Drought Law Bans Watering Grass : Conservation: Santa Barbara is the first city in the state to enact such a measure in this dry spell, and the first ever in Southern California. The council also boosts water rates sharply.

Santa Barbara is a city known for its Spanish architecture, its variety of flora, lush gardens and expansive lawns. But soon, tens of thousands of homes apparently will be framed not by manicured lawns but by straw-colored patches of desiccated grass.

Faced with a water shortage of almost 50% this year, the Santa Barbara City Council voted Tuesday night to make watering lawns illegal. In so doing, the city became the first in the state to ban lawn watering in response to the current dry spell, and the first ever in Southern California to enact such a measure to cope with drought, water experts said.

As part of the new ordinance, which took effect immediately, Santa Barbara residents also are prohibited from using hoses to water trees and shrubs, but are permitted to keep them alive with hand-held buckets or drip irrigation systems.

Other conservation measures adopted by the council include a sharp increase in water rates.

The ban on lawn watering will have a devastating impact on the city’s landscape industry, experts say.

“Nurseries won’t be selling lawn supplies, landscapers won’t be putting in lawns and gardeners won’t be mowing them,” said Martin Senn, president of the California Assn. of Nurserymen’s local chapter. “We’re all going to have to lay low and try to survive this until the drought is over.”

Among the hardest hit will be the more than 1,500 gardeners in the city. Up to 20% could lose their jobs, said Henry Camacho, president of the Santa Barbara Gardeners Assn.

The morning after the City Council’s decision, Santa Barbara residents began searching for ways to keep their gardens alive.

“We just had a sprinkler system man over to tell us about installing a drip system,” said Vasanti Fithian, who has a large garden with 50 trees, as well as a variety of rose bushes and 75-year-old shrubs. “Some plants we’ll keep alive through the drip system and through saving shower water. Others we’ll just have to let die, along with the lawn. There’s only so much water.”

To ensure that people don’t violate the watering ban, three “drought officers” from the city’s Public Works Department will be responding to violations. A warning citation will be issued for the first offense; a fine of up to $250 for the second; another $250 fine for the third, along with the possibility of water use restrictions, and a possible total shut-off for the fourth violation.

The last time lawn watering was banned in the state was in 1977 in Northern California’s Marin County during another serious drought, said Dean Thompson, a spokesman for the California Department of Water Resources. Thompson and spokesmen for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California say that to their knowledge, Santa Barbara is the first Southern California city to enact such a ban.

The state’s current drought has hit the area from Monterey to Santa Barbara particularly hard. Unlike Los Angeles and other areas in California that have access to water from the Sierra, the central coast relies solely on reservoirs and ground water pumping.

And among the cities of the central coast, Santa Barbara has the greatest water shortage. Lake Cachuma provides Santa Barbara with the majority of its water, but it is at its lowest point ever--30% of capacity. And Gibraltar Reservoir near Montecito, which in the past had provided the city with about 30% of its water, ran dry in November.

Lake Cachuma was designed to tolerate a seven-year drought, the longest known when the reservoir was created in the 1950s. The city is entering its seventh year without adequate rainfall--the worst drought in more than 40 years, said Bill Ferguson, water development planner for Santa Barbara.

“Our goal now is to keep the big things alive--like trees and shrubs,” Ferguson said. “Because the water shortage is so critical, we have to view turf and lawns as expendable.”

Also under the city’s new Stage III drought plan, families will be paying much higher water rates. The average single-family home in Santa Barbara used to pay about $18 a month for water, Ferguson said. The same amount of water will now cost $76, he said. And those who use excessive amounts of water will be charged rates that increase dramatically as water use rises.

The City Council had considered banning the watering of even trees and shrubs, and landscape professionals, worried that their industry would be wiped out, lobbied city officials.

“We’re all aware of the seriousness of the drought, so we haven’t fought the issue of letting turf and lawns go,” said Autumn Brook of the Santa Barbara Green Industry Council, an association of landscape professionals. “We’re all relieved that trees and shrubs were spared. So now we just have to approach horticulture in a different way. We’ll be planting a lot of drought-resistant plants and installing low-volume irrigation systems.”

The City Council agreed to allow carwashes to keep operating and to let the city’s Botanic Gardens use sprinklers. The council also will allow golf courses to keep greens and tees alive for four months, until a system using reclaimed water from the city sewage treatment plant can be implemented.

Cities throughout the state have instituted less severe measures to cope with the persistent drought, said Thompson of the state Water Resources Department. Monterey and San Luis Obispo counties have enacted laws to institute mandatory cuts of 20% in water use. Those who exceed their water allotment can be fined up to three times the amount of their water bill. The city of San Jose instituted mandatory water rationing last summer. And El Dorado County enacted a building moratorium until March, when officials can better estimate their water resources for the year.