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Long Beach cracks down, hits a McDonald's with water-wasting fine
Water from sprinklers pools in the drive-up lane at the McDonalds restaurant on Bellflower Boulevard in Long Beach.
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Courtesy Long Beach Water Department
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Sprinklers around the drive-through area at this Long Beach McDonald's restaurant created runoff, and that created complaints, say city water managers.
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Molly Peterson/KPCC
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Water managers in Long Beach notified the McDonald's on Bellflower Boulevard about sprinkler problems three times before levying $800 in fines.
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Molly Peterson/KPCC
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The head of the Long Beach water department says it's time to crack down on water waste. The first water-waste fine in the city's history went to this McDonald's, on Bellflower Blvd.
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Molly Peterson/KPCC
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Long Beach cracks down, hits a McDonald's with water-wasting fine
A year after Gov. Jerry Brown declared a drought emergency, the city of Long Beach is moving away from trying to entice water conservation with friendly reminders.
For the first time ever, Long Beach has penalized a water waster, issuing four violations and $800 in fines to a McDonald’s restaurant on Bellflower Boulevard.
In light of the worsening drought, Water Department General Manager Kevin Wattier said it was time to act.
“We've gotten to the point now where this drought is so serious and our credibility as a utility is in question that we can no longer put up with flagrant abusers of our prohibited users of water,” Wattier said.
The city's water department got a lot of complaints that the McDonald's restaurant on Bellflower Boulevard was wasting water, Wattier said. So, the department started monitoring it. They sent the owner a warning letter, and served its office two legal notices.
Still, water department employees videotaped broken irrigation lines and sprinklers going off twice overnight, sometimes five days a week.
McDonald's water waste on Bellflower Blvd.
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On Friday afternoon, the manager on duty at the restaurant declined to comment, as did a spokesman for the regional franchise owner.
Long Beach has had permanent water restrictions in place since the 2009 drought, prohibiting sidewalk runoff, irrigation of landscape during the day, and other wasteful practices. Emergency water use restrictions in the city limit irrigation to 10 minutes on Mondays and Thursdays between October and March.
In less than a week, spring snowpack measurements should be at their peak, taken in Northern California from the Trinity River basin through the Feather and Truckee river basins.
Wattier’s not optimistic.
“There’s nine snow sensors in the Feather River watershed. Eight of those nine are showing zero snowpack in the area where it should be peaking out [Thursday],” Wattier said. “Quite frankly, we’re very, very concerned about the long-term progress. And we think Long Beach needs to set a good example in terms of conservation for the rest of the region and that’s what we’re trying to do.”
With state regulations tightening, and reservoirs emptying, Wattier says that he expects more cities to follow suit.
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