California Water Cuts Leave City Days Away From Running Out Of Water

The upscale community of Mountain House, west of Tracy, is days away from having no water. It’s not just about lawns—there may not be a drop for the 15,000 residents to drink. “We’re out there looking for water supplies as we speak,” said Mountain House general manager Ed Pattison. “We have storage tanks, but those are basically just to ensure the correct pressurization of the distribution system. No more than 2 days are in those storage tanks.” The community’s sole source of water, the Byron-Bethany Irrigation District, was one of 114 senior water rights holders cut off by a curtailment notice from the state on Friday. That means Mountain House leaders must find someone to sell them water, hopefully, the GM says, to have enough until the end of the year. “We don’t want this town to become a ghost town, it was a beautiful master-planned community,” he said...more