2025 Orange County Water Demand Projection Model
2.1.15
Drought Restrictions
The presence of drought restrictions tends to decrease the amount of water consumed by customers. Water use restrictions were represented by the presence of Statewide drought declarations or mandatory restrictions (both assigned a binary value of 0 or 1, meaning either the restriction is in place or it is not), and the state-required cutback (as a decimal from 0 to 1 corresponding to the restriction percentage) if a restriction was in place. The time series of historical water restrictions is shown in Figure 2-7 .
10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50%
1 Yes
0% 5%
No
0
State Declaration
State Mandatory Restriction
State Requested Reduction (%)
Figure 2-7: Time Series of Historical Water Restrictions Imposed by the State
Retail agencies also provided their agency-specific drought stages, which were categorized as level 1, level 2, or level 3 and greater. During the model fitting process, Hazen determined that while the State Declarations resolved water use for the single-family, multifamily, and CII sectors, the agency-specific drought stages (which did not always coincide with the State binary or percentage requests) yielded a better fit across the irrigation sector models.
2.1.16
COVID
COVID is introduced as a binary variable for March 2020 through May 2023, the period in which the World Health Organization designated COVID-19 a pandemic. The presence of COVID restrictions tended to increase the amount of water consumed by residential customers and decreased the amount used in the CII sector.
2-18
Appendix G - 37
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