Mayor Leo Zuber is requesting to see the water consumption report for the City of Ripon for the past year. 

While he was impressed with the efforts by locals in December – Ted Johnston in public works reported water reduction at a whopping 29.8 percent compared to a year ago – Zuber was also aware that Mother Nature had a helping hand.

He pointed that out at last Tuesday’s Ripon City Council meeting.

December was an extraordinarily wet month.

That bolstered the state, as a whole, to finally meet Gov. Jerry Brown’s challenge of over a year ago that all cities reduce water consumption by 20 percent in response to the continuing drought.

“December was good because it rained. Now I would like to see the numbers for January, which was a dry month,” Zuber said.

According to reports filed by urban water agencies with the State Water Resources Control Board, this marked the first time that the emergency drought declaration goal by Brown was met.

The same report had the San Joaquin River region cutting down on water consumption by 18.9 percent in December compared to that of a year ago.

Johnston, meanwhile, said he would be able to provide a report on the 2014 water consumption for Ripon.

He’ll soon schedule a water conservation outreach program for the public, providing instructions on how to set the timer as to when to properly irrigate the yard, for starters.

“We’ll also tell people about the rebates available for the smart irrigation controllers,” Johnston added.