East Bay Municipal Utility District declared on Tuesday a water-shortage emergency across the district’s system and passed its first water-rationing resolution in 16 years.

According to Bloomberg, Brian McCrea, a spokesman for the EBMUD, said that, while January and February were wet months, March was “miserable” and April had the lowest rainfall in 79 years.

“This is the worst situation we've seen in almost 20 years,” McCrea said.

East Bay District has 1.3 million costumers in a 325-square-mile area between Oakland and Danville and Crockett and Castro Valley.

The conservation goals were set at 5 percent for refineries and manufacturers, 11 percent for apartment residents, 19 percent for owners of single-family homes and 30 percent for irrigators.

The questions that rise are about how the targets are calculated and if the residents who were already conserving water are supposed to cut the same percentage as the ones who used large amounts of it.

“The problem is there's no incentive for people who have ... made a huge investment to do the right thing. Maybe it should be ... if you've made the investment, we're not going to (demand reductions of) 30 percent, but 2 percent,” said Chris Donton, a field technician for Aqua Conserve, a Riverside irrigation control company, reported the San Francisco Chronicle.

The penalties for those who won’t comply involve citations and the possibility of reduced water flow or even disconnected service.

Managers said that this measure is necessary because the system’s reservoir is expected to be left with only 415,000 acre-feet of water - about two thirds of the normal 600,000 acre-feet due to the two consecutive dry years and the driest spring recorded so far.

The board will hold a public hearing on July 8 on the surcharge rate proposal. The rates would take effect beginning with August 1.