NEWSOM CALLS FOR WATER CONSERVATION
Governor losing patience as water use drops only 3.7% since last July, well short of 15% target
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday warned major water agencies to show better water conservation results or face mandatory statewide water restrictions as California heads into its third summer of severe drought.
The threat is a sign of Newsom's growing impatience with the state's lagging conservation efforts, and came as he convened a meeting in Sacramento of the state's largest water agencies, and told their leaders that not enough is being done to reduce urban water use.
The governor scheduled another meeting in two months for them to provide an update on their progress, and also told them to submit water use data more frequently to the state and to step up outreach and education efforts to better communicate the urgency of the crisis to the public.
Last July, Newsom declared a drought emergency and asked Californians to cut urban water use 15% compared to 2020 levels. But in March, the most recent month for which that data is available, residents instead cranked up the taps, increasing urban water use a staggering 18.9% statewide compared to March 2020, amid the driest January, February and March in the state's recorded history.
Overall, Newsom's calls for water conservation have been largely ignored.
Cumulatively, from July through March, residents, businesses and government agencies reduced urban water use statewide by just 3.7% compared to the same time period in 2020, according to the State Water Resources Control Board, with lower rates of conservation in Southern California than Northern California.
“Every water agency across the state needs to take more aggressive actions to communicate about the drought emergency and implement conservation measures,” Newsom said in a statement. “Californians made significant changes since the last drought but we have seen an uptick in water use, especially as we enter the summer months. We all have to be more thoughtful about how to make every drop count.”
Currently, 95% of the state is in a severe drought, and 59% is in an extreme drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a weekly report issued by the federal government and the University of Nebraska.
Amid other crises like the COVID pandemic, wildfires, inflation and Russia's attack on Ukraine, Newsom has struggled to get the public to make the drought a toptier concern.
For the past nine months, he has allowed local water agencies largely set their own conservation targets. Some have set vigorous targets with enforcement. Many have not, or are only recently starting to. Water conservation costs city water departments and water districts tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue as less water is sold,
and costs — like purchasing water from other agencies, and boosting enforcement — go up.
Former Gov. Jerry Brown tried a similar voluntary approach during California's last drought from 2012 to 2016.
When it failed to produce significant water savings, Brown issued mandatory statewide water targets, with different targets for cities and water districts based on their per-capita use. San Francisco, for example, which has thousands of apartments without yards, uses less water per capita than Sacramento or Palm Springs, so was given more moderate savings target than those areas.
Under Brown's plan, cities and water districts that did not hit their goal were issued fines. That effort cut water use nearly 25%.
But it led to complaints from some agencies, particularly in Southern California, who asked Newsom to leave drought rules to local control.
The state's problem is simple: After three drierthan-normal winters reservoirs are low. And with climate change causing increasing temperatures, drought conditions, including wildfire risk, are exacerbated.
Most of the state's major reservoirs are at low or record-low levels for this time of year. On Monday, Shasta Lake, the state's largest, near Redding, was just 40% full. The second largest, Oroville, in Butte County, was 55% full. No significant rain or snow is expected to fall for at least five or six months, until October or November.
Newsom supported plans by Poseidon, a private company, to build a $1.4 billion desalination plant in Orange County. But two weeks ago, the California Coastal Commission — including all four of the governor's appointees — voted unanimously to deny it a permit, saying it would increase water rates for low-income people and could harm microscopic ocean life.
Newsom also has supported plans to build new reservoirs, such as the proposed $4 billion Sites Reservoir in Colusa County, but in his revised May budget, did not devote any of the state's surplus this year to funding them.
There is no guarantee next winter will end the drought. The state has been in a drought in seven of the past 10 years.
Although agriculture accounts for 80% of the water that people use in California, many urban systems rely on their own local reservoirs and local groundwater supplies for some or all of their water. On Monday, the 10 reservoirs operated by the Santa Clara Valley Water District, which serves 2 million people in Santa Clara County, for example, were just 23% full.
Meanwhile, in another signal of the worsening drought playing out across California and the West, the state water board is set to vote Tuesday to ban all watering of “non-functional turf,” meaning lawns at office parks and industrial sites, with potable water, with fines up to $500 for offenders.