CALIFORNIA’S REBOUND SLOWER THAN IN OTHER WARM STATES

in one of the poshest areas of Orange County, approved a ban on filling or refilling residential pools. San Jose, which is trying to cut water use by 30 percent, did the same in April. That city also prohibits topping off existing pools with more than 1 foot of water.

The bans generally do not include community pools.

“We’re in a very significant drought. We’re asking people not to water their lawns,” said Kerrie Romanow, director of San Jose’s environmental services department. “That does require some level of sacrifice.”

Even as cities and agencies crack down, contractors in some parts of the state are seeing a small uptick in demand as the recession ends. Applications for new pool permits declined steeply during the recession, but pool contractors in some areas without pool-related water restric- tions say business is up this spring.

The rebound is slower in California than in other warmweather states such as Florida, Texas and the Carolinas that aren’t experiencing intense drought, said Toby Morrison, Metrostudy’s national sales manager.

“Our sales are up fairly significantly, but we have no idea how many people are influenced by reading in the newspaper and saying, ‘Gee, I might not ever be able to fill it, or will the neighbors throw rocks at me if I build one?’” said Cecil Fraser, owner of Swan Pools in Lake Forest, Calif.

McDonough’s water district has not yet instituted restrictions, and a pool seemed right for her two young children.

“For us, it was sort of a musthave when we bought this place,” McDonough said. “So, I’m happy that it’s getting done now and that we were able to fill it.”

Experts caution that the poolversus-lawn calculations depend on too many variables to be reliable, including how much water splashes out of the pool, whether there’s a pool cover to prevent evaporation and how often the lawn was watered before it was ripped out.

In the end, the amount of water used for pools and lawns is roughly the same, said Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, a nonprofit research institute focused on the environment and sustainability. And letting a lawn die or replanting with desert landscaping uses dramatically less water than a pool, so the comparison misses the point, he said.

“These are luxuries and we’re in areally baddrought, andeverybody needs to step up instead of pointing the finger at the other guy,” Gleick said.