Los Angeles Times

Who has made the grade?

- thomas suhlauder and matt stevens thomas. lauder @ latimes. com Twitter: @thomas0603­7 matt. stevens @ latimes. com Twitter: @ByMattStev­ens

On April 1, as California entered a fourth year of drought, Gov. Jerry Brown stood in a barren f ield that should have been smothered in snow and demanded a 25% cut in urban water use.

To comply with Brown’s mandate, the State Water Resources Control Board developed reduction targets that each of California’s more than 400 urban water districts must meet over the next several months.

Districts that have had high residentia­l water usage must cut their overall consumptio­n by as much as 36%. Districts that have recorded low residentia­l use will be required to cut their usage by as little as 4%. The targets were f inalized by state regulators after weeks of public comment.

Regulators will evaluate compliance on both a monthly and a rolling cumulative basis beginning this month and running through February. Water use during that time will be compared with the same months in 2013.

Districts that fail to meet reduction targets may be fined up to $ 10,000 a day.

The report cards below show the targets for 16 districts across Southern California. The report cards also show how much each district’s actual water usage increased or decreased in April 2015, as compared with April 2013. The April data are the latest available.

The state releases new water- use data at the beginning of each month. These report cards will be updated online at latimes. com/ drought- report- card as new informatio­n is released. Regulators said water use for this month will be made public by early August.

Although districts will be judged on how much they reduce total water use — which includes commercial, industrial and other sectors — residentia­l use usually makes up the largest share of water consumptio­n in urban areas.

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