SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Gavin Newsom, acknowledging the severity of the drought, ordered California cities and other local water agencies Monday to reduce their water usage and tighten their conservation rules.
Newsom, however, continued to resist mandatory statewide cutbacks in urban water use, just as he did last year during the recall campaign. Instead, he ordered urban water agencies to implement the second stage of their water shortage contingency plans — protocols that are to take effect when water shortages approach 20%.
While those rules vary from one jurisdiction to the next, they usually include restrictions on outdoor watering, customer rebates for installing efficient plumbing fixtures and stepped-up public-relations efforts and "water waste" patrols.
Newsom administration officials defended the decision not to impose a statewide mandate. "Each of those own districts have their own plan, we're not telling them what to do," Jared Blumenfeld, secretary or the state Environmental Protection Agency, told reporters.
While Newsom's predecessor ordered statewide cutbacks, Blumenfeld said it's clear that "it's really important to listen to locals. ... One size fits all doesn't work in California."
It remains to be seen how effective Newsom's latest move will be. Last year he urged Californians to voluntarily reduce water use by 15% — a plea that has largely been ignored. Last September, for instance, consumption fell by just 4%. In January the conservation rate was just under 6%.
"Today I am calling on local water agencies to implement more aggressive water conservation measures," Newsom said in a prepared statement.
Newsom's directive came, ironically, as rain and snow fell across much of Northern California. But the precipitation was expected to be moderate — and surely wouldn't be enough to prevent a third straight year of drought.
On average, water levels are 31% below normal for late March in California's major reservoirs, according to the Department of Water Resources. Shasta Lake, the largest reservoir in the state, is just half as full as it should be. The Sierra Nevada snowpack — so bountiful after record snowfall in December — has largely evaporated and sits 61% below normal for this time of year.
Newsom's predecessor Jerry Brown imposed a 25% mandatory cut in urban use during the drought in 2015. The move had some Californians putting buckets in their showers and tearing up their landscaping. Outdoor use for lawns and ornamental landscaping accounts for most urban water use in the state.
While some conservative communities protested Brown's orders, most local governments offered rebates for turf removal and other incentives to encourage water reductions. Many levied fines on water wasters, triggering a wave of people tattling on their neighbors for hosing down sidewalks or letting their sprinklers run into the gutters.
The cutbacks were loosened as conditions improved the following year and then lifted altogether when record precipitation led Brown to declare an official end to the drought in 2017.
Newsom also told the State Water Resources Control Board to consider banning irrigation of "nonfunctional" grass, including decorative grass next to large commercial and industrial buildings. The ban wouldn't extend to parks, ball fields and school grounds. The Department of Water Resources said this ban would save several hundred thousand acre-feet. An acre-foot is 326,000 gallons.
The governor also said he was cutting red tape so drought-stricken communities in the Central Valley and elsewhere can quickly get bottled water or other emergency supplies. He also said he would expedite state agency approvals needed "to protect fish and wildlife where drought actions threaten their health and survival."
The reductions in urban use come as farmers, who use more water than California's cities do, also are facing substantial cutbacks.
According to the Public Policy Institute of California, about 9 million acres of farmland in California are irrigated, representing about 80% of the water used by people.
The Central Valley Project has announced a zero allocation for most of its customers, which include many of the largest farm-irrigation districts in the state.
Last week, state water regulators also sent warning letters to approximately 20,000 water right holders — farmers and cities with historical legal claims to river water. The letter says they should expect to stop pulling water in the coming weeks — and even earlier than last year.
Separately, the Newsom administration announced it would be cutting water deliveries from the State Water Project, the elaborate network of reservoirs and canals that distributes water all over California.
The SWP's largest customer is the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which serves 19 million urban residents, including those in Los Angeles and San Diego.
The project, after a promising start to winter, had originally declared that allocations would hit 15%. Now Metropolitan and other agencies can expect only 5% allocations this year from the state project.
Taken together, the moves reflect not only California's abysmal drought conditions and fears of communities running out of water, but also the governments' efforts to try to keep more water in the rivers to protect species of cold-water fish that scientists have been warning for years are perilously close to extinction.
Californians shouldn't expect new dams or water storage projects to come online any time soon either.
In 2014, during California's last drought, voters approved Proposition 1, a $7.1 billion water bond whose backers promised would be used to build "new facilities we need to store, deliver and treat water."
Eight years later, none of the major water storage projects being funded by Proposition 1 is completed.
They're all still in the pre-construction phase: reviewing environmental impacts, designing dams and nailing down financing to pay for the costs the state won't handle.
Of the seven big water storage projects receiving Proposition 1 funding, the earliest that anything will be completed is late 2024, when a groundwater-banking project south of Sacramento is scheduled to begin operations.
The largest project, Sites Reservoir, a storage facility north of Sacramento that would hold more water than Folsom Lake, is likely years away from becoming reality. However, the federal Environmental Protection Agency recently signaled that the project could be eligible for a $2.2 billion government loan, a development that could jump-start construction.
