Californians turned on their sprinklers in force in March, using more water than they did the year before and making a mockery of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s call for voluntary drought conservation.
The State Water Resources Conservation Board said Tuesday that per-capita urban water usage rose 7% in March compared to a year earlier, and was up 14% when compared to March 2020. It was the heaviest consumption of water in March since 2015, when the previous drought was in its worst days.
With the drought in its third year, Newsom has resisted imposing mandatory water conservation but instead has been asking Californians since last July to voluntarily reduce consumption by 15%. By contrast, his predecessor Jerry Brown ordered 25% mandatory cutbacks in urban water use in 2015.
Despite Newsom’s call, the cumulative savings since July amount to less than 4%, the state water board said.
Joaquin Esquivel, the chairman of the water board, called the latest results a consequence of three consecutive months with practically no rain in much of California.
“Regrettably, it’s not too much of a surprise,” he said. “Outdoor irrigation is really driving ... our challenges around conservation.”
Newsom’s administration immediately called for $100 million in fresh spending to ramp up the state’s “Save Our Water” public relations campaign. Newsom will formally announce the proposed spending on Friday, when he releases the annual May revision of the budget he proposed in January.
H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for the Department of Finance, said only $8 million was budgeted for the campaign in the previous budget.
The increased expenditure “is certainly designed to address and stress the importance of getting the word out about the importance of conservation,” Palmer said. He said Newsom hopes to “turn these (conservation) numbers in a different direction.”
Newsom on Friday will also propose an additional $180 million to help local water agencies implement water efficiency projects.
His office noted that the governor issued an executive order in March that called on local water agencies “to take more aggressive conservation actions.” He also directed the state water board to consider a ban on watering of “decorative grass at business and public institutions.”
Many local jurisdictions already have water restrictions in place. In the city of Sacramento, outdoor watering is limited to twice a week, and repeat violations can bring fines.
Last month the state’s largest urban water supplier, the Metropolitan Water District of California, took the unprecedented step of limiting outdoor watering to one day a week for an area covering about one-third of its 19 million customers. Newsom noted that some other local agencies have clamped down on water use.
“While today’s conservation figures are disappointing, they do not reflect these latest changes,” Newsom’s office said. “We are hopeful these actions will significantly contribute to the state’s overall water reduction goals as outdoor watering is one of the biggest single users of water.”
Heather Cooley, director of research for the Pacific Institute, an Oakland-based water policy think tank, said the numbers show Californians still have too many “water intensive” lawns and outdoor landscaping for a climate that is increasingly not suited to sustain them.
“I do think this an opportunity to build more resilient communities in the face of climate change,” she said. “We need to stop thinking this is just another drought and recognize the West is going to be hotter and drier than it was in the past, and we need to reevaluate and reimagine our water use.”
