25% reduction mandated.

Sierra snow pack at 5% of average for this date.

The part I read was very vague but required water companies to implement a pricing structure to "discourage" (penalize) heavy users (you and I).

Time for fake grass.  

I am concerned they will only try to conserve their way out of this problem. Additional supply will be ignored.
Yes a lot of people and organizations have not done any / or enough conservation but that will never be enough.
The environmentalists will fight any additional methods of supply - Desal plants or pipelines from elsewhere and they certainly will not allow the electrical generating plants needed to power them.
Where I'm at in San DIego County, we just completed a Desal plant that the environmentalists fought for years. It will supply about 7% of the Counties water.
As Paul said, Ag uses most of the water and they will be targeted for additional cutbacks in order to supply the urban areas. Ag is big business but I think if this drought does not end they will drive agriculture out of California completely before they will develop any significant new sources.
Maybe Ag can move elsewhere without causing food price spikes or shortages, I don't know. Certainly the rest of the West is subject to drought all the way to the front range of the Rockies. So that leaves about half of the US to source the remainder.
I think that it will be very important to continue for America to be able to supply food, not just to ourselves but to  the World. If we can sell food to the world we can make money (same with oil and nat gas) and we can use that food and fuel supply to prevent or reduce World chaos that may develop. So I lean towards increasing the water supply in California rather than just getting rid of Agriculture and conserving in the urban areas.
We need to make electricity plentiful and cheap in the US and that will help us make food and fuel and all kinds of other things plentiful. Those things will help us develop new power sources and solutions to our environmental problems. We will solve more environmental problems that way than by not driving or taking showers...

When I think about this statement, its implications are almost frightening because it isn't really a statement just about lawn care.

"We're in a new era; the idea of your nice little green grass getting water every day, that's going to be a thing of the past," (Governor) Brown said.




Little by little by little but inexorably, they push all the good people and good businesses out of California.  It has long since begun.  

Where will it stop?

Allow for profit water companies to penalize the citizens. Seems fair right? The eyeballs of some of these companies CEOs are just huge dollar signs right now.


I am still not sure why everyone is whining about desalinated water. It tastes better than any city water you get and the waste is not a problem if the people crying about it stopped for 20 seconds, thought about who likes really salty water(Cargill Salt) and sold off the brine to cover the electric bill.

The Ag water districts where I live have some of the strongest water rights in the state, and they will get 50% this year. There is nobody (upstream) to buy additional water from.

Tom

Well, I am going outside to start capping off a bunch of sprinklers to cut my water use.  I'll probably throttle back on the remaining sprinklers, too (reduce the flow).

I think I'll convert the parkway to some sort of xeriscape.  The City has two trees on my parkway.  I don't want those to die, so I may irrigate them with a drip system using one of the existing sprinkler lines.  

I don't really waste too much water but will do my part to reduce my consumption.



Many people in the neighborhood water almost every day and flood the street (a huge flow down the curbside gutters) when their sprinklers are on - that's a waste!

Yep!  All done.

In one area I took out 6 of 10 sprinklers and turned the other 4 down a bit.  That's a big change, so I'll have to keep a sharp eye on the trees.  The thing about trees is that by the time the stress is readily evident they are already in really bad shape.

I wonder how much water this will save.

I may look into the logistics and price of having a well drilled.

Already have no lawn and mostly hardscape (concrete and lava rocks) but I have quite a few very productive fruit trees that I would like to keep.

Yep, we try not to waste it.

I wonder what a huge loss of irrigation water will do to the influx of undocumented democrats.

This.

I had 18 fruit trees 3 years ago.   Now I am down to 16.

Lost a young cherry tree in the course of about a week last year due to over watering.   Working a ton of overtime I didnt catch it til it was too late.   Turned off the water to it and it never came back.

I am not losing any more trees.    I will let the front yard die off completely before I lose any of my 5+ year trees.

This mandatory restriction can't be sustained and it does doesn't really reduce water usage overall. It merely slows down the rate of increase. A lot of people are still moving to California and they'll have to figure out how to increase supply.

No matter the outcome, for now, we are in a drought.  Everyone knows that.  

The water companies have been given a green light to penalize users for normal consumption.  Anything less than a 25% reduction will surely cost beau coups bucks.  I wonder what they will do with the funds they raise in penalties????

They failed to plan for this eventuality.  So they've planned to fail.

Where are the other two, GD?

Yep, GD, I found them.

 
Do you have any idea how expensive it is? $12 a sq ft. +




 

They get to keep it, and seeing as some of these water utilities are private for profit companies all it does is speed up the rate at which the CEO on the east coast can buy a new Benz.

To be fair, pretty green lawns are a huge use of water that could be better served elsewhere. I'm not going to just come out and say they are a waste of water, but lawn water usage has been a discussion point all across the country.

Yes and it ain't cheap, but it's cheaper than the fines to keep a nice yard.

Artificial is great for small decorative patches, but sucks as a lawn. It gets very hot in direct sunlight, doesn't drain water easily and feels like a rug was placed over dirt. It gets stapled down, but it can't follow the small contours of the ground beneath it and you feel it give under you.

If you have animals, pets or otherwise, it will smell something awful.

Oh, I'd not thought of that.  I bet that's 100% true.  We have skunks, raccoons, opossums, ... and our dog.  OMG!

I already have my lawn sprinkles timer set to 1 min every 3 days.
I guess I can go to 1 min every 4 days.

I don't think I can lower my water use anymore than it is, unless I let the Yellow water  ...MELLOW !!
Or rig up my shower waste water to flush my toilet.

During our last bad drought, I was looking at installing a grey water recovery system for use in the garden.  I was thinking laundry waste water, showers, maybe the sinks.  I never did it, though.  During my research, I found out the City does not allow this, either.

Another thing that I thought would help while washing dishes was a foot switch (a pedal).  Step on the pedal and the sink faucet comes on.  Hold the pedal down as long as you are using water.  Release pedal and water goes off.


Tomorrow, I am going to shut down a few more sprinklers.  I have a steep slope out back.  I need to keep the ground cover and trees on the alive.  All droughts end.  I can not afford to have a heavy rain start a mudslide.

Yes, you are correct that it's not cheap if you buy the good artificial turf.  Cheap ones look fake and don't hold up.  

My GF and I have it installed in our front yard and backyard of our home in LV and have not

experienced anything of what you say here.  Ground needs to be level....and plastic underneath so that the weeds won't grow.

Other than that....I use a blower to clean it ...never needs water and virtually maintenance free. We've had it for 5 years now.

This sucks.  I looked at my water bill and I'm on the lowest tier you can be on.  

Can't wash you grass ,ass or brass.  Fuck Jerry brown.  


Edit , I have brass in the wet tumbler now.  

Telling it like it is:

Here's a link to the article but I did not want to lose the story when Foxnews updates their page, so I quoted it all below.  It will be interesting to re-read this a year from now.

Drought Is A Man Made Disaster


'Man-made disaster': Critics say California drought caused by misguided environment policies



The blistering drought that has Californians timing their showers, driving dirty cars and staring at brown lawns and empty swimming pools is a “man-made disaster,” according to critics, who say the Golden State’s misguided environmental policies allow much-needed freshwater to flow straight into the Pacific.

In an average year, California gets enough snow and rain to put 200 million acres under a foot of water, but environmental opposition to dams over the last several decades has allowed the majority of the freshwater to flow into the ocean, even as the state’s population exploded to nearly 40 million people. The current drought has left farms parched and residents under strict water consumption orders, but some say it didn't have to be that way.

“This is a man-made disaster,” said Bonner Cohen, senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research. “Southern California is an arid part of the world where droughts -- even severe droughts -- are commonplace, and knowing this, you’d think the government of California would have included this mathematical certainty in its disaster preparedness planning, but the government has done nothing, not even store rain, as the population has continued to grow.”

Gov. Jerry Brown last week mandated the state’s residents cut water usage by as much as 35 percent, saying, "As Californians, we have to pull together and save water in every way we can.” Consumers face stiff penalties, forced installation of water restriction devices and even water service suspension if they don’t comply with county mandates. Commercial users face even tougher sanctions, with one county requiring them to cut usage by 80 percent.

The critics say California gets  plenty of water to meet its needs, if it were only managed properly. More than half of California’s surface water flows from the Sierra Nevada mountains in the east down to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in Northern California. Much of the mountain runoff is managed by two of the world’s largest water storage and transport systems – the federal Central Valley Project and California's State Water Project. Each is a system of dams, reservoirs and distribution systems designed to send water to cities, towns and farms throughout the state.

But the vast majority of the state’s 1,400 dams and reservoirs, in the two massive systems and smaller ones that supply southern California, were built well before the 1980s. Environmentalists have since stopped the construction of water storage and delivery systems through legal and political actions. They have also fought to ensure that captured water is released into streams and the ocean -- rather than the water delivery system -- in order to boost fish populations and dilute the salinity of the delta.




Amid the worst drought on record, Californians are being forced to make drastic cuts in usage. (AP)


“Droughts are nothing new in California, but right now, 70 percent of California's rainfall washes out to sea because liberals have prevented the construction of a single new reservoir or a single new water conveyance system over decades, during a period in which California’s population has doubled,” said Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett Packard and likely GOP presidential candidate. “This is the classic case of liberals being willing to sacrifice other people's lives and livelihoods at the altar of their ideology.”

Releasing the water is supposed to save the endangered fish population, including the Delta Smelt, Longfin Smelt, four runs of Chinook Salmon, the Steelhead, Green and White Sturgeon, Splittail and the Sacramento hitch, but so far the fish population has decreased, according to experts. A state survey in March found just 6 Delta Smelt – four females and two males – prompting wildlife experts to estimate the species' population has dropped to 5,000 or fewer from the millions in the last 40 years.

"Prepare for the extinction of the Delta Smelt in the wild,” UC Davis fish biologist Peter Moyle said. “The population today may be too low to sustain itself,” Moyle said. “Fish ready to spawn have to find one another in a big area. If spawning is successful, there have to be enough eggs and larvae that some individuals survive to become the next generation of spawners.”

Jim Burling of the Pacific Legal Foundation said while water diversions have not helped endangered fish populations, the policies are devastating to people, produce and the economy.

“The plan is not doing anything for the fish and causing a lot of pain for farmers and farm workers,” Burling said. “The impact of these policies on people should be considered.”

The state has more than 80,000 farms and ranches, which generate more than $44 billion in annual sales. California produces more than 250 different crops, leads the U.S. in production of 75 commodities, and, according to the Water Education Foundation, is the only state to produce 12 key crops such as almonds, artichokes, dates, figs, raisins, kiwi, olives, persimmons, pistachios, prunes and walnuts.

During the current drought, which began in 2012, and by some estimates could be the most severe in recorded history, billions of gallons of water have been diverted from farmlands, according to a report by the Washington D.C.-based Heritage Foundation, with the American Farm Bureau estimating that between 400,000 acres and 500,000 acres of crops will be lost.

Fiorina said it’s a “tragedy” that the agricultural land in California, the most productive in the world, has been destroyed, along with farming jobs because of politics, policy, and liberal environmentalists.

Rep. Devin Nunes, a Republican who represents a Central Valley district in Congress, said roughly 21 million-acre feet of water is flushed into the ocean annually. One acre-foot equals 325,851 gallons, the average annual water usage for a suburban family household. He also blames environmental groups for the fact that the state is dry.

“The environmental groups did not expect to run everyone out of water, but they got greedy, shut down the whole system, and ran the whole damned state dry,” Nunes said.

The environmental movement went to court to stop most new dam construction, according to Victor Davis Hanson, a Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, including the Sites Reservoir; the Los Banos Grandes facility; and the Temperance Flat Reservoir.

The Klamath River diversion project also was canceled in the 1970s, putting an end to the Aw Paw reservoir, potentially the state’s largest man-made reservoir with 15 million acre-feet of water, or enough to supply San Francisco for 30 years, Davis said.

“California’s water-storage capacity would be nearly double what it is today had these plans come to fruition,” Davis said in a report.

Environmentalists also diverted irrigation and municipal water from reservoirs and moved to freeze California’s water-storage resources at 1970s capacities, Davis said.

Nunes introduced the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley Water Reliability Act of 2012 and co-sponsored the Sacramento-San Joaquin Emergency Water Delivery Act of 2014 to “restore water deliveries cut off by environmental lawsuits and federal regulation; streamline environmental regulatory processes to speed up 5,000,000 water reliability projects and transfers; expand the use of the Central Valley Project to allow water deliveries by non-federal sources; and end the effort to protect non-native species and instead focus on native species.”

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the legislation in 2013 and 2014, but U.S. Senators Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein, both Democrats from California, refused to sign on to the GOP plan, and Brown, in charge of California from 1975 to 1983 and then again since 2011, also expressed opposition, Nunes said. As the crisis in California grows, Nunes hopes to get the legislation through the Senate and to President Obama for his signature.


The Delta Smelt could be headed for extinction, despite the efforts to save it. (University of California)

“If we had stored water and built three new dams, the state would be flush with water,” Nunes said.

As millions of gallons of freshwater rush out to sea, some counties are looking for ways to bring desalinization plants online, and are spending millions of dollars to do so, but environmentalists are already speaking out against the plan, saying desalinization is energy-intensive and can negatively impact sea life.

Preparing for future droughts and making it through this one all comes down to math and engineering, Cohen said. “We know the systems we have to build to make sure the state has plenty of water, but instead we have wasted millions of acre feet of water in the last 10 years,” Cohen said. “The thought that you can conserve your way out of this is not going to lead to any success.”

Sometime tourist from Texas - just curious how this is playing out day to day for y'all. We always enjoyed the amazing restaurants, breweries, and overall ambiance when we visit, but haven't really heard how this effects regular folks. I know on a previous visit when I was talking to a home brewer, he was self rationing water, but was having issues on brew days trying to keep his water usage down.

Best wishes from Texas

I've seen very few lawns going yellow.  Mine is.  

Honestly, people around me don't seem to care about the drought.  People water their lawns as usual, runoff pours down the street like a burst pipe.  Their hired gardeners still come weekly.

I believe the City has reduced the pressure to the water mains.

I believe most people won't "get it" unless and until they are ticketed or have to pay a heavy fine for excessive use/failure to reduce consumption.

Perhaps, opening their tap with little coming out would send a message.  I hope it does not come to that.

We've cut our watering back almost 75%, lawns are almost all gone, and by out last bill, probably only 5% less than last year.  Which includes a new high efficiency washing machine, but we have two more people living here.  I think the outside use will get overtaken by inside use.  Navy showers and paper plates here we come.

Never ever count on people as a society to understand something unless some power enforces it.

 

I already have no lawn and mostly hardscape (concrete and lava rock).

Except for my fruit trees. I will continue to water those because food.

I will also continue to wash my truck. I use buckets and a power washer so I am probably using 10 gallons of water tops. I refuse to let the 2nd most expensive thing I own go to shit because of some stupid fish.

You know, I really can't get upset about the restrictions themselves. It's a shitty situation and we all have to deal with it. And I can understand the agri-business getting priority since they are the economic soul of the state, and much of the US (and world) depends on our harvests. The ineffective irrigation methods irk me and should be addressed.



What really pisses me off is the fact that the state isn't investing the money in new storage (dams and the like) and is still letting massive amounts of water run to the ocean to save the delta smelt, a task that is clearly doomed to failure anyway.

I see it often stated that Ag uses 80% of the water here, when the reality is Ag uses 40%, people use 10%, and HALF of our WATER goes to environmental uses.

Tom

Please explain further and define "environmental uses".  

I, too, have seen bigger fractions allocated to agri-business.  So, I'm wondering if there is just a difference of definition or if someone in government is lying (again).

Generally you will see it phrased something like " of the water used by humans in the state, 80% goes to agriculture". They usually neglect to say that humans use only half the water.

The "environmental" uses are many, including cold water for migrating salmon and flushing (somewhat appropriate term) the delta, etc., etc.

Tom

The implications of that are we can close the throttle on "environmental uses" and cut the State's water use in HALF!

I understand shutting it off entirely is troublesome but if it comes to snail darters or people,...

To be fair, much of that environmental use isn't mandated by the state but by the Feds. There has been a push to get rid of some of that water waste for years now, but the Feds are the ones standing in the way.



 

At what point do people just say fuck the feds! Or is it death by a thousand nicks as usual?

Tom

I got a bulletin in the mail yesterday which details the mandatory restrictions in my area.

It seems there are only three specific days during the week when we can water.  On those days, we cannot water from 8AM to 6PM.  Violators are subject to citation and a $100 fine.

Hand watering, watering of trees, drip irrigation and microspray of lawns are exempted from all the restrictions.

Honestly, we already complied with the intent of the restrictions. I had to change the days and start times to comply but we only water twice per week and it was done in the early mornings.  I tweaked the tiers, so we are now fully compliant.  



I don't know if you've used micro-sprays.  I have.  They are a very wasteful use of water.  They atomize the water allowing a large fraction to evaporate before hitting the ground.  I don't really care for them or drip irrigation.  They are both difficult to keep operational due to the mineral build up on the emitters/spray nozzles.

You and I are probably already paying their water bill!

Tom

An interesting article by Victor Davis Hanson - Link to Article


"Let us face elemental reality. A 40-million person California is an iffy place. It is entirely dependent on a sophisticated, man-created infrastructure of dams, reservoirs, canals, pumps, freeways, rail lines, airports, and schools and universities. Given that the population continues to rise, and given that one in four Californians was not born in the United States and is often poor (California has the largest population in real and relative numbers below the poverty line; one sixth of the nation on welfare payments of some sort lives in California), there is no margin of safety. A drought is but a metaphor about the collapse of an entire way of living."


"If it does not rain or snow soon, we are going to see things unimaginable."