Water use grows during California drought, flouting Newsom’s call for conservation

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 18.9% 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. The Newsom administration, acknowledging the troubling results, plans to expand its public outreach campaign to promote conservation.

Ed Osann, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, called on the governor to set “mandatory water use targets,” similar to what Brown ordered during the last drought.

“The water we’re putting on our lawns right now is probably the water we’re going to need for drinking water in the fall or next spring,” Osann said. “We’re going to wish we had that water back.”

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.”

Michael Anderson, the state climatologist, said March was 3.6 degrees warmer than usual — another sign of climate change and how it’s intensifying the drought.

Sacramento area residents used 13.6% more water in March compared to last year, said James Peifer, executive director of the Sacramento Regional Water Authority.

“We have more work to do in terms of reducing demand,” he said. Consumption since last July, when Newsom issued his call for voluntary conservation, has fallen by 5.5%.

Since outdoor use makes up the bulk of the region’s water use in the summer, Peifer called on customers to “stress” their lawns by watering them less, saving the water instead for their trees.

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.

Major California reservoirs in poor shape

Evidence abounds of the increasing severity of the drought. Shasta Lake, the largest reservoir in California and a crucial water source, is just 40% full, roughly half where it should be this time of year. Lake Oroville, the second largest reservoir, is 30% lower than average.

Newsom’s 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 significant 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.”

A previous version of this story reported a different figure for the increase in water use compared to March 2020.

This story was originally published May 10, 2022 at 12:31 PM.