Yes, you can water your lawn. But here are the restrictions for Sacramento area, so far

You can’t water your lawn more than twice a week in the city of Sacramento during summer, and never on Thursday or Friday.

For thousands of Sacramento County residents, the limit is three days a week. In Roseville, there’s no watering between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. Customers of the San Juan Water District have five days to fix leaks, and hosing down the driveway or sidewalk is off-limits in Elk Grove.

Long before Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a drought emergency for the Sacramento region — and much of the rest of California — area residents were already dealing with an assortment of restrictions on water consumption, depending on their supplier.

Most of the rules deal with outdoor usage, and are left over from the drought that ended in 2017. [Search this map for the water restrictions in your area.]

Now, with limits in place and many residents aware of the need for conservation, the region’s water managers don’t expect to impose a slew of new regulations and enforcement actions to deal with the new drought — at least not yet.

In other words, you probably won’t get fined for using too much water. Nor will you get hauled off to “drought school,” as scores of residents in the city of Sacramento did the last time around. Mandatory, draconian cuts in water consumption haven’t been ordered.

Instead, the area’s water agencies plan to rely on education and communications to reduce water consumption.

The city of Sacramento has ramped up its “water patrols” in the past week, but the staff of six is more focused on providing information than doling out punishment to anyone who violates the twice-a-week limit on watering or any other rule.

“We always like to take an education-first approach when it comes to making people aware of water efficiency,” said Carlos Eliason, a spokesman for the city of Sacramento’s utilities department.

The Fair Oaks Water District, which serves about 37,000 suburban residents, has a voluntary limit of three days of watering a week, and requires that hoses be fitted with automatic shutoff valves. It has very few rules, and expects that it can use the art of persuasion to make sure residents conserve

“We’re working on messaging right now,” said general manager Tom Gray.

No mandatory water cutbacks from Newsom — yet

Newsom’s drought emergency order is much gentler than his predecessor’s. In 2015, Jerry Brown ordered a 25% statewide cutback in urban water use.

The reductions varied by region and fell hardest on greater Sacramento and other inland areas known for heavy water consumption. Most of the 23 large water agencies in the Sacramento area had to reduce usage by 28% to 36%, while cooler coastal areas faced less severe restrictions.

The orders worked, by and large. Most water agencies in Sacramento and around the state met their mandates before the order was relaxed the following spring.

So far, Newsom says it isn’t necessary to order residents to reduce consumption. Speaking Monday at San Luis Reservoir in Merced County, the governor said California is “a little bit more prepared than last time” and noted that Californians are already doing a better job of conserving water than they were before the last drought.

“Californians have taken their water use very seriously,” he said.

Figures compiled by the State Water Resources Control Board show that urban Californians used less water per-capita last year than in 2014, the year before Brown issued his order — a drop of about 15%.

Sacramento area water managers said they hope the habits ingrained during the last drought will prompt residents to redouble their conservation efforts.

“The residents have kept up savings water,” said Matt Robinson, spokesman for the Sacramento County Water Agency, which serves nearly 200,000 residents. “It’s really become a way of life for people.” He said residents are using about 10% less water than they did in 2013.

But there’s been some backsliding since the last drought ended. Statewide per-capita urban consumption increased by 8% between 2019 and 2020.

Wade Crowfoot, the secretary of the Natural Resources Agency, said another mandatory cutback is “on the table” if California goes through a third straight winter with below-normal rain and snow. Water conditions have deteriorated sharply in the past month, and Newsom’s latest order means 41 of the state’s 58 counties , covering about 30% of the population, are officially in drought.

Officials in greater Sacramento said they don’t expect to order any reductions unless the governor tells them to.

“We don’t anticipate any mandatory cutbacks,” said spokesman Ross Branch of the Placer County Water Agency, which serves about 200,000 residents in South Placer and the foothills. “At this point we’re in a strong position to meet the water supply needs of our customers.” Currently the Placer agency has no restrictions but does offer advisory guidelines, such as asking residents to avoid watering between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m.

Sacramento’s water — more than just Folsom Lake

Gray, the head of the Fair Oaks district, said he doesn’t have to move mountains to convince his customers that water supplies are tight. All he has to do is show them a recent picture of Folsom Lake, where much of the shoreline is exposed and water levels are just half what they should be for mid-May.

“It’s dramatic and it tells the story immediately,” he said.

It doesn’t tell the whole story, however. Folsom Lake accounts for roughly half of the area’s supply in a normal year, said Ryan Ojakian, the legislative and regulatory affairs manager at the Sacramento Regional Authority. Most of the rest of the water comes from a groundwater basin that’s capable of storing twice as much as Folsom, he said.

In fact, groundwater supplies are in such good shape that “we are not panicked at the moment,” Ojakian said. “When you go to the taps and turn on the water, there will be water that is drinkable.”

The regional authority oversees a carefully negotiated agreement among its member agencies and area environmental groups designed to steer greater Sacramento through a drought. With Folsom Lake so low, the agencies will draw less from the lake and more from the groundwater basin, Ojakian said. Those agencies with better groundwater supplies will share with those that normally rely more heavily on the reservoir.

“That shifting and sharing ... is our first response,” he said.

At the same time, the authority will work to persuade residents to save water in order to preserve the environment. At least some of Folsom’s storage will be used to keep cold water flowing through the American River and into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to prop up struggling fish populations.

Ojakian acknowledged that convincing residents to conserve water to save fish won’t be easy. “It’s hard to tell people to conserve, period,” he said.

But he added that Sacramento area residents did their part during the last drought — and he believes they can do so again. During the last drought, the region’s residents, who make up 5% of California’s population, accounted for 12% of the water savings, he said.

‘Cash for grass’ and other lures to save water

In 2018, one year after Brown officially declared the end of the last drought, the State Water Resources Control Board considered making a series of conservation rules permanent, including a statewide ban on hosing down driveways and watering lawns within two days of a rainfall. But the board blinked in the face of widespread opposition from local water agencies.

Nonetheless, there are safeguards aplenty against wasteful use. Depending on where they live — and how vigilant their neighbors are — Sacramento area residents have no shortage of advice on saving water.

County residents can go online to notify the water agency if they see water being wasted. A crew will come out to investigate and discuss the matter with the alleged offender.

“We’re not going to be heavy-handed,” Robinson said. “It’s more of a carrot approach rather than a stick. Our crews are very understanding.” He said the county water agency didn’t fine anyone during the last drought.

In fact, the county is happy to dispense cash to those who need some incentive to save. The county’s rebate program offers up to $175 for purchases of low-flow toilets and $100 for efficient clothes washers. The county has a cash-for-grass program to encourage residents to replace lawns with water-stingy landscaping, as does the city. In addition, the city has a program to help low-income residents pay to fix leaks.

Agency managers say persuasion generally works better than strict orders and threats.

During the last drought, officials complained mightily that the Brown administration’s cutback orders, which leaned heavily on inland areas, weren’t fair and punished Californians for living in areas with the hottest summers.

The State Water Resources Control Board, which implemented the rules, said it made sense to seek the deepest cuts in usage from places that used the most water. Some of the suburban water districts in Sacramento had some of the highest water-consumption rates in California.

In early 2016, after nearly a year of mandatory cutbacks, one Sacramento-area agency declared enough was enough. Citing improved hydrology conditions, the San Juan Water District said it would ignore the state’s mandates and instead ask customers to voluntarily reduce consumption by 10%. A couple of months later, the state scrapped its mandates and replaced it with a “stress test” regime that required cutbacks only for agencies with iffy supplies.

San Juan’s customers had been among the heaviest water users in the state and, until early 2016, had complied with the Brown administration’s order to cut usage by 33%.

Currently, the district, which includes the wealthy enclave of Granite Bay, has few restrictions beyond requiring that leaky pipes and faulty sprinklers be repaired within five days and forbidding residents from washing sidewalks or driveways.

Paul Helliker, the district’s general manager, said it’s too early to say whether San Juan will impose tougher rules this summer. The district is waiting for new forecasts from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates Folsom Lake.

“We really don’t have an updated picture yet,” Helliker said. “We have to wait until we get the final data from Reclamation.”

This story was originally published May 13, 2021 at 5:00 AM.