LONG BEACH, Calif. — What’s it going to take to get people to use a lot less water in drought-stricken California, the Technicolor landscape of lush yards, emerald golf courses and aquamarine swimming pools?
Residents will find out as California imposes its first mandatory statewide water-use restrictions this year.
Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday ordered a 25 percent overall cutback in water use by cities and towns, but not farms, in the most sweeping drought measures ever undertaken by the nation’s most populous state.
The crackdown comes as California and its nearly 40 million residents move toward a fourth summer of drought. State reservoirs have a year’s worth of water, and with record low snowfall over the winter, there won’t be much to replenish them. Wells in some parts of the state are going dry as groundwater levels fall.
On Thursday, retired secretary Brenda Johnson stood in the doorway of her Sacramento home contemplating her lawn and azalea bushes.
“With the money I put into it, I don’t want it to go dry,” said Johnson, who got a warning letter from the city last year for watering her front yard on the wrong day. “I don’t want a dead lawn. But change is hard, and you do adjust.”
In Southern California’s sunbathed city of Long Beach, homeowner Katherine Rusconi stood among the bright red, pink and yellow succulents and desert plants that make up her front yard, basking in the knowledge of being ahead of the game.
The city of Long Beach gave her $3,000 in rebates for ripping out her own lawn less than two years ago. Some of her neighbors have since followed her lead, making the block a showpiece of water-saving, wildlife-friendly yards.
“This should have been in place for some time,” Rusconi said.
Brown’s move to get tough on water use came after his push for voluntary conservation yielded mixed results. Asked by Brown in January 2014 to cut their water consumption by 20 percent, Californians achieved only about half that.
Affluent Southern California communities with lots of landscaping on automatic timers were some of the worst offenders, topping 300 gallons of water per person a day compared with 70 gallons for some San Francisco-area communities.
State water officials will now draw up the emergency regulations and hope to have them ready for enactment in May, said George Kostyrko, spokesman for the state Water Resources Control Board.
State water officials stress it’s the lush, green grass they are after. Californians should water enough to save their trees, said water board head Felicia Marcus, but should let their lawns go the way of all mortal things.
