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Good idea even if it's year too late ( a testament to the incompetence of Governor Brown on this issue).
Now for the good news. Those that cut back voluntarily and cut as much as they could are faced with cutting back an additional 25%.
Now think about that. The cut back is going to be mandatory.
There is a good reason why people don't conserve voluntarily. Why conserve when a mandatory requirement doesn't take into account that you might have already done so on your own and really can't do more?
Just pay the fine please, that will teach you.
Yes indeed, many will learn that lesson. Next time, see what happens.
Mr. Brown could have done something years ago, he was in office then too. He did nothing. He did however, decide to build a high speed train to Bakersfield. There is nothing in Bakersfield that needs a high speed train.
The high speed train to nowhere.
Now you know what many people don't partake in voluntary conservation. In the end, people get punished for trying to help. Like water rates going up because revenues are down because people use less water.
Had they built scalable water supply systems infrastructure (yes, it can be done) then the maintenance costs would be scalable as well.
In the 80s there was a year when socal got only two inches of rain. This was after other years where rainfall had been almost as bad. It was the year that the city we lived in made watering lawns illegal. But they also had a landscaping rule, and someone kept calling in all the brown lawns. So the belegiered city guy said to leave a few drops dripping by the hose. It resulted in a tiny patch of grass. He could sign of there was living grass. Some people never get the message.
A couple years later, after slightly better rainfall, it reversed and we had 20 inches. My room where I was renting had a door which was lower than the walkway and I had everything in plastic covers since my room flooded.
I'm pretty sure that if they tried to go for brown dead laws when it wasn't that bad, a lot of people would not follow the rule. That's the problem with the way people need the results staring them in the face before they get the problem.
The most scary part was the fires. Even not living that close, we had ash in the house with one, and the car would be covered by morning. I had the car packed just in case.
The norm is dry years for a time building to wet years, the first wet year usually very wet, and I hope that someone wakes up and sets some standards so when there is more water it is saved for when the lakes go dry. But I don't have a lot of hope for it.
That's an extremely aggressive target, but clearly it's needed. All of my children were born in California, but we moved on about a decade ago. Thinking about what our friends out west are going through right now, and probably will for many years to come, has certainly made me more conscientious about our family's water use. Furthermore, knowing about how much of our nation's food, particularly produce, comes from the Central Valley, I worry about the effect on our food supply.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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I remember the turmoil when I worked at EBMUD and was involved in the 1976-77 drought rationing program, with financial penalties and even flow restrictors being installed for some wasteful customers. It looks like this coming summer will be far worse than that one, and have far-reaching implications for the entire west coast. Hopefully our eastern WA farmers can pick up some of the slack for our area, though our snowfall here has been about 40% of normal, though we did get close to a foot earlier this week. Much of Oregon is almost as bad as CA. Fortunately for some of us that get our water from local rain runoff, the rainfall in our area is at actually above normal.
Good idea even if it's year too late ( a testament to the incompetence of Governor Brown on this issue).
Now for the good news. Those that cut back voluntarily and cut as much as they could are faced with cutting back an additional 25%.
Now think about that. The cut back is going to be mandatory.
There is a good reason why people don't conserve voluntarily. Why conserve when a mandatory requirement doesn't take into account that you might have already done so on your own and really can't do more?
Just pay the fine please, that will teach you.
Yes indeed, many will learn that lesson. Next time, see what happens.
Mr. Brown could have done something years ago, he was in office then too. He did nothing. He did however, decide to build a high speed train to Bakersfield. There is nothing in Bakersfield that needs a high speed train.
The high speed train to nowhere.
Now you know what many people don't partake in voluntary conservation. In the end, people get punished for trying to help. Like water rates going up because revenues are down because people use less water.
Had they built scalable water supply systems infrastructure (yes, it can be done) then the maintenance costs would be scalable as well.
Great post, OP! DH and I have really been conserving water for about 2 years now and our usage is down by 10%. We're teaching our kids to be conscious of it, too- can't start too early! What gets me so angry is seeing people who have their sprinklers on when it actually does rain or their sprinklers water the sidewalks, their driveways and streets- learn to scale that crap back, morons!
Given the typical daily discharge of the Mississippi river into the gulf of Mexico, how long would it take for it to completely fill the 36 largest resovoirs in California (minimum size 1/4 km^3). The largest is Lake Shasta which is around 5.5 km^3 of water.
Spoiler
About 26-27 days @ 1.5 km^3 per day for a total of roughly 40 km^3. It could fill Lake Shasta in less than 4 days.
With population there still exploding, this problem isn't going to go away.
People are just going to have to face up to the fact that, for now - until this pattern changes, this state is largely desert. Just like much of the West has been for eons. They're going to have to choose between green lawns/boulevards/ample irrigation and taking showers/washing dishes. It's really quite simple.
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