In the midst of a historic drought, California and other municipalities are instituting unprecedented water restrictions. Will it do anything?
Unprecedented water restrictions in Los Angeles County are going to ensure the slow demise of lawns. And now, California Gov. Gavin Newsom is ready to deal green lawns a final blow. Today, how Southern Californians will have to get used to browner lawns — and why even that might not make a dent in a historic drought.
Read the full transcript here.
Host: Gustavo Arellano
Guests: L.A. Times water reporter Ian James
More reading:
Newsom urges aggressive water conservation and warns of statewide restrictions
California just adopted new, tougher water restrictions: What you need to know
California bans watering ‘nonfunctional’ grass in some areas, strengthening drought rules
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GUSTAVO: Lawns, lawns, so many lawns in Southern California. Big, beautiful, luscious, GREEN.
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But…
All that turf is about to go on life support. Unprecedented water restrictions in Los Angeles county are going to ensure its slow demise. And now California, governor Gavin Newsome is ready to give green lawns… their final blow.
Clip: Newsom has threatened to impose mandatory water restrictions if residents don't use less on their own. That's as a drought drags on with the summer months on the way.
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GUSTAVO: I’m Gustavo Arellano. You’re listening to THE TIMES, daily news from the LA Times. It’s Wednesday, June 1, 2022.
Today… how Southern Californians are gonna have to get used to browner lawns…and why even that might not make a dent in a historic drought.
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GUSTAVO: My colleague Ian James covers all things water for the Los Angeles Times. Ian, welcome to THE TIMES.
Ian: Thanks Gustavo.
Gustavo: Okay. So I knew California was pretty dry, especially after our last “Masters of Disasters” that we did with you. But man, it's really bad–for those who didn't listen to that episode and shame on you, gentle readers for not listening to every single episode we do. Ian who, what, when, where, why restrictions are we talking about.
Ian: Basically large parts of Southern California are going on a serious water diet.
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Clip: I'm not trying to be rude, but we're in a drought. Do you have to water that grass right there?
Ian: Starting in June, the Metropolitan Water District has ordered restrictions on outdoor watering. And the restrictions cover an area of about 6 million people. LA is included. So are parts of Ventura and San Bernardino counties.
Clip: I know it's going to look bad, but give or take look over what makes sense. We're running out of water. I mean, Hey, do what you want to do.
Ian: And all these areas depend mostly or entirely on water that comes from Northern California through the aqueducts of the state water project. And these restrictions will be a bit different for each area. So in Ventura County, water districts are restricting people to watering outdoors one day a week. In LA, the drought rules limit watering to two days a week.
Clip: Wow. She'd rather just water that. Look, look, look at her nice green grass trees. We're in California. We're going into a drought, but let's water the city lawn. It makes no sense, man. She'd rather have her lawn look good instead of somebody having water.
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GUSTAVO: But didn’t Los Angeles already have restrictions in place for like a decade now?
IAN: Yeah, that's right. And over the years, Angelenos have conserved and made a lot of progress in using less water, including during the last big drought. What's different this time is that the supplies of water are so limited that the Metropolitan Water District has had to declare this shortage emergency and order mandatory restrictions for a large part of its territory, about a third of Southern California. So for these areas, the goal is to reduce water use by 35%.
Gustavo: Yeah, that's going to be like 6 million people affected. How did we get here? And tell me a reason that doesn't involve climate change.
Ian: Climate change is certainly a part of it. It's just a really, really severe drought. California goes through these natural wet and dry cycles, but with the higher temperatures with climate change now it's just really making the droughts more severe. The major reservoirs are at about half of their average levels right now.
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Clip collage: The lake Mead reservoir fed by the Colorado river has dropped more than 170 feet since 1983, some 70% of capacity gone.
This lake provides drinking water for those in Arizona, Nevada, California, as well as down in Mexico. And it also provides agricultural water and resources for those folks. So the supply is low, the demand is high, and that's why we're experiencing a record low lake this summer.
We are driving and what used to be McSwain Lake. This is how dry California is…. like ridiculously dry.
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Ian: So it's, it's really bad.
Gustavo: Well yeah, what trips me is that we had like record breaking snowfall in Northern California in December, all this precipitation across the state, and then January, February and March become the driest January, February, and Marches ever recorded in California.
Ian: That's right. It was like a, a flip, you know, it just went from one extreme to another. And those first three months of the year were extremely dry and also warmer than usual.
Gustavo: And the places where we do get our water here in Southern California, as you said earlier, Northern California and other parts of the Colorado river. Well, they're not doing well at all.
Ian: Definitely not. The state water project brings water from Northern California from the Sacramento San Joaquin River Delta and cities and water districts this year are getting just 5% of their full allocations from the state water project because there just isn't enough water. So that's driving the need for these really severe water restrictions. But for other parts of Southern California, it's a different story where they depend mostly on the Colorado River. Now the Colorado River also is in a really bad shape with shortages and the reservoirs are at very low levels, but California isn't yet being required to reduce how much it's taking from the Colorado River. So for the time being, those areas are somewhat spared.
Gustavo: Yeah, but even in the Colorado River, all those reservoirs, like Lake Mead, Lake Powell, they're sinking so much that they're finding sunken ships that were never going to get found again. Or they're finding bodies in freaking barrels from long ago murders. But aside from people angry about their lawns dying. Are there any wider concerns about all these watering restrictions are going to take effect on June 1st?
Ian: These water restrictions do mean that a lot of lawns will be going brown, that's unavoidable. And, but there are some concerns about trees /// because in a lot of cases, the sprinklers that watered the lawns are also watering trees. And so how are people going to keep trees alive? The concern that some people have voiced in some of these meetings is that the water restrictions could end up killing a lot of trees if they aren't done right.
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Ian: There is an exemption in the water restrictions in Southern California, for people to water trees by hand, take a hose, water them down a little bit and keep them going through the summer months. When the trees really do need some water to survive.
Gustavo: Yeah, that's the best way to water trees anyways. Just really, really slow drip the hose. My dad taught me that a long time ago.
Ian: Cool.
Gustavo: Coming up after the break California's history of water restrictions.
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Gustavo: Ian, so Southern California is putting in all these restrictions or at least LA county and some other areas. But then last week // California, governor Gavin Newsom, hinted that he wants to put water restrictions across the entire state. // How's the rest of California doing on that?
Ian: That's right. The state water board just strengthened the drought rules for the entire state. And this came out of an executive order from Newsom. The new regulations that were adopted by the state water, they now require local water suppliers everywhere in California. For the most part, with some small exceptions, to move to what's called a level two of their drought contingency plans. And so they're being told to prepare for a shortage of water, of up to 20%. And it's up to each local board of the water district or the city to determine based on their plan and their local circumstances, how are they going to reduce water use to prepare. So different areas are taking different approaches and it's being left up to them, but everyone is being told to cut back.
Gustavo: But weren’t there water restrictions last year?
Ian: There were water restrictions, kind of. Governor Newsom said he prefers to let local water districts take the lead and go with a voluntary approach.
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Ian: Last July, the governor urged everybody, all Californians to reduce water use by 15% voluntarily.
Clip: we are encouraging people, uh, to do the common. Things like reducing the amount of irrigation in the water you're doing, um, out on your lawns, for example, reducing, uh, perhaps the, uh, time, uh, that you are in a shower. Eliminating that time, not here, uh, as nanny state, we're not trying to hear be oppressive. We have laid out voluntary standards.
Ian: And that has not happened since then. If we look at the figures from the state water board, it's been a decrease since then of about 3.7%. So very far from 15% and actually March was so dry and warm that people ended up using more than the same month in 2020, which they're comparing with. So it ended up being nearly 19% more water used in cities and towns across the state. Newsom called that a black eye when he met with leaders of water districts.
Clip: We have voluntary reductions in this state. Some parts of the state are exceeding the voluntary numbers. Other parts of the state haven’t. We'll work through that over the course of the next number of months.
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Ian: And he warned that if the conservation doesn't pick up and improve these next couple of months, that the state could be forced to impose mandatory water restrictions throughout the state and do it on a stricter basis.
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Clip: We will also be putting out baseline expectations across the in this state of watering outdoors twice a week, the reason we do that is 80% of urban consumption continues to be outdoors, not indoors. And that's how we move the needle.
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Gustavo: Yeah. And there's been really severe water restrictions statewide for previous droughts. My wife’s sister-in-law told us once that there was a drought so bad during the 1970s, that restaurants couldn't even serve water. But what gets me is that officials – local, statewide — they'll put in these water restrictions. And then when the quote-unquote drought is all of a sudden over then they end them. Why don't they just keep them?
Ian: Yeah, I think that's a good question. It just depends on // is there enough water to go back to the old ways? And I think it just seems like in California, there is this pattern of responding to the immediate crisis and putting these changes in place. In fact, the people who manage water in Arizona recently said that they're glad they aren't having to do what California is doing just yet. So I think a lot of the people who // work in managing water. They're trying to, for the most part, avoid if they can, these abrupt // disruptive cutbacks and water that // forced people to really change their habits. But that said, you know, it's, it's, it's out of necessity at this point. There just isn't enough water to go around.
Gustavo: When Arizona is doing better on something than California, you know there's a problem. You mentioned that climate change is making all of this worse. So these restrictions that are about to get implemented in Los Angeles, can they actually get even more severe?
Ian: Yes, they could.
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Clip: We need to cut our water usage by 35%.
Ian: The Metropolitan Water District even said that they'll be monitoring how this goes this summer.
Clip: We are looking into the summer month where we think usually the water use increases over time. // We're trying to be ahead of it.
Ian: They will be seeing how much the region cuts water use.
Clip: our goal is to get to a place that we have all of us in this area at the 80 gallons per person, per day.
Ian: But there is a possibility that at the end of the summer, they could ban all outdoor water use. In these areas that are dependent on the state water project, sort of the Northern third of Southern California.
Clip: If we don't see the movement in the measurements between now, June 1st, all the way leading to August, and I'm authorized by my board to ban all outdoor usage.
Ian: So yes, the restrictions could get more severe and that looks like a possibility.
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Gustavo: And officials really think that they could enforce this and make this happen?
Ian: Enforcement is always a big problem with these types of rules and some water districts dedicate employees to going around and patrolling and actually looking for water waste. Of course, a lot of water districts also have apps that people can use to report incidents of water waste.
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Ian: It creates a whole bunch of paperwork as far as warning people that they are using too much water, issuing fines and all these things. And I think it's going to depend from area to area. Are they capable of doing it?
Gustavo: The water police are coming for your fountains folks. Watch out. More, after the break.
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GUSTAVO: Okay. And so Angelenos let their lawns go brown, plants die. Does that even save water? Like what is that actually going to accomplish?
Ian: Yes, it does save water. And at this point there are very few options. // Outdoor water use is most of the water use and these water districts are looking for a way to shrink by 35%. And so what they’re saying is if everyone can cut back by about that much. Then it will stretch the water supplies enough to get through the summer, which is going to be a difficult summer.
Gustavo: No outdoor watering for residents, that's getting all the headlines, but what about businesses? You know, those office parks with those really nice lawns or landscaping and all that?
Ian: Right, well, the state is cracking down on businesses and this just happened. The state water board issued these new regulations that outlaw the watering of what they call non-functional turf outside. What they say are commercial, industrial and institutional properties. So that includes things like shopping malls and homeowners associations. And libraries, // other types of facilities that just have a bunch of grass around them. And non-functional means that nobody walks on that grass. And other than just to mow it, it's not used for sports or recreation or for people to gather on. It's just sitting there.
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Clip: And we will establish a fine if there's an abuse of that. These are not fines to individuals. These are the corporations and industry specifically.
Ian: The idea is with this regulation that the state is trying to send a message that // acres and acres of green grass no longer makes sense in the situation that California is in.
Clip: Since 800 AD we've never experienced in the west coast of the United States, consecutive years, dry years, like we have experienced. 1200 plus years. But we have to do more. We have to do a little bit better.
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Gustavo: What about other measures that public officials can take? Like I know in Orange County we have this world famous water recycling program, but then on the other hand, residents also killed a proposed desalination plant tHuntington Beach.
Ian: That's right. Orange County does have a world famous recycling program. They recycle a ton of wastewater, and that makes a big difference for the aquifer that's used for water for the area. There was a huge debate over a proposed desalination plant in Huntington Beach. It went down in a unanimous vote by the California Coastal Commission, a really hard fought battle after 20 years of talking about whether it made sense or not. And ultimately I think, what doomed that proposal before the Coastal Commission, were the concerns about the cost of water, that it would push up the cost significantly for people in the area. And also the location that, where it would be, built on a low lying part of the coast, where the people who opposed the plant say there would be a number of hazards from earthquakes to toxic sites. So it got complicated. And I think the thing is, both with water recycling and desalination plants, which still can be an option it seems like in parts of the California coast. All these things take years to build. The metropolitan water district is working on a large water recycling project to try to reuse more of the wastewater. And they are talking about that as a real solution to help the region deal with climate change and have less imported water and be able to do better in the long run. The thing is, all these things take years to plan and build, and California faces an immediate crisis.
Gustavo: Years and money. Finally Ian, what's it going to take for us to get out of this historic drought?
Ian: A couple of wet winters probably would do it. That certainly can happen. And it has happened before, like in 2017. It's just that we're in such a deep hole at this point that recovering from this drought is going to take some time.
Gustavo: Yeah, you said it like, it used to be just one wet winter. Now you're saying a couple and then probably in a couple of years it's going to be multiple or dozens or some. Or more, just more.
Ian: Yeah, you look at the map of the Western US and it's just all yellow and orange and red with the drought situation. // it doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon.
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Gustavo: Ian… thank you so much for this conversation, even though it sucked.
Ian: Thanks.
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Gustavo: And that's it for this episode of THE TIMES, daily news from the LA Times.
Angel Carreras was the jefe on this episode and Kasia Broussalian helped him. Thank you to Kevin MacLeod (McCLOUD?) for making his “Monkeys spinning Monkeys’ song available for the public to use.
Our show is produced by Shannon Lin, Denise Guerra, David Toledo, Ashlea Brown and Angel Carreras.
Our editorial assistants are Madalyn Amato and Carlos De Loera. Our engineer is Mario Diaz. Lauren Raab and Kinsee Morlan edited this episode.
Our executive producers are Jazmin Aguilera and Shani Hilton. And our theme music is by Andrew Eapen. Like what you're listening to? Then make sure to follow THE TIMES on whatever platform you use. Don't make us the Pootchie of podcasts. I'm Gustavo Arellano. We'll be back tomorrow with all the news and desmadre. Gracias.