“But having been through what we’ve been through, we obviously want people to stay aware and redouble our efforts.” Overall, urban residents reduced the amount of water they use by just .8 percent in January, a far cry from the whopping 20.7 percent reduction in January 2017, compared to January 2013, the baseline year the state uses.
Marcus attributed January’s meager conservation totals to hot, dry weather around the state that month, particularly in Southern California, where temperatures hit the 80s on multiple days, prompting people to turn on lawn sprinklers, which account for half of all urban water use in the state.
While residents of the nine Bay Area counties continued their conservation habits — cutting water use 6.9 percent in January, compared with January 2013, the South Coast area, which includes Los Angeles, Riverside, Orange County and San Diego, did the opposite: Residents there used 3.8 percent more water in January than five years ago.
By comparison, most big Bay Area cities used less.
Despite rain and snow last week and more in the forecast for next week, much of this winter has been dry.
But rainfall totals around the state since Oct. 1 are barely half of average in Northern California this winter and about a quarter of average in Southern California.
That’s in part because of a major water main break in the city in January and because the period it computed its numbers was 35 days long this year, compared with a 30-day period in 2013, said city spokesman Chuck Finnie.
The reason: Last winter’s storms didn’t help Southern California as much as Northern California.
“Generally one dry year doesn’t make a drought,” Marcus said.
“But if we don’t get more snow this winter, the reservoirs are going to drop like a rock when the growing season starts and it’s going to be tight.” Last month, the water board began a process to make permanent the emergency water-wasting regulations that it passed during the drought.