CA's Can't Do Spirit - With Snowpack Tied W. Record Low, City Residents Cut H2O Use 9% In January
During an unusually dry and warm January, residents of California cities only cut their water use by 9 percent. That’s according to a monthly report from the State Water Resources Control Board, which has been gathering city water use data since June. It compared current use to the same month from 2013, which is the baseline year established by the board.
Governor Jerry Brown asked the state to cut water use by 20 percent about a year ago. In December city dwellers met that goal for the first time, reducing their consumption by about 22 percent statewide. Water board staffers speaking Tuesday connected the slippage in conservation to climatic conditions.
December was wet, while January was unseasonably dry and warm. California saw the fourth driest January on record, with a statewide average of just around two-thirds of an inch of rain. No rain fell in San Francisco at all that month, and there was scant precipitation in the Central Valley and Southern California. The state also recorded the second hottest temperatures ever.
“The drop in savings we see between December and January indicates that people were really great about turning off their sprinklers when it was raining in December, which is exactly what we wanted them to do,” said Kathryn Landau, an environmental scientists with the water board. “But once the rain stopped in January, people turned those sprinklers right back on.”
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http://www.scpr.org/news/2015/03/03/50151/california-drought-city-dwellers-only-cut-water-us/
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