Californians keep up water savings in April

Californians continued to save water in April despite the easing of the drought, reducing use by about 26 percent compared to 2013, the State Water Resources Control Board said Monday.

The reductions came before the recent roll back of severe mandatory conservation targets. They also came during a relatively dry April. Water savings ranged from 23 percent along the south coast to about 33 percent in the San Joaquin Valley, state data show.

Starting this month, water agencies across the state will propose their own water conservation targets based on their ability to withstand an additional three dry years. California is now in its fifth year of drought, and the water board says 60 percent of the state remains in severe drought.

“Californians continue to demonstrate that they are serious about water conservation, which is fabulous,” State Water Board Chairwoman Felicia Marcus said in a statement.

“We will be watching closely to make sure that water agencies continue to prioritize the conservation habits their customers have adopted, and don’t fall back into business as usual,” Marcus said. “In particular we expect them to continue to enforce bans on the worst types of wasteful water use, and to take a prudent approach with their water budgets.”

Several Stanislaus County cities did well in April. For instance, Riverbank reduced its water use by 42.7 percent; Turlock by 32.1 percent, Ceres by 24.7 percent, Modesto by 35.7 percent and Oakdale by 45.7 percent.

The water board said continued conservation is especially critical during the hot summer months, when the potential for water savings is greatest.

“Summer is when we use far more water than we need to,” Marcus said. “Keeping our lawns on a water diet is the easiest way to save every valuable drop we can in our local reservoirs and groundwater basins for the future.

“Californians most need to keep up their impressive conservation in the summer months — wherever they are in the state. The fact is that we could be staring down the barrel of continued drought into 2017 and last winter’s rain and snow could just be a punctuation mark in a longer drought.”

This story was originally published June 6, 2016 at 5:05 PM with the headline "Californians keep up water savings in April."