California Saved More Water Than It Had To

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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The State of California instituted a law which mandated a 25% cut in water use. People and businesses did better than that, with a drop in use of 27.3% in June. If drought in the region stays the same as it is now, or worsens, the benefit of the restrictions may not matter much.

According to The State Water Board:

With record-breaking heat throughout much of the State in June, Californians continued to conserve water, reducing water use by 27.3 percent and exceeding Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr.’s 25 percent mandate in the first month that the new emergency conservation regulation was in effect.

And:

Despite being the hottest June on record, California’s urban water suppliers exceeded the statewide conservation goal, saving 59.4 billion gallons (182,151 acre-feet), as compared to the same time in 2013. June conservation efforts put the State on track to achieve the 1.2 million acre-feet savings goal by February 2016, as called for by the Governor in his April 1 Executive Order.

Despite skepticism about whether Brown could meet his goal so quickly, the skeptics were wrong.

However, a look at the carefully followed nationwide “The Drought Monitor” shows 36% of California suffers “exceptional drought”, the worst designation. Over 71% suffers from either “exceptional drought” or the next worse designation–“extreme drought”. And,

While the rains in southern California during the past couple weeks have caused local flooding and inhibited wildfire development, reservoirs saw no increase in storage.

And, storage is the most important measure of whether people and businesses get any relief, and the ability to use more water instead of adhering to the difficult 25% guidelines.

The “U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook” shows that for the period which extends to October 31, the California can expect what is labeled”drought persists or worsens”

In other words, water conservation levels of 27.3% won’t come close to stopping the catastrophe. June has come, and gone

 

 

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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