The drought !

[old pudd fisher]

Are ya going to cut way back on your lawn watering? I have and so have my neighbors, sure hate to see my lawn go brown but it has to be. I always had a nice green lawn to enjoy. Well I guess I wont be mowing as much this summer, heck I liked mowing it and making it look nice.

[JHDucky]

Yes me too. I had total knee replacement in August and had to sell my gardening/landscape business. The surgeon strongly recommended I get out of that business so my new knee would last longer. Now with these water restriction a lot of people will not want weekly service for their yards, so I guess it was good timing on that surgery.

[DEVOREFLYER]

I have mixed feeling about any cut back of water use. I have 1.59 acres of property and have cut back water use to the .5 landscaped acres around my home. My 21 tree fruit orchard has been removed except one only Apricot tree. Lost two 30 year old pine trees out of the nine that are on my property due to the drought and pine bark beetles last summer. I cut my water use by over 30% last year and do not plan to reduce it any further. I live in a very high fire hazard area and I want/need a green belt for fire protection. I have been through several major fires during my time living here and the green belt and fire protection measures I have is why my house is standing. This summer and fall is going to be a fire tinder box.

[old pudd fisher]

Don't blame ya keep it watered, I know how Devore can be.

[DEVOREFLYER]

I have mowed down and sprayed Roundup on roughly 1 acre of my property for water saving and fire protection. In the upper right of the photo are the two pines that were killed that I will be cutting down in the next few weeks, free firewood for someone. The home is surrounded by a green belt and area around my workshop is clear of vegetation.

[Ifishtoolittle]

Roundup poisons the soil! One thing you could've done to get more milage out of your watering devo is to mulch your trees. And I mean mulch the hell out of it. Woodchips really lock moisture into the ground.

[City Dad]

I have mowed down and sprayed Roundup on roughly 1 acre of my property for water saving and fire protection. In the upper right of the photo are the two pines that were killed that I will be cutting down in the next few weeks, free firewood for someone. The home is surrounded by a green belt and area around my workshop is clear of vegetation.

Is that LQ I see hiding in the bushes up top?

[jrip]

We're having Turfterminators take out our lawn and make it drought resistant.

[Lady Quagga]

(The following is an excerpt from California’s Water: Water for the Environment, an insightful report on the specifics and importance of California's environmental water use. A link to the full report is available below.)

ENVIRONMENTAL WATER USE IS NOT WELL UNDERSTOOD
Source: http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_415WFTER.pdf

Water counted as “environmental” in state statistics serves a variety of purposes. Although much of this water is not in direct competition with other uses, a growing volume of water is being allocated to protect endangered species or water quality in some regions. Because these increases—typically associated with court or regulatory decisions—can reduce water available for other uses, they often create controversy. A better understanding of environmental water use can help inform future decisions about water management.

Water that stays in rivers, streams, and wetlands is assigned to the environment. There are four broad types of environmental water: water that flows in rivers protected as “wild and scenic” under federal and state laws, water needed to maintain habitat within streams, water that supports wetlands for migratory birds, and water needed to maintain water quality. Water categorized as environmental accounts for half of state use, while farms (40%) and cities (10%) make up the other half.

Most environmental water use does not affect other uses. More than half of environmental water is in the wild and scenic rivers of California’s sparsely populated North Coast, where there are few alternative uses. In the rest of California, where water is shared by all three sectors, environmental use is not dominant, at 33 percent (versus 53% for farms and 14% for cities). In these regions, new allocations of water for the environment may reduce water available for other uses.

Environmental water often does double duty. In the Central Valley, most flows in wild and scenic rivers are captured by reservoirs and reused downstream by farms and cities. In many systems, minimum flow standards that help fish and other species are set to maintain water quality for drinking water and irrigation. For instance, in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, freshwater outflows (viewed by some as water “wasted to the sea”) also keep Delta water fresh enough for local farms and water exports to the Bay Area and the southern half of the state. In addition, environmental water that goes to wetlands and floodplains recharges groundwater basins.

Droughts heighten conflicts over environmental water allocations. Droughts put pressure on regulators to relax environmental standards in order to boost supplies to farms and cities. In 2014, the state approved requests to reduce environmental flows and relax salinity standards in the Delta so that water exports for farms and cities could be increased. During past droughts, low environmental flows caused long-term harm to native species populations, which ultimately led to higher regulatory costs. It is too soon to know whether recent drought management practices will have similar effects.

[seal]

Thanks for the post Hawgz. I never understood how the use of water to maintain rivers, streams etc.. could be categorized as a percentage of our water usage, understanding of course that some of that water "usage" is used for environmental causes. But seriously for Christ sake we have to have some natural watersheds where water flow is maintained we can't categorize all water within California as a usable resource, never made sense to me.

So we're back to agriculture being a main water usage abuser, or user depending on where you stand. Long and the short of it is we can't put a dent in water usage without agriculture cutting back also. Don't know how anybody could argue with that logic, logically.