Do what? Please do tell us what will fix the problem and we'll do it.
The problem is that there is nothing that the average consumer can now do that will materially affect the situation.
Southern California is building desalinization plants. That's something that local communities near the ocean will do. That can solve the water problem for many people.
However, the only real way to solve the water problem in California is to shut down agriculture in the Central Valley. There is no other option.
I understand that personal use is nothing compared to agricultural use, but it's as if everyone will continue business as usual until all the water is gone, and then it feels like "shrug oh well guess we'll move".
In March people were claiming the state had 12 months of water remaining. Lets assume that number is holding and we've got about 7 months of water left.
If the entire state simply halted all urban and industrial water use, that would buy about 3 extra weeks before the state runs out of water. And that is in a scenario where 40 million people (and all non-ag industry) simply cease to consume water at all.
Not washing cars or watering lawns is a great emotional gesture, but nothing short of real policy or weather changes will make any meaningful difference.
This has happened before and in the past the state made a big deal about it and everyone panicked. But before we ran out of water, the biggest deluge of water hit California in decades and the populous prayed for sun instead.
I've lived in SoCal for about three years and even in that short time the changes brought on by the drought have been substantial.
https://www.calwater.com/latest_news/july-conservation-progr...
Actually, why would Europe institute such measures in the first place? They aren't suffering from drought. In a non drought situation why would you undertake such measures? The reason desalination plants aren't commonly built is that if you have adequate water alternatives, they actually hurt the environment, so there's no benefit.
And most Germans use toilets that never fill the bowl and only rush about 1 liter of water to save water (the new ones without poop shelf, at least).
Why we do this? (a) efficiency, (b) water is expensive, even though we have more than we can use.
Actually, in my city people use so little water that the water company (despite population growth) has to clean the pipes artificially, because they were designed to self-clean from the constant water stream, but people just don’t use enough water for that. (Why they have to be cleaned? We have insane CaCO3 concentrations in the water. Wash clothes, and your jeans can stand on their own).
http://www.enlight-inc.com/blog/?p=1036
The story that keeps circulating on the internet is that a guy in Colorado was fined for doing just for that. But looking at it more closely you find he was damming creeks on his property and building holding ponds (essentially lakes), which is subject to standard environmental regulations.
http://water.state.co.us/DWRIPub/Documents/DWR_RainwaterFlye...
Anyway, there is nothing inherently "anti-government" about pointing out what is and is not proscribed by the law.
The stuff california implements now has been standard here for decades, and we have more water than we can use.
Exactly. I was there in April. It was surreal to me how normal everything seemed to me. I do not think reality sets in until you run out, which has happened to some towns in the Central Valley.
Edit: also, the fact that some residential areas are not metered seems nuts: http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_25303957/california-dr...
The reason for this is that lawns and pools aren't the problem. The problem is, and continues to be agricultural use of water. You could rip out literally every single lawn and golf course in the entire state of California today and the impact it would have on statewide water use would be within the margin of error for measurement. We're talking literally less than 5% of total water usage.
The scope of this problem is so massive that most people have difficulty comprehending it, both due to the massive amount of water involved, and the massive amount of land area involved. People think all the lawns cover a huge surface area. It's a rounding error compared to the size of the industrial farms in the Central Valley and the amount of water they use.
Some crops in particular use far more water than others as well. The two biggest offenders are almonds and alfalfa. If we temporarily stopped growing those two crops in California, the crisis would be literally non-existent. The entire cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco use about 800,000 acre-feet of water per year COMBINED.[1] Alfalfa growers in California are using 5.3 MILLION acre feet of water.[2]
On top of that, Alfalfa contributes so little to the California economy that we could buy out the entire Alfalfa growing industry in this state and it would only cost a total of about two dollars per resident.
Most people are already fairly water conscious, and don't go around wantonly wasting it, so when they're asked to further cut back an additional 20% on their water use and threatened with increased fees and fines if they don't, they tend not to be too happy about it. Especially when you take into account the fact that household water use(drinking water, showers, toilets, cooking, lawns, swimming pools, sprinklers and such) accounts for roughly 3%[2] of total use in the entire state, why should we all suffer, cut back, put up with low-flow showerheads, drain our pools, let our lawns die and leave piss sitting in our toilets to save 20% of 3%? All that to save 0.6% of the total water used in the state? Sorry, but no.
Read over link [2] below in it's entirety, it has great data and really provides some excellent perspective on the state's water issues.
[1] http://www.pacinst.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2013/02/n...
[2] http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-do...
that's interesting - you could say that if you can convince just 10% of people in california (4mil people) to donate $20 bucks, they can reduce the drought problem by half. I'd say that should be agreeable for most, except for the alfalfa related industries...