Alarming water crisis in California

San Francisco: California Governor Jerry Brown, in his most sweeping action to combat a devastating multi-year drought, ordered residents and businesses to cut water use by 25 per cent in the first mandatory statewide reduction in California history.

The cuts mean industrial parks and golf courses must immediately cut a quarter of their water use on ornamental turf, and homeowners will be pressed to replace thirsty lawns with drought-tolerant landscaping. Farmers will be exempted.

The move comes as California's snowpack, which generally provides about a third of the state's water, is at its lowest level on record in a sign the state's drought, now entering its fourth year, is far from over. Standing in a field of dry, limp grass at a snow-monitoring station in the Sierra Nevada mountains, the fourth-term Democratic Governor said the cutbacks would save some 1.5 million acre-feet of water over the next nine months.

“We're standing on dry ground and we should be standing on 5 feet of snow,” said Brown, whose two non-consecutive stints in office have coincided with two of the state's worst droughts. "This is rationing. We're just doing it through the different water districts."