According to Axios, Southern California officials have declared a water shortage emergency for the first time ever and imposed unprecedented outdoor water usage restrictions on it’s 6 million residents.
The Metropolitan Water District of SoCal wrote in a Tweet, that the residents of Los Angeles, Ventura, and San Bernandino counties outdoor water access will be restricted to once every 7 days. A Map of the impacted areas is published on BeWaterWise website.
In the neighboring state of Nevada, the Lake Mead reservoir on Hoover Dam is experiencing lower water levels by over 175 ft than its full pool elevation of 1229 ft. Lake Mead Water Level (uslakes.info)
Although, the mandate is enforcable only by local agencies, with heavy fines for non-enforcement, it is unlikely anyone will go against it. An innovative solution could be capping water use by meters so that residents consume only what they were allocated.
The state has decided to penalize individuals by restricting their water use to 1 in 7 days. However, 75% of water in California is consumed by corporations.
Gina Palino from Climate Resolve said that
For southern California, the way they enforce these restrictions is with fines. Some people will continue to water outdoors even if there are high fines (~$10k)- especially with multi-million dollar homes in LA, they just keep watering and paying the fines.
During an online zoom event Rethinking Water Webinar Series, Big Data & Water Conservation, Dr. Upmanu Lall from Columbia said that it is a 1200-year drought.
Day Zero - Cape Town vs Chennai In 2018, Cape Town almost did not reach Day Zero, Cape Town water crisis - Wikipedia day when the water level drops less than 13.5 percent in the city dams. Day Zero would mark the start of Level 7 water restrictions, when municipal water supplies would be largely switched off and it was envisioned that residents could have to queue for their daily ration of water. Good rains in 2020 effectively broke the drought and resulting water shortage when dam levels reached 95 percent.
In 2019, Chennai a city in India with over 11 million people ran out of water. Chennai city did recover, however for an extended period of time, water was being shipped from the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu and rationed to the people by the government. The rich were able to use private services, however numerous businesses in hospitality and restaurants had to shut down and millions of slum dwellers faced the heaviest toll due to fights breaking out in the queues.
CivilXR will explore ways to create an app to track the lawn conditions of various Los Angeles houses to track if anyone is facing water shortages in irrigation.
