Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday relaxed drought rules in California amid a winter season filled with atmospheric river storms, flooding and a massive Sierra Nevada snowpack — and officials signaled that an end to the declared drought emergency in the Bay Area and many other regions is coming soon.
At an appearance at a groundwater recharge project in Yolo County, Newsom announced the end of state regulations he put in place last March that required cities and water agencies to impose water restrictions such as limits on the number of days a week residents could water lawns and landscaping. The decision now will be up to each local area in the coming weeks and months about whether to drop those restrictions.
“Are we out of the drought?” Newsom said. “Mostly. But not completely.”
Due to brimming reservoirs and the big snowpack, the state Department of Water Resources also announced Friday that it will increase water deliveries through the State Water Project, which serves 27 million people, from 35% of requested amounts to 75%, a number that could still increase further in May and June.
Major Bay Area water agencies, including the Santa Clara Valley Water District, East Bay MUD and the Contra Costa Water District, said they will begin changing their drought rules in the coming weeks.
But the governor did not lift the drought emergency that he declared in October 2021 for all 58 California counties.
Karla Nemeth, director of the State Department of Water Resources, said in an interview that her department will make recommendations April 28 to Newsom about which counties should have the emergency declaration lifted.
“We’ve had so much rain and snow this year that we have emerged from drought,” Nemeth said of much of the state. “But we know that weather has been moving between extremely dry and wet conditions, and that extremely dry conditions can re-emerge. Californians need to conserve water as a new way of life, and California also needs to continue investing so that when dry conditions return, we are more secure in our water supplies.”
Nemeth said the Bay Area and other parts of the state are likely to be removed, while other places, such as the Klamath Basin near the Oregon border, and parts of Southern California that are heavily dependent on the depleted Colorado River, are less likely.
Having a drought emergency declaration in place allows the state, under its emergency powers, to fast-track some water projects, such as well drilling, water transfers or groundwater banks, without following all the dictates of the California Environmental Quality Act, which often requires long studies. It also allows state agencies to waive competitive bidding rules for drought-related emergency projects, such as providing bottled drinking water to rural farm communities whose wells fail or run dry.
With the extremely wet winter, Newsom had little choice but to begin relaxing drought rules, said Jay Lund, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis.
“You have to do it,” he said. “When it’s raining out, you can’t ask customers to be troubled with saving a lot of water when the reservoirs are full. It starts to jeopardize credibility with the public. It has some appeal to some environmentalists, but you don’t want to be crying wolf. It makes people not trust the government.”
On Thursday, 64% of California was no longer in a drought, up from just 3% three months ago, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a weekly report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The report, which looks at reservoir levels, groundwater, soil moisture, rainfall and other factors, showed all Bay Area counties and all coastal counties, along with most of the Sierra Nevada, drought free.
The Sacramento Valley and the Shasta region, along with Inyo, Kern, Riverside, Imperial and San Bernardino counties in Southern California, all still had some level of drought, the report showed.
On Friday, Newsom also ended a state campaign asking people to voluntarily cut water use 15%, although he said that they should never waste water. Water agencies have pushed for the state to relax such rules. When they sell less water, they lose revenue.
Newsom left in place state rules that prohibit wasteful water practices statewide, such as hosing down sidewalks and driveways, washing cars without a shut-off nozzle on the hose, or allowing water to run into the street from lawn irrigation.
California’s three-year drought was among the most severe on record, with widespread water shortages, record heatwaves and deadly wildfires. But since January, arid landscapes have given way to an abundance of water in many areas.
Many of the state’s major reservoirs have been rising so fast that operators are releasing water to reduce flood risk later this spring as snows melt. Shasta Lake, the largest, near Redding, was 78% full Friday, while the second-largest, Oroville, in Butte County, was 82% full, and San Luis, a key reservoir east of Gilroy, was 94% full and rising.
Since Christmas, a parade of enormous snow storms has paralyzed much of the Sierra Nevada — the source of nearly one-third of California’s water supply. On Monday, the snow depth reached the 2nd largest level since 1946 at the UC Central Sierra Snow Lab at Donner Summit, hitting 56 feet of accumulation for the season, behind only 1952, which saw 67 feet.
The huge snowpack will fill reservoirs when it melts in the coming months. Numerous areas, particularly in the San Joaquin Valley, still have depleted groundwater levels, caused by generations of over pumping by farmers.
“None of us,” Newsom said, “could have imagined a few months ago that we’d be where we are today.”
