Apr 3, 2015

California drought: Brown orders water-use reduction

Standing in a browned meadow that should have been buried in deep snow, Gov. Jerry Brown ordered California’s first-ever mandatory water cutback, imposing a 25 percent reduction to force residents and businesses to significantly tighten up water use.

Brown’s historic executive order came Wednesday under sunny skies in theSierra Nevada as he stood with snow surveyors who had not a flake to measure on the ground at Phillips Station. The news statewide was worse than expected: Snow depth was calculated at 1 to 2 inches — far from the record low of 27 inches in 1977 during one of the state’s worst droughts on record.

San Francisco Chronicle

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