Mountain View Voice
By Rachel Becker of CalMatters
As extreme drought claims most of the state, California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday asked Californians to voluntarily cut their water use by 15%.
The request, Newsom said, applies to businesses and agriculture as well as residents. Meeting the target could save enough water to supply 1.7 million average households for one year, according to state officials.
Speaking from windy Lopez Lake in San Luis Obispo County, Newsom stressed that the reductions are voluntary and urged Californians to make common sense cuts like looking for leaks and running full loads of laundry and dishes.
"Not here as a nanny state. And we’re not trying to be oppressive," he said. "But nonetheless, the sober reality is such that here we are again, and we will need to proceed with the lessons learned from the last drought."
Newsom also on Thursday expanded drought emergency declarations to nine more counties, including three parched Bay Area counties and several along the Central Coast. Fifty counties, home to 42% of the state’s population, are now under drought emergencies.
The nine new counties with emergency declarations are Inyo, Marin, Mono, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz. Conditions are not severe enough to include Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Francisco and Ventura, all of which have sufficient supplies in storage so far.
"Water is a precious essential resource. With San Mateo and Santa Clara counties now included in the Governor's emergency drought proclamation, we all must take steps to ensure we are conserving water and doing our utmost to further water resilience," state Sen. Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park, said in a statement following the governor's announcement.
Article also ran on Palo Alto Online, The Almanac and PleasantonWeekly.com.