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Gov. Gavin Newsom has refused to follow in former Gov. Jerry Brown’s footsteps and mandate that all residents cut back on water use amid the worsening California drought. But Newsom’s calls for voluntary conservation aren’t working. Newsom and sign interpreter Julia Townsend stand at the edge of a diminished Lopez Lake near Arroyo Grande (San Luis Obispo) in July 2021.
David Middlecamp/Associated Press 2021
If Gov. Jerry Brown’s drought strategy was defined by the “we’re all in this together” mantra of collective sacrifice, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s approach has been guided by the more individualistic notion of “it’s not one size fits all.”
Newsom, despite the state facing a third year of exceptional drought conditions, has refused to follow in Brown’s footsteps by mandating that all residents cut their water use.
The governor has instead repeatedly called on Californians to voluntarily conserve, and has allowed the state’s 436 local water agencies to create their own plans to prepare for impending water shortages.
But that approach has raised alarm bells among some water policy experts, environmentalists and legislators, who said the emphasis on local control and voluntary conservationsimply isn’t working.
Newsom’s pleas for residents to voluntarily conserve have flopped. Last July, he called for people tocut water use by 15%.But consumption has soared in recent months — urban water use rose by 17.6% in April and 18.9% in March over the previous year.
Heather Cooley, director of research at the Pacific Institute, a water-policy think tank in Oakland, said allowing hundreds of water agencies to set their own strategies has led to mixed messaging and a sense of apathy.
“During the Brown administration the message really was, ‘We’re all in this together,’” she said. Now, “we’re not getting the statewide message that highlights the severity of the drought and the need for everyone to do something.”
At the core of Brown and Newsom’s disparate approaches is a different philosophy about the extent to which the drought response should be centralized at the state level or decentralized to leave the decisions in the hands of local water boards.
Newsom has staunchly defended the latter approach, which he said empowers local officials to make plans that are better tailored to the unique hydrology and water needs in different parts of the state.
“The approach this year is different than the old administration. It’s bottom-up, not top-down,” he said during his latest news conference on the drought in mid-May. “Gov. Brown didn’t have the benefit of lessons learned from the drought in 2012 to 2016.”
Newsom hasn’t been passive on the drought, either. He signed an executive order this spring that directed the state Water Resources Control Board to order water agencies tomove to “level two” of their drought emergency plans.
That effectively ordered water agencies to prepare for the likelihood that their water supplies could be cut by up to 20%, and the move took effect June 10. Newsom also pushed to prohibit businesses and public institutions from using potable water toirrigate “nonfunctional” grassthat only serves an ornamental purpose.
But compared with the mandatory cuts Brown imposed, the move has a lot less teeth. Local water agencies can prepare for a water shortage by requiring consumers to cut water use or by finding new sources of water, including drilling for more groundwater.
In some ways, the scenario is a case of deja vu from the last drought, when Brown became exasperated with water suppliers shrugging off earlier voluntary calls for conservation.
Felicia Marcus, the former chair of the Water Board and one of Brown’s right-hand advisers on drought, said Newsom’s predicament has strong parallels to the last administration. She said the former governor made the “hard call” to mandate water rationing only because local water agencies didn’t step up.
While Marcus declined to second-guess Newsom’s approach, she said she’s been puzzled by increasing water use this year after how much consumers learned about being more efficient during the last drought.
“It should be going better,” she said. “There’s a failure of messaging happening out there, and I’m not sure by whom. You don’t have the same alarm and the same edginess.”
Newsom’s approach has frustrated some legislators, especially those from rural counties where wells are drying up in droves. Complaintsbegan to simmerin spring 2021, when Newsom declined to declare a statewide drought emergency and limited his initial declaration to a handful of counties.
At the time, he argued the state should make decisions based on the unique conditions in each county and poo-pooed the notion of mandatory cuts. That mantra has remained central to his local-control drought strategy, though heeventually extendedthe emergency declaration to all of the state’s 58 counties.
“It’s not a one-size-fits-all,” Newsom said in April 2021, as he spoke from a high-and-dry boat launch overlooking the receding reservoir behind Oroville Dam.
State Sen. Melissa Hurtado, D-Sanger (Fresno County), said that after nearly three years into the current drought, she’s perplexed Newsom doesn’t have a clearer message.
“I don’t think I have an understanding of what his strategy is,” she said. “It would be good to know.”
During the last drought, Brownimposed mandatory cutsabout four years into the dry spell. He had earlier called for people to conserve voluntarily, but forced restrictions after that didn’t work.
California saw a nearly 24% drop in urban water use after Brown signed an executive order in April 2015 requiring water agencies to cut usage by 25%. The order was in full effect for about 11 months, and major rainfall ended the drought in early 2017.
纽森是当前droug大约三年ht that started in 2020. Less of the state is underextreme drought conditionsthan it was at the point Brown imposed mandatory water cuts in 2015. That said, conditions are rapidly deteriorating because of unusually hot winter and spring that caused snowpack to melt quickly.
The state’s two largest reservoirs are now atlower levelsthan they were when Brown signed his executive order in 2015. Shasta Lake, the largest, has 49% of what it normally holds at this time of year, compared with 74% when Brown mandated cuts. Lake Oroville, the second-largest reservoir, is carrying 67% of what it normally holds at this point in the year, compared with 71% seven years ago.
That’s why some water experts say it’s time for the governor to get serious about mandates. But Newsom’s defenders said it’s still unfair to compare his response in the third year of the current drought to Brown’s handling of a five-year drought.
For starters, they said Newsom hasn’t been able to be focus on the issue to the same degree because he’s been dealing with a host of crises: the COVID pandemic, catastrophic wildfires, and economic uncertainty. The state has also faced higher temperatures with this drought, which led to people to use more water in the winter and spring months.
“We’re all juggling a lot and have been juggling a lot,” said Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot, one of Newsom’s top water-policy advisers.
Crowfoot was also an architect of drought policy in Brown’s administration. He said there’s a false perception that Brown got Californians to turn on a dime and conserve water when it actually took a few years and, eventually, mandatory restrictions.
“You’re always going to start with voluntary,” Crowfoot said. “You have to keep open the idea of more mandatory and prescriptive actions.”
Newsom has also warned that more mandatory cuts could be coming, if people don’t start cutting back. Last month, he met with with local and regional water officials to demand they do more.
That said, Newsom hasleaned into the notionthat local control in drought response is ideal. He’s cited a report from Crowfoot’s agency aboutlessons from the 2012-16 drought.The report states that mandatory water cuts should “balance statewide ‘we’re-all-in-this-together’ approaches with ways to account for local and regional differences in climate and water availability.”
The report also cites unintended consequences from the state’s response to the last drought, including that cutbacks killed countless mature trees in urban areas, landscaping that provides crucial shade to combat rising temperatures because of climate change.
Newsom said his approach of requiring water districts to come up with their own plans, which he has dubbed a “a mandate for local mandates,” reflects that takeaway about local control.
The governor also faces a tough political road navigating water policy in California. Similar to his predecessors, he has often been criticized by environmentalists who argue the state provides more water to agriculture than it can sustain. They also worry the state is missing its chance to save water early in a drought that could last years longer than previous dry spells.
Kathryn Phillips, former director for the Sierra Club California and a longtime environmentalist, said while she disagreed with aspects of Brown’s approach on water, he spoke with more authority and urgency on the issue.
“With this governor, I feel like they’re on some sort of photo-opportunity schedule,” she said. “I don’t anticipate substance from this administration when he’s doing a press conference.”
Newsom has likewise faced criticism from farmers, water agencies and business groups who say he hasn’t done enough to modernize water infrastructure and expand storage to capture runoff from storms.
The governor’s budget, which he’s still negotiating with legislators who recently passed a placeholder budget, includes more than $2 billion for drought response, including funds for water recycling projects, more efficient irrigation systems for farmers and public education campaigns to increase conservation. That’s on top of $5.2 billion the state allocated last year.
Charles Wilson, executive director of the Southern California Water Coalition, an advocacy group that represents water suppliers, cities and businesses, said part of Newsom’s challenge is “natural fatigue” with drought restrictions.
He said people aren’t motivated to stop watering their lawns or turn off the faucet when they brush their teeth if they don’t see the state taking more significant action to resolve the problem long-term.
“You can’t just rely on ‘kill the lawn, I’m done,’” Wilson said. “You still have to build things. (Brown) had big infrastructure solutions.”
In 2014, Brown and legislators negotiated a$7.5 billion bond package向国家老化水注入资金nfrastructure, which voters overwhelmingly approved. But only a fraction of that money has been spent on projects so far.
Sen. Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber (Tehama County), helped negotiate that bond package with Brown and other legislators. He said Newsom has never spoken with him about the drought and seems to treat water as a back-burner issue.
“Jerry Brown, for all of his idiosyncrasies, did have a broader vision than this governor,” Nielsen said. “What is not visionary is, ‘Oh well, the locals will need to decide it, that’s their problem.’”
Dustin Gardiner (he/him) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email:dustin.gardiner@sfchronicle.com
