After a drought-stricken California lifted a year of mandatory water-use cuts that were effective in 2015 and 2016, urban water use crept back up somewhat, but the overall lasting effect was a more waterwise Golden State, a University of California, Riverside, study has found.
Published Tuesday, April 25, in the journal Water Resources Research, the UCR study found that water use by 2019 was still lower than it was in 2013, thanks in large part to water use changes by larger water users.
The water-reduction mandate imposed in 2015 by then-Gov. Jerry Brown also spurred Californians to develop better water-saving habits, such as irrigating their lawns and gardens during cooler morning hours when less water is lost to evaporation, the researchers found. The study analyzed about half a billion records of hourly water use data.
Read more at: University of California - Riverside