California implemented permanent water rationing for urban water users on January 1. The California State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) designed the regulations, which will affect about 405 water providers serving about 95 percent of the state’s population. These providers in turn will need to determine how to meet their SWRCB quotas.
The stringency of the rationing varies across locations. Newsweek reports estimated water delivery reductions of 92 percent for the City of Vernon, 58 percent for the City of Atwater, and 43 percent for the City of Glendora by 2040. It also reports that by 2040, about 36 percent of water suppliers will need to cut water delivery by an estimated 10 percent or more. About 31 percent of suppliers are estimated to avoid any cuts by 2040. Fines for noncompliance could reach $10,000 per day, though compliance apparently won’t be enforced until 2027.
To get a sense of household water consumption envisaged under this program, the National Review reports a target for household indoor use of about 47 gallons per person per day in 2025, and about 42 gallons per person per day in 2030. If you happen to have a high-flow showerhead, then you could possibly use as much as 25 gallons on a 10-minute shower.
The state has adopted temporary rationing in some previous years when water supplies were low. The intent of this permanent rationing is to increase water supply reliability. But the program faces significant challenges. Perhaps the most obvious one is that urban water use typically accounts for only about 10 percent of California’s annual water consumption. This means that these conservation efforts will have a limited quantitative impact. A report by California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) estimates that the new regulation could save about 1 percent of annual water use upon full implementation.
Another issue is cost. The LAO report states the rationing will add significant costs and complexity to urban water provision, and the LAO asks whether the costs outweigh the benefits:
While an assessment from SWRCB estimates a cumulative net benefit of $2.5 billion, an independent review conducted by a private consulting firm—which raises credible questions about SWRCB’s estimates—projects net costs of $7.4 billion. Moreover, even if benefits outweigh costs in the long run, whether they merit the amount of work and costs to implement the requirements as currently proposed is uncertain.
These issues raise the question of why California is doing this. The rationing approach, part of a regulatory framework titled “Making Water Conservation a Way of Life,” stands in contrast to California’s previous approaches to dealing with water scarcity.
Because some parts of California, particularly Southern California, have limited rainfall, California has chronically faced water challenges. California substantially expanded its water supply through significant investments in water storage and conveyance in the previous century. This includes the Central Valley Project, which provides water to the San Joaquin Valley for purposes including crop irrigation, and the California State Water Project, which provides water for agricultural use and for household use by 27 million residents.
However, expansions in storage and conveyance have slowed since those major water systems were developed. In 2016, then US senator Dianne Feinstein stated that California had essentially the same water infrastructure at that time as when the state had just 16 million people, which is less than half the population in 2016 and today.
Why hasn’t California expanded water storage and conveyance more as the state has grown? One factor is environmental challenges to these projects. The Delta Conveyance Project, which would move water from the Sacramento River to a reservoir on the California Aqueduct, has been delayed because of concerns about some fish species; preliminary geotechnical investigations were halted in June 2024 by a court injunction. This project was first proposed in 2009.
The California Wild and Scenic Rivers Act has impeded the possibility of raising the height of the Shasta Dam, a project that was evaluated by the Federal Bureau of Reclamation in 2015.
Desalination is another option to increase water supply, yet proposed desalination plants also face environmental challenges. A proposed desalination plant in Huntington Beach was contested by environmental groups and was denied permitting by California’s Coastal Commission in 2021. As of 2023, only four desalination plants were operating regularly in California, according to the Sierra Club.
Environmental concerns and challenges do not always halt projects, but they can delay them. An appellate court recently upheld a decision regarding the sufficiency of the environmental impact report for the proposed Sites Reservoir, which had been challenged by environmental groups on the basis of the California Environmental Quality Act. However, planning for the Sites Reservoir, which would be located in the western Sacramento Valley, goes back at least 40 years, and the authority for advancing the project has been in place since 2010.
At one time, California was very nimble in building water storage and water conveyance infrastructure. That no longer is true, and environmental challenges are one reason why. Californians pride themselves on being responsible stewards for the environment, but there needs to be a balance of the costs and benefits of environmental policies. Some of the environmental challenges that water projects face fall under laws that California can change. If modifications to these laws could be enacted that made it faster and less costly to permit and build environmentally reasonable projects, then California may be able to expand water supplies significantly. This in turn could reduce the need for rationing and other policies that constrain water demand.
