Take Two translates the day’s headlines for Southern California, making sense of the news and cultural events that affect our lives. Produced by Southern California Public Radio and broadcast from October 2012 – June 2021. Hosted by A Martinez.
When Governor Brown issued mandatory restrictions back in 2015, many people ripped out lawns in favor of drought-resistant gardens or, at the very least, watered our plants a lot less.
But people may be slip and sliding back into their water-wasting ways since the drought officially ended last year.
The U.S. Drought Monitor reports today that large portions of SoCal are back in severe drought conditions.
"If the fires weren't a wake-up call, I don't know what was," says Mark Gold, associate vice chancellor for Environment and Sustainability at UCLA.
Very much so. I thought the state made a very big mistake in making the cutbacks, moving them from "mandatory" to "voluntary."
What we've seen is that we went from a 24.5 percent reduction in water use – which everybody in the state had a lot to be proud of.
Now, in the year and half or so since those mandatory cutbacks went to voluntary, we're back to about 11 percent of reduction from where we were in 2013.
We're in a much better position individually as people because we did such a great job last year of capturing runoff. ...
[But] this sort of emergency response mentality of "Is it a drought?" or "Is it not a drought?" – that's what's not working. We really have to realize that conservation is a way of life in California.