California Governor Jerry Brown just announced the first-ever mandatory water restrictions as the state's brutal four-year drought continues
The State Water Resources Control Board will force cities and towns to reduce their water usage by 25 percent in the coming year.
But there's a key caveat: This rationing won't apply to agriculture, which uses four times as much water as California's urban areas.* Throughout this drought, farmers have been pumping up lots of scarce groundwater, but restrictions on that won't take effect until 2020 or later.
The state will also order golf courses to use less water, replace 50 million square feet of lawns with drought-tolerant landscaping, and offer rebates for consumers to buy more water-efficient appliances.
California has been slow to resort to mandatory rationing — but its drought shows no signs of abating. Snowpack in the mountains, which typically provides water in the spring, is at just 6 percent of historic levels.
Source: Vox
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