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California today moved a big step closer to implementation of an historic law to protect groundwater basins from overdraft, as the California Water Commission approved regulations that will guide creation of sustainability plans by local groundwater agencies. Approval of the regulations advances the implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), enacted by Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. in September 2014 after more than a century of largely unregulated groundwater pumping in California. Groundwater supplies over a third of the water Californians use on average. In drought, some regions rely on groundwater for 60 percent or more of their water supplies.

Lake Mead’s surface Wednesday evening hit its lowest level since the man-made reservoir was created by the building of the Hoover Dam in 1935.

The surface of the lake — a critical source of water for Nevada, California, Arizona and Mexico — is expected to drop lower in the coming weeks, but rebound before the beginning of next year, when jurisdictions would be asked to accept shortages in supply.

Before throngs of TV news cameras in April last year, Gov. Jerry Brown stood on a patch of bare Sierra dirt that should have been covered in snow and told Californians they had to be unified in conserving water.

Noting that his call for voluntary conservation had not resulted in a significant change in habits among urban and suburban residents the previous summer, Brown said that he had no choice but to order urban water providers to collectively reduce water use by 25 percent compared with 2013. “We’re in an historic drought,” Brown said. “And that demands unprecedented action.”

Eric Graham has fake grass. Across the street, Louie Torres has dead grass. The Irvine neighbors, like most Californians, know lush, green lawns are a distant dream even as the state’s long drought eases.

But California’s decision Wednesday to return conservation goals to local control has them hoping their bills will get a little more manageable, and their yards a little less ugly.

“It looks terrible,” said Torres, 49, as he looked at his brown yard. “I’ve been trying to save water. They said, ‘brown is the new green.'”