California Drought: Wasting Water? You Could Be Hit With a $500 Fine

Hosing off the driveway. Watering lawns within 48 hours of a rainstorm. Washing a car without a shut-off nozzle.

Any of those wasteful practices could soon be illegal in drought-stricken California, with fines of up to $500 for violators.

Seven months after Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a drought emergency for most counties in California, his administration is moving forward with something water conservation experts said should have happened long ago — crafting statewide rules to ban the egregious wasting of water.