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The drought rules were relaxed, but Californians didn’t open the spigots.The state’s urban residents are continuing strong water conservation, cutting water use 21.5 percent in June compared with June 2013, the baseline year, despite state officials easing mandatory drought targets earlier this year. The new data was released Tuesday morning by the State Water Resources Control Board in Sacramento.“It’s maybe not as good as we hoped, but it’s better than we feared with conflicting messages out there,” said Felicia Marcus, chairwoman of the board.

Sacramento is considering scrapping the lowest bidder requirement in its water meter installation program, a step it says could get meters put in faster and reduce customer complaints. The change could also allow contracting bias in a program that has weathered setbacks and scandals, including the recent finding by the city auditor that its onetime project manager had sex and used alcohol and drugs on the job.

In Colorado, rivers flow not only down mountain slopes but beneath them, across them, and through them. Nearly four dozen canals, tunnels, and ditches in the state move water out of natural drainages and into neighboring basins. Some snake across high passes. Others pierce bedrock. All manmade water courses, meant to supply farming, manufacturing, or household use, eventually become so familiar they become part of the landscape. But old infrastructure can come to life in different form.

 

Californians used 21 percent less water in June than they did in 2013. That wasn’t as much savings as last month or even last year, but state water regulators say they expected conservation to dip. It’s the first month after statewide mandates were eased. Local water agencies now set conservation standards based on supply. Agencies must self-certify that they can provide water for several years. Regulators call it a “stress-test.” But it may be too soon to tell if the dip in June is an indication that the relaxed rules aren’t working.

 

California officials Tuesday released a detailed environmental blueprint for Gov. Jerry Brown’s controversial Delta tunnels project, saying the $15.5 billion plan “minimizes potential effects” on endangered fish species whose populations have dwindled following decades of water pumping. The Department of Water Resources unveiled its so-called “biological assessment” for the proposed tunnels, which are designed to re-engineer the plumbing of the battered Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in order to improve reliability of water deliveries to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California.