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California decided Wednesday to allow hundreds of local water districts to set their own conservation goals after a wet winter eased the five-year drought in some parts of the state.

The new approach lifts a statewide conservation order enacted last year that requires at least a 20 percent savings. Beginning next month, districts serving nearly 40 million Californians will compare water supply and demand with the assumption that dry conditions will stretch for three years. The districts would then set savings goals through January and report their calculations to the state.

For its first four years, the California drought spread its pain across most corners of the state.

The great peaks of the Sierra Nevada were snow-deprived. Central Valley agricultural fields lay fallow. And the trademark green lawns of Southern California suburbia slowly turned brown.

But this summer is going to be different. A strong series of storms have left parts of Northern California rehydrated, with reservoirs brimming with water and once brown and dry hillsides radiating green again. But to the south, residents are enduring another record-dry year.

In Southern California, fresh water is constantly in short supply. But the San Diego area can now tap into a resource that’s not dependent on rain — a new $1 billion desalination plant that is the largest in the Western Hemisphere.

In Carlsbad, California, intake pumps pull water from the Pacific Ocean. “We bring 100 million gallons of water through our intake pump system and up the hill to the desalination plant,” said Jessica Jones, spokesperson for Poseidon Water. “We get a 55 percent recovery. We turn half of it into fresh drinking water.”