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California’s devastating 4-year-old drought showed signs Thursday of easing its grip on the nation’s most populous state — if only a little.

For the first time in three years, less than 90% of California is in drought, the U.S. Drought Monitor, a federal website that tracks the dry conditions, reported. The decrease may not sound like a lot, but it’s still welcome news for the state’s 38 million residents dealing with widespread water restrictions, which could soon be amended.

The El Nino rains have brought some relief to drought-stricken California. The U.S. Drought Monitor is reporting that the percentage of the state in exceptional drought is half of what it was at the beginning of the year – 21 percent versus 44.8 percent in January. At least one water district has decided to loosen its water usage restrictions.

But Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, says water scarcity is a chronic condition in California and the drought is far from over.http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2016/05/05/california-drought-eases

Water supplies in many California public schools have repeatedly exceeded safe drinking standards. The report from the Community Water Center looked at nearly 7,000 public schools around California. It found between 2003 and 2014, up to 24 percent of the schools had water that violated safe standards.

“Bacterial and arsenic violations were the most common types of violations impacting schools, but they were also followed by the pesticide DBCP, disinfectant byproducts, and nitrates,”says lead author Jenny Rempel with the Community Water Center.