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Residents and businesses statewide, including those in San Diego County, continued to save water aggressively as officials began moving forward with loosening emergency conservation standards. Regulators on Wednesday released their analysis of water consumption in May, the most recent month for verified data. Their reports are issued monthly as part of a program created in response to California’s historic drought, which is deep into its fifth straight year. Water use in May was 28.2 percent lower than during the same month in 2013 — Gov. Jerry Brown’s benchmark time period for his conservation mandate, which took effect in June of last year.

City officials hope to better understand the health of Long Beach’s urban forest, which contains some 92,000 street trees throughout the city.

As cities across Southern California have grappled with a historic drought and worked to comply with state-mandated watering restrictions, trees and park systems have suffered, including those in Long Beach.

A handful of City Council members, led by 5th District Councilwoman Stacy Mungo, asked the council to support having the Public Works Department study the condition of the city’s street trees – and based on that assessment, develop a life-cycle management plan.

Council members opted to follow state and local recommendations and agreed to reduce the drought response to Level 1. Last month, when staff suggested the change based on increased water supplies due to winter storms and Carlsbad’s desalination plant going online, Councilman Don Mosier called the move “premature” and a “big mistake because…two-thirds of the state is still in a drought.” “You’re undoing a good program,” Mosier said at last month’s meeting in an effort to convince his colleagues to leave the response level unchanged. “This community’s adapted to using less water, and I think we should continue to do that.”

 

Without mandatory conservation, San Diego is positioning itself to fall back into the same short-sighted planning that built the state’s drought inadequacies in the first place. For decades, the San Diego region inched closer and closer to a drought crisis, pumping more water for more lawns from the ever-dwindling supplies in the Colorado River Basin and the Bay Delta. We were addicted, concerned with getting more water today, not the drought tomorrow. Then we hit rock bottom. In 2015, after we failed to respond to voluntary conservation calls to action, Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency.

When it comes to California’s ongoing drought, there’s good news and bad news. While the level of statewide drought has been decreasing over the past year, La Niña predictions suggest California could be in for more dryness in the near future.

The latest numbers from the U.S. Drought Monitor show less drought throughout the state today compared to the same time last year. About 60 percent of the state is still in severe drought or worse, but that’s down from about 95 percent one year ago.