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Everywhere he goes, Anthony Ambrose sees the dead and dying.
They haunt this city’s streets, the browning yards of stylish homes, the scenic grounds of the local University of California campus and dry roadway medians. They’re urban trees, thirsty for water as the state enters the fifth year of the worst drought in its history, and thousands are keeling over.

“It’s definitely not a good thing,” said Ambrose, a researcher at the university who studies forest ecosystems. “They’re not as visual, they’re not as pretty. Along the highway you see a lot of dead redwoods. I feel sorry for the trees.”

Water savings by Californians continued to dip in January for the sixth straight month, raising questions about whether conservation efforts will satisfy Gov. Jerry Brown’s aggressive 25 percent reduction target.

Regulators announced Thursday that residents cut water use by 17.1 percent last month when compared with the same time period in 2013, the baseline year under the mandate.

California has experienced, over the past few years, its most severe drought on record. In response to worsening conditions, Governor Jerry Brown announced the first ever statewide mandatory reduction in urban water use in April 2015. This calls on Californians to reduce their use of potable (safe for drinking and food preparation) urban water by 25% from pre-drought levels. Californians are meeting the mandate.

California is entering its fifth consecutive year of drought, with many areas experiencing “exceptional” drought levels. While rain and snowfall have improved recently, water storages remain low and the long-term drought signal has not changed.

Water district officials from California’s Central Valley are looking to a deeply fractured Congress for relief from what they expect to be a third straight year of no federal allocations.

Westlands Water District general manager Tom Birmingham compares the drought-related water shortages bedeviling valley communities to the drinking water contamination crisis in Flint, Mich.

Residents in the San Diego Water District are currently tasked with slashing water use 28 percent under state-mandated rules, but this target could be lowered to 20 percent.

General Manager Bill O’Donnell at the district’s Feb. 17 board meeting said the state might lower the district’s target based on a credit for districts that have developed local water supplies since 2013 — in this case, the Carlsbad Desalination Plant that recently opened.