Most Water Agencies Can Ease Up on Conservation Under New Standards

California may be in its fifth year of drought, but on Tuesday, state water regulators effectively turned back the clock to 2013. Staff members of the State Water Resources Control Board announced that 343 of the state’s 411 water districts reported having enough water to meet their customers’ demands — even if the next three years are unusually dry. To blunt the impact of drought, the state required water providers to reduce their consumption compared to 2013 levels. Each provider was assigned a so-called conservation standard, which was expressed as a percentage.