One year ago Friday, Frank Gehrke hiked out to Phillips Station and stuck a tube onto a tuft of brownish-green grass. There was no snow, but Gehrke had quite an audience.

A gaggle of reporters and even Gov. Jerry Brown had assembled at the outpost 90 miles from Sacramento to watch Gehrke work and bear witness to the severity of California’s drought.What followed was a historic executive order from Brown that required a statewide 25% cut in urban water use and set in motion a fundamental rethinking about how Californians use the precious resource.