Amid severe drought conditions, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California mandated outdoor water restrictions for 6 million Southern California residents in June. Current University water usage mostly complies with the new requirements and the University plans to continue expanding water conservation efforts around campus.
After record-low precipitation in January, February and March, California faces its third consecutive year of drought.
“[The water shortage] is not a new problem or one that’s ever going to go away,” said Dan McCurry, an assistant professor of environmental engineering. “We have recurring droughts every five [to] 10 years in California and probably the biggest problem is that we have to import about 90% of our water. We get almost no water naturally, locally in L.A. Most of it comes from big aqueducts from hundreds of miles away from the Sierras and the Colorado River. And all the water that we import ultimately comes from snowmelt from the Sierras in the Rockies. So as the snowpack gets seemingly more unreliable every year, that’s just not going to be a problem that goes away.”