The Los Angeles Department of Water & Power announced today that water use in the City declined by over 18% in the past 2 years, as individual residents, businesses, and government institutions like schools all cut their water use in response to the drought. As a result, Los Angeles uses less water today than it did 25 years ago, despite adding more than a million people to the population.
It’s a pretty remarkable accomplishment, and it demonstrates that each of our individual actions and choices really do make a difference. But there's much more we all can be doing to save water and use it more efficiently.
While LA sometimes gets a bad rap on water use, their past conservation efforts really have been impressive, and the City has adopted plans to meet the water needs of its growing population entirely from the Virtual River of water supply tools, including water conservation and recycling. Even with LA's successful water conservation efforts in the past 15 or so years, LA's Virtual River will be creating more new water for residents and businesses for years to come.
I don't often root for Los Angeles (especially not the Lakers!), but I'm certainly rooting for LA to blow past the 20 percent water conservation requirement in the recently enacted State water policy reform legislation. So congratulations (and thank you!) to the leaders at Los Angeles DWP, and to the residents of LA, for this impressive accomplishment.
But with the drought far from over, keep up the good work!