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California governor tells climate-change deniers to wake up

Jerry Brown has ordered water rationing as state faces its worst drought in history

An aerial view of a parched landscape in San Diego. College campuses, golf courses and other industrial and recreational facilities, as well as homeowners, have been ordered to ration water. Photograph: Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images

Tom McCarthy
Sun Apr 5 2015 - 22:27

As his state faces the worst drought in its history, with mandatory water rationing for residents and fears that the agricultural sector will be destroyed, California governor Jerry Brown had a message for climate-change deniers: wake up.

“With the weather that’s happening in California, climate change is not a hoax,” Mr Brown said, on ABC News. “We’re dealing with it, and it’s damn serious.”

Snowpack in California, which usually the state’s water reservoirs each spring, has been measured this year at just 8 per cent of usual levels. Reservoirs are mostly dry, with 38 million residents downstream wondering where water for everyday use will come from.

Earlier this week, Mr Brown announced new rules on the amount of water California residents and municipalities can use, with the aim of cutting water usage statewide by 25 per cent. Residents faced restrictions on watering lawns and flushing toilets. Cities were prohibited from watering ornamental grass and told to revisit the amount charged for water.

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Wake-up call

“It is a wake-up call, and it should be for everyone,” Mr Brown yesterday. The governor said that if people ignored rationing, which could be measured through local water districts, they could face fines.

“The enforcement mechanism is powerful,” he said. “In a drought of this magnitude, you have to change behaviour.”

California senator Dianne Feinstein told CNN, meanwhile, that the historic drought facing her state represented a "very, very serious problem" and announced that she was working on emergency legislation to provide relief to farmers and those whose livelihoods were threatened.

Mr Brown also responded to criticism that rationing rules did not do enough to limit water consumption by the agricultural sector. About nine million acres in California are irrigated, accounting for 80 per cent of all human water use, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. High-growth crops include almonds, grapes, citrus and other fruit.

"The farmers have fallowed hundreds of thousands of acres," Mr Brown said. "They're pulling up vines and trees. Farmworkers are out of work. There are people in agriculture areas that are really suffering." – (Guardian service)

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