Photo Credit: AP / Rich Pedroncelli

On a recent sunny day, the water waste inspector rolled through a quiet Sacramento neighborhood in his white pickup truck after a tipster tattled on people watering their lawns on prohibited days.

He approached two culprits. Rather than slapping them with fines, Upton offered to change the settings on their sprinkler systems.

“I don’t want to crack down on them and be their Big Brother,” said Upton, who works for the water conservation unit of Sacramento’s utilities department. “People don’t waste water on purpose. They don’t know they are wasting water.”

At least 45 water agencies throughout California, including Sacramento, are imposing and enforcing mandatory restrictions on water use as their supplies run dangerously low. Sacramento is one of the few bigger agencies actively patrolling streets for violators and encouraging neighbors to report waste.

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Photo Credit: GETTY IMAGESA federal agency’s recent announcement that the California’s Central Valley will get zero percent water allocation this year was devastating for farmers already dealing with the worst drought seen in decades.

One of the world’s most productive agricultural regions, the enormous valley is reeling after the driest year in more than a century. But last week, the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation, which supplies water to a third of the irrigated farmland in California through a 500-mile network of canals and tunnel, said it won’t be able to deliver any of the water sought by farmers.

“It goes beyond devastation, you’re going to see farms that have been in business 30 and 40 years, they do not have any water, they are out of business,” said Dennis Falaschi, general manager of the Panoche Water District.

The drought, combined with continued protections for endangered species, has forced farmers to find alternatives. Most farmers have already switched to drip irrigation, which is much more efficient than the flood irrigation technique used when water was plentiful. But it still may not be enough, as farmers are now choosing which crops to water – and which to let wither.

“This farm’s been here for over 90 years and we recognize that Mother Nature throws a drought occasionally and so we made the decision not to plant more than a third of this farm,” says Mike Stearns, a Central Valley Farmer.

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Robert GalbraithWithout a lot more rain and snow, many California farmers caught in the state’s drought can expect to receive no irrigation water this year from a vast system of rivers, canals and reservoirs interlacing the state, federal officials announced Friday.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released its first outlook of the year, saying that the agency will continue to monitor rain and snow fall, but the grim levels so far prove that the state is in the throes of one of its driest periods in recorded history.

Farmers who rely on the federally run Central Valley Project received only 20 percent of their normal water allotment last year and were expecting this year’s bad news. Some communities and endangered wildlife that rely on the federal water source will also suffer deep cuts.

The state’s snowpack is at 29 percent of average for this time of year, which means that for farmers it’s going to be a hard year.

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