California residents cut water use by nearly 30 percent

In California, residential water use dropped a whopping 28.9 percent in May, the State Resource Control Board said Wednesday.

That was a major increase over the 13.6 percent water savings in April, compared to April 2013. "My first response is almost disbelief," Mark Gold of UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability told the Los Angeles Times. "It is such an incredible number. These results are beyond encouraging; they're heartening. They make you realize that as a whole, people in urban areas are making the sacrifices necessary to get through this unprecedented drought."

On April 1, Gov. Jerry Brown (D) ordered a mandatory 25 percent cut in urban water use due to the drought. "The numbers tell us that more Californians are stepping up to help us make their communities more water secure, which is welcome news in the face of this dire drought," State Water Board Chairwoman Felicia Marcus said in a statement. "That said, we need all Californians to step up — and keep it up — as if we don’t know when it will rain and snow again, because we don't. If the drought continues beyond this year, we'll all be glad we did."

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