[ouchy]

If all Californians stopped watering their lawns, the state's water situation would remain almost wholly unchanged. It's an incredibly minor contributing factor.

Most of the laws passed mandating reduced watering are done primarily to satisfy the electorate that "something is being done," so they don't notice or care that groundwater supplies are being rapidly depleted in the interest of making billions off nut sales:

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/11/almonds-water...

[sanswork]

While I agree that lawn watering regulations in most places will do very little to actually help conserve water directly I think it goes a long way to making water shortages real to people. It's very hard to believe there is a serious issue when everywhere you look sprinklers are going. Being forced to conserve water in a simple way like that probably isn't going to be a direct benefit but getting people thinking about it more by it directly affecting their lives definitely can be.

[zaroth]

I think just the opposite. You pass a law and think you've done something, but actually the problem remains exactly as large as is was the day before. And now you have another excuse for more bureaucracy, call lines for snitching on neighbors, excuses to fine people exorbitant fees which can hit a family very hard, etc. I think it's the worst possible action we could take.

There was a period in Bay Area about a year ago, before some of the more strict regs were enacted, when the local papers were running front page stories almost daily about water shortage and the city's refusal to implement "common sense policies" and other such nonsense. No one said a peep about that bag of almonds which wasted as much water as your entire house would use that month, lawn watering included.

I see it as a means of subjecting the population toward ever increasing levels of scrutiny, control, and government interference. The drought is just an excuse. The policy has zero meaningful impact except to expand government largess and the populace's willingness to kowtow to authority.

[sanswork]

For most people sure they will stop watering their lawn pat themselves on the back and be done with it. You won't ever get action from those people though so we can ignore them. There is a smaller group that will be annoyed that they are having to make sacrifices when industry/agriculture isn't and those people will be pushed to be more active.

Does it guarantee improvements? Nope, but it does get more people on the side of conservation.

Any way to improve it would require increasing levels of government interference. Clearly people(industry included) aren't willing to self regulate their water usage or they would already be doing so.

[ouchy]

It gets people thinking they're conservationists. It doesn't necessarily make them conservationists. In fact, I'd argue it has tended to produce the opposite effect, because it creates a mental barometer based on the wrong indicators.

And any way to improve it may require increasing levels of government interference, but increasing levels of government interference ≠ improvement.

I know it sounds obvious when put that way, but too many people fall into the trap of thinking that because something must be done, anything must be done. And, that because something was done, it was a good thing. Which is seldom true, unfortunately.

[sanswork]

I agree it will make lots of people think their conservationists when in reality they are just retweeters/fb likers but I disagree that it won't actually lead more people to being actual conservationists.

>And any way to improve it may require increasing levels of government interference, but increasing levels of government interference ≠ improvement.

Agreed but I think increasing interference in the "wrong"(as in not most effective place I.E. watering lawns) place will put pressure on them to also put pressure on the right places so the people under the first problem don't feel like they are over contributing.

That said I've not read any studies on this so really I'm just guessing blind here.

[ouchy]

I totally agree that people need to feel like they have skin in the game.

And I wish lawn-watering laws did that, but they don't seem to. I think the natural result with mankind–at least with Californians–seems to be that people then feel like they've done their part, and can go back to watching television. The state has a long history of such behavior across a variety of issues, and I don't think this one's any different, unfortunately.

It's a fine line, but Californians need to be having difficult conversations about the composition and nature of their economy, and the true long-term environmental impact of those choices, instead of feeling good about feeling bad.

Sending city employees out to fine people for watering their lawns, while legislators continue to enable a billion-dollar industry on land that can't support it for much longer, is what's happening.

The state's supposed to be at the forefront of environmental restraint, but can't ever seem to make do with what it has (whether it's water, money, or otherwise).

So what does it do?

Same thing it always does: Sweat the small stuff to win the PR game and fill the public coffers, sell bonds to fund boondoggles that won't attempt to solve any root causes, and seek reelection: something made considerably easier by the first two.

[sanswork]

I honestly can't speak on the Californian mindset since my experience living there was only a few months so I can't say for sure it would work. I think it would give leverage to the people trying to enact agriculture changes though.

Once people can't water their lawns you can quite easily say "You can't water your lawns but look at this footage of MegaAgriCorp flooding this near desert field for days on end(I saw this near Delhi where a maybe 10 acre field that was rock hard was covered in plastic and flooded for a week then planted) just to get an extra few acres of land." and you will have a lot more advocates for change even if most people just go 'Meh'.

[ouchy]

> I think it would give leverage to the people trying to enact agriculture changes though.

It probably does, but agriculture changes in California tend to be in the interest of the agriculture industry, and those whose campaigns they fund.

As far as watering restrictions being useful for winning hearts and minds, I think in some cultures that would make a lot of sense (Japan comes to mind), but not in California. Environmentalism and conservationism are about as diametrically opposed in California as it gets: it's one of the prime consumer cultures on the planet, and consumerism is at odds with conservationism, unfortunately.