JUST IN: CA Gov. Newsom has ended some state water restrictions but did not declare an end to the drought following a series of strong storms, warning much of the state is still suffering from its lingering effects.
Newsom did not declare an end to the drought, warning much of the state is still suffering from its lingering effects.Governor Gavin Newsom is in Northern California Friday morning to talk about the latest on the state's drought status.California Gov. Gavin Newsom ended some of the state's water restrictions on Friday because a winter of relentless rain and snow has replenished the state's reservoirs and eased fears of a shortage after three years of severe drought.
Newsom said he would stop asking people to voluntarily cut their water use by 15%, a request he first made nearly two years ago while standing at the edge of a nearly dry Lopez Lake in the state's Central Coast region - a lake that today is so full from recent storms it is almost spilling over. Californians never met Newsom's call for that level of conservation - as of January the cumulative savings were just 6.2%.
"Is the drought over? Are we going back to normal? I would say no," Wade Crowfoot, Newsom's secretary of the California Department of Natural Resources, said Thursday. "It's really adjusting to a new normal, and that is intensifying extremes - what the governor has called 'weather whiplash.'" Amid all that carnage, water has steadily poured into the state's reservoirs. Of California's 17 major reservoirs, 12 of them are either at or above their historical averages for this time of year.
Water shortage concerns remain for some areas of the state, including a sizeable chunk of Southern California that relies on water from the Colorado River - a basin that remains in drought. In the north part of the state, portions of the Klamath River basin are still listed as in "severe drought."
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