Water Shortages

Deep in the green avocado groves, the winter quiet is shattered by the whine of chain saws. Workers wielding machetes slash leafy branches from the trees and spray-paint the tall stumps white to protect the bark from sunburn in the forced hibernation to come. Here, in the heart of the nation's avocado industry, growers are beheading their avocado trees.

The public agency that distributes water to much of the Southland is urging residents to reduce consumption by 10% to 20% to protect reserves during a worsening drought. "We're coming to the point in Southern California life where there's no room for water waste," said Anthony Fellow, vice chairman of the board of the Metropolitan Water District, which distributes imported water to 18 million people from Ventura County to the Mexican border.

Hoping to wring water from the skies, a parched Los Angeles County plans to launch an $800,000 cloud-seeding project in the San Gabriel Mountains that officials believe will boost rainfall and raise the levels of local reservoirs. The project, which will rely on injecting clouds with silver iodide particles, has won county supervisors' backing and is slated to begin this winter.

Across the countryside of this nation on the heel of the Arabian Peninsula, the pumps and drills roar. Wildcatters bore as much as 1,000 feet into the earth and draw out the valuable liquid. They pump it into tankers and haul it away to sell to the highest bidder. But soon the reservoirs will run dry.

Jean Orban thought she had found a simple solution to her green grass quandary. The Garden Grove resident considered having a healthy, pretty lawn the mark of being a good neighbor -- plus, residents who let their lawns go brown can be fined by the city. But she wanted to spare her husband the Sunday morning ritual of mowing the lawn, and she thought it was a waste to use hundreds of gallons of water to keep the grass thriving. So she had an artificial lawn installed.

Diamond Valley Lake, the giant regional reservoir in Riverside County, has been called the "jewel" of Southern California when it comes to pleasure boating and bass fishing. But the jewel has been tarnished by the water woes gripping Southern California. The water level in the 4,500-acre lake near Hemet is down by nearly 40%, and on Monday the lake's owner, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, will close the boat ramp.

Residents of Yorba Linda, where fire destroyed 118 homes, had complained for years of poor water pressure, a problem that may have made it more difficult for firefighters to beat back the weekend blaze that tore through the upscale community. In Sylmar, where about 500 mobile homes burned to the ground, fire officials said they were investigating reports of lack of water pressure there.

The first sign of trouble came almost immediately after Kurt and Michelle Dahlin moved into Lancaster's new Westview Estates in March 2007. The water slowed to a trickle midway through showering. The toilet tank took two hours to refill. The family often was forced to bathe at 4 a.m. -- before the neighbors awoke and the water flow became a dribble. Some days, there was no water at all. Things only got worse as more homeowners moved into the gated community on the outskirts of Lancaster.

Federal wildlife officials on Monday released new restrictions on pumping water from Northern California, further tightening the spigot on flows to Southern California cities and San Joaquin Valley farms. The curbs, intended to keep the tiny delta smelt from extinction and stem the ecological collapse of California's water crossroads, could in some years cut state water deliveries by half. "The water supply is becoming less certain," state water resources Director Lester Snow said.

Drought in the Colorado River basin could soon force a cut in water deliveries, but Southern California is unlikely to be affected, according to a federal report released Wednesday. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation document examines the effects of four proposals for handling shortages on the river, which is suffering from the worst drought in a century and one of the most severe in 500 years. "There is a chance in three years we would have a shortage.