SAN FRANCISCO -- Californians sharply cut water use this summer, prompting state officials to credit their new conservation policies and the sting of thousands of warnings and penalties that they had issued to people for overuse.
But the most effective enforcers may be closer to home: the domestic water police.
They are the moms and dads, spouses and partners, children, even co-workers and neighbors who are quick to wag a finger when they spot people squandering moisture, such as a faucet left running while they're brushing their teeth, or using too much water to clean dinner plates in the sink. And showers? No lingering allowed.
So discovered Dick Allen, a retired businessman in San Francisco, who tells of getting busted recently by his wife. He'd just stepped into a hot shower to loosen up after a workout when she appeared in the bathroom to scold him.
"'You've been in the shower too long,'" he recalled her saying. "How do you know that?" he pleaded. She had proof -- his back was red. "It was the gotcha moment," said Allen, who occasionally jokes with his wife, who is younger than he is, that she has "junior water rights" and therefore can't shower until the following day.
The culture of badgering has intensified since January 2014, when the drought led Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a state of emergency and ask Californians to voluntarily cut water use by 20 percent. But as conditions worsened, the state stopped asking so politely. In June and July, for instance, state water agencies issued more than 70,000 warnings for overuse and more than 20,000 penalties. (The fines varied widely, but were generally several hundred dollars or less, state officials said.)
Many of the warnings were issued because "someone's neighbor ratted on them," said Max Gomberg, climate and conservation manager for the State Water Resources Control Board. The actual penalties, he said, were assessed to "a tiny percentage of people who just don't care." The nanny-state strategy, however, has been helped by the nagging-state approach at home, according to interviews with people across the state. By many accounts, the needling often seems taken in its intended, well-meaning spirit. But it isn't always welcomed, particularly when it comes from someone outside the inner family circle.
That led to an awkward moment for J S Gilbert and his wife recently during a gathering at their house with friends in South San Francisco. One of the visitors used the bathroom and, Gilbert happened to notice, didn't flush. So he mentioned this oversight to his friend, who "looked me straight in the eye and said, 'If it's yellow, let it mellow,'" said Gilbert, who works as a consultant to advertising agencies.
"I said, 'I think that's OK if that's you and your wife at home,'" Gilbert responded, which invited another riposte from his visitor. "He said: 'That's up to you. I'm doing what I can to save water.'" Water shaming has plenty of precursors. Public safety advocates, for instance, have said that greater use of seatbelts, and a drop in drunken driving episodes nationwide, can be traced in part to friends and family members giving offenders a mouthful.
With water, the California droughts in the late 1970s and '80s prompted some homegrown policing, but nothing like the crackdowns now taking place in households across the state, said Jeffrey Mount, a senior fellow of the Public Policy Institute of California. (A poll from the group published in March found that, for the first time, Californians' concern about the drought equaled concern about jobs and the economy.)
Shorter showers and fewer toilet flushes can add up, but they represent a small fraction of the water being used for lawn irrigation and agriculture, said Jeffrey Michael, an economist who studies water issues at the University of the Pacific in California. Residents and urban districts are typically responsible for about 20 percent of the state's water usage; the rest is used for agriculture, which is not included in the state's latest water-saving figures.
But Michael said Californians' willingness to nudge one another could change the collective mindset toward water.
In Michael's own household, outside Sacramento, the water cop duties are divided. He handles the lawn, while his wife oversees the showers. But Michael said the different roles betrayed a subtext in water policing: People use the drought to press their own agendas.
For instance, he likes cutting back on watering partly because he hates lawn care. And he thinks his wife is tough on shower time because she would really like family members to be more efficient in all things. "She wants people to get ready faster," he said, adding, "You can use the drought to sort of hasten or further our alternative goals."
Some Californians police colleagues at work to, say, toss a half-drunk cup of water on a plant and not down the drain. Some residents hear it from their children; Robin Wolaner, an executive at a nonprofit in San Francisco, got an earful from her teenage daughter because she was shaving her legs in the shower with the water running. Shaving without running water? "Uncivilized," Wolaner said in an interview. But she found little support from friends on Facebook, so she now shaves with the taps off.
Others are weighing how appropriate it is to nag a neighbor. For instance, Nick Desai, the chief executive of a health care startup and a resident of Pacific Palisades, said he had been thinking of a proper way to tell his new neighbors that they should revisit their sprinkler strategy.
"I think I'll wait another two weeks and I'll knock on the door and say, 'At night I can see the sprinklers from our bedroom, and they're mostly watering the patio,'" he said.
Many people report that policing pits generations against each other. Parents, especially, say they can have trouble getting through to smaller children who think of water as just plain fun. And how exactly to counter years of programming that children need to bathe every night? "The pendulum has swung from filthy boys needing a bath twice a day to, 'Does he really need a bath?'" said Dave Donohue, a San Franciscan who has reduced bathing for his son Milo, 2, and also concedes chiding his wife and his colleagues if they toss a glass of drinking water into the sink.
The habit has caught on elsewhere. Tara Lindis, a writer in Brooklyn, said she had used California's dry spell as a teaching moment for her children. For example, when they were having a water fight in the backyard this summer, she said she told them, "Don't dump that bucket! Kids in California can't have water balloon fights like you! They don't get baths!" What goes around comes around. The other day, her son, who is almost 7, admonished her: "That was a long shower." Sometimes you just can't win with the water cops. Gilbert, the ad agency consultant in South San Francisco, was told by another friend (not the one who declined to flush at his party) that he needed to replace the old toilet in his house because it used too much water.
Eventually, after being hectored for a few months, he relented and replaced the toilet. Unfortunately, the new low-flow toilet, which was white, no longer matched the old green sink and tub. So Gilbert replaced the sink, and enameled the tub himself, spending $2,500 for the new fixtures and plumbing, plus his own enameling time.
The next time the friend came over, Gilbert showed off his efforts. "I said, 'Are you happy I replaced the toilet?' and he said, 'Well, at this point, I'm not sure we have to worry so much, we're going to have El Niño.'"