A household water budget turns a plea to save water into a number a home can break. In the third year of a drought, Californians were asked to keep indoor use to 55 gallons, about 208 litres, per person per day. One utility in the Santa Monica Mountains went further, setting each home an allowance and fitting a flow restrictor when repeat offenders ignored it.

For scale, the BBC noted that filling a bathtub takes about 30 gallons.

What happens when a home goes over

The Las Virgenes Water District, which serves Calabasas and Hidden Hills in the Santa Monica Mountains, put more than 2,000 customers on a list of water offenders in one summer. Each had used more than 150% of their allocated budget. The list included Kevin Hart, Sylvester Stallone and Kim and Kourtney Kardashian.

The penalty is mechanical. After five ignored warnings, the district’s Derek Krauss fits a small metal disc with a pinhole in it to the home’s main water pipe. Taps still run and machines still wash, but not at the same time.

Hart had the restrictor fitted for two weeks, the district said. The Kardashians avoided it by pledging to cut back and remove some of their grass. By then the district had fitted restrictors in 70 homes. It can also fine customers, but Krauss told the BBC that his main job is teaching people how to use less.

Why gardens are the target

Lawns decide most of it. Outdoor irrigation accounts for 70% of water use in Las Virgenes, and residents were allowed to water once a week. Average use there fell from 227 gallons per person per day in 2020 to 154 gallons in July of the drought year. One customer still used 800,000 gallons in a single month, according to Krauss.

What came before budgets

Earlier droughts showed why a number matters. In 2014 Governor Jerry Brown declared a drought emergency and asked Californians to cut use voluntarily by 20%. Most towns kept the cuts voluntary.

Enforcing more was hard because many homes had no meter. The San Jose Mercury News found about 225,000 homes and businesses that paid a flat rate, and those communities used 39% more water per head than the state average. About half the homes in Sacramento had no meter, which left the city no way to cap use or penalise anyone.

A few places set rations anyway. Cloverdale, a town of about 10,000, ordered a mandatory 25% cut after state officials warned it could run dry in 100 days. Patrols searched for sprinklers and people filling pools. St Helena threatened fines of up to $1,000 for repeatedly exceeding a ration of 65 gallons a day.

Rations bite unevenly. In Lompico Canyon, where homes sit among redwoods and have no lawns, water board head Lois Henry asked how residents who already use little could cut another 30%. Cloverdale’s city manager, Paul Cayler, put the same problem another way: the people saving water were already saving it.