Santa Cruz out of the drought, but residents still encouraged to conserve water

Heavy rain brought damage to parts of the Central Coast, but it has also helped much of Santa Cruz beat the drought.

What started as a dry year has turned into what looks like a tropical paradise with green grass and colorful plants.

“I am excited we are out of the drought and I’m also excited it is a sunny day after our rain,” said longtime Santa Cruz resident Morgan Chiverton.

Morgan Chiverton has lived through droughts and rain years. She says it is nice when water restrictions are loosened up.

The City of Santa Cruz Water Department said their reservoir is full and that’s not surprise.

“We have enough water in our system now, as we would normally have at around the end of March,” said Water Conservation Manager, Toby Goddard with the Santa Cruz Water Department.

So far across California, we have seen around 18 trillion gallons of water fall from the sky just in the month of February. That is around 27 million Olympic sized pools or just under 50 percent of the volume of Lake Tahoe.

It is also a big turnaround from the drought of 2014 into 2016 when Santa Cruz residents had to find interesting ways to conserve water.

“You know, make sure I take two pees before I flush,” said resident Dave Mitchell.

Even now though residents such as Dave Mitchell and Morgan Chiverton are trying to conserve as much water as they can.

“Thinking ahead, sometime in April we are going to dry up and then we dry up from then until about next October. It needs to carry us all the way until next year and no one can predict what kind of weather we are going to have next year,” said Goddard.

The county still tries to keep the water limit to around 45 gallons per person, per household. To help you track of that, every flush is about 1.2 gallons of water and every minute in the shower equals to almost two gallons of water.