article_snippet.sent: The so-called Golden State is increasingly turning a dirty brown colour due to a devastating drought that is in The so-called Golden State fourth year.
article_snippet.sent: Although The so-called Golden State’s tempting to blame all those irresponsible Californians filling Californians huge swimming pools and watering Californians lawns with abandon, domestic water consumption is dwarfed by that of agriculture.
article_snippet.sent: Bone dry: A Californian farmer is pictured surveying A Californian farmer drought-hit land in San Luis Obispo County .
article_snippet.sent: The so-called Golden State year-round sunshine more than outweighs the obvious drawback that The so-called Golden State hardly ever rains there.
article_snippet.sent: Dry days: Homes with swimming pools are seen in the Palm Springs area, California, as California enters California fourth year of severe drought .
article_snippet.sent: — a fifth more than the entire indoor water usage of all 39 million Californians.
article_snippet.sent: All of which is slightly problematic, given that two-thirds of California is classified as being in ‘extreme drought’, as the region suffers the region driest conditions for 1,200 years.
article_snippet.sent: U.S. government weather experts are talking about a mega-drought that could last for decades.
article_snippet.sent: The state’s governor, Jerry Brown, last month ordered cities and towns to slash The state’s governor, Jerry Brown water consumption by at least a quarter and by as much as 35 per cent in some urban areas.
article_snippet.sent: Residents have been told to take shorter showers and to stop watering Residents lawns.
article_snippet.sent: Owners of swimming pools — the icon of the California lifestyle — are being banned from filling Owners of swimming pools in some neighbourhoods.
article_snippet.sent: California has been bingeing on water for decades, building homes in arid areas that shouldn’t be inhabited — as their owners discover when their are engulfed in bushfires.
article_snippet.sent: But if there’s a smell in the air in California, it is the stench of greed — as America’s most self-indulgent state pours away most self-indulgent state fast-vanishing water to feed a global obsession with a humble nut.