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Gov. Gavin Newsom warned major water agencies Monday to show better water conservation results or face mandatory statewide water restrictions as California heads into its third summer of severe drought.

The threat is a sign of Newsom’s growing impatience with the state’s lagging conservation efforts, and came as he convened a meeting in Sacramento of the state’s largest water agencies, and told their leaders that not enough is being done to reduce urban water use.

Calling recent increases in water use a “black eye,” according to one source in attendance, Newsom said the state will closely monitor water use over the next 60 days.

Newsom also told water agencies to submit water use data more frequently to the state and to step up outreach and education efforts to communicate the urgency of the crisis to the public.

“He was very stern, very deliberate,” said Rick Callender, chief executive of the Santa Clara Valley Water District. “He wants to see more results. It was a come-to-Jesus moment.”

Callender said that most water agency leaders were receptive.

“For the most part everyone is getting there,” he said. “Everyone is going there. They want to find ways for additional conservation. We have to.”

Last July, Newsom declared a drought emergency and asked Californians to cut urban water use 15% compared to 2020 levels. But in March, the most recent month for which data is available, residents instead cranked up the taps, increasing urban water use a staggering 18.9% statewide compared to March 2020, following the driest January, February and March in the state’s recorded history.

Overall, Newsom’s calls for water conservation have been largely ignored, though not in Marin County.

Marin’s two largest municipal water suppliers have on average exceeded Newsom’s conservation target since July.

The Marin Municipal Water District, which serves 191,000 residents in central and southern Marin, has cut back water use by an average of 24% per month compared to 2020, according to district communications manager Adriane Mertens.

Last year, the district faced the possibility of depleting its main reservoir supplies by mid-2022 following two dry winters. The district was preparing to build a $100 million emergency pipeline across the Richmond Bridge to pump in Sacramento Valley water before heavy downpours in the last three months of the year averted the crisis.

The North Marin Water District reported the 60,000 Novato residents it serves had cut back by an average of 21% per month since July, according to Tony Williams, the district general manager. The district has been mandating a collective 20% water use reduction in Novato since early 2021.

Cumulatively, from July through March, residents, businesses and government agencies reduced urban water use statewide by just 3.7% compared to the same time period in 2020, according to the State Water Resources Control Board, with lower rates of conservation in Southern California than Northern California.

“Every water agency across the state needs to take more aggressive actions to communicate about the drought emergency and implement conservation measures,” Newsom said. “Californians made significant changes since the last drought but we have seen an uptick in water use, especially as we enter the summer months. We all have to be more thoughtful about how to make every drop count.”

Currently, 95% of the state is in a severe drought, and 59% is in an extreme drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a weekly report issued by the federal government and the University of Nebraska.

Amid other crises like the COVID pandemic, wildfires, inflation and Russia’s attack on Ukraine, Newsom has struggled to get the public to make the drought a top-tier concern.

For the past nine months, he has allowed local water agencies largely set their own conservation targets. Some have set vigorous targets with enforcement. Many have not. Conservation costs them millions in lost water sales.

Former Gov. Jerry Brown tried a similar voluntary approach at first during California’s last drought from 2012 to 2016.

When it failed to produce significant water savings, Brown issued mandatory statewide water restrictions, with different targets based on per-capita use. San Francisco, which has thousands of apartments without yards, uses less water per capita than Sacramento or Palm Springs, so was given more moderate savings target than those areas.

At the time, the state required the Marin Municipal Water District to cut back by 20% and the North Marin Water District to conserve by 24%.

Under Brown’s plan, cities and water districts that did not hit their goal were issued fines. Statewide water use fell 24.5%.

But it led to complaints from some agencies, particularly in Southern California, who asked Newsom to leave drought rules to local control.

Most of the state’s major reservoirs are at low or record-low levels for this time of year. On Monday, Shasta Lake, the state’s largest, near Redding, was just 40% full. No significant rain or snow is expected until October or November, if then.

Newsom supported plans by Poseidon, a private company, to build a $1.4 billion desalination plant in Orange County. But two weeks ago, the California Coastal Commission — including all four of the governor’s appointees — voted unanimously to deny it a permit, saying it would increase water rates for low-income people and could harm microscopic ocean life.

Newsom also supports plans to build new off-stream reservoirs, such as the proposed $4 billion Sites Reservoir in Colusa County. But in his revised May budget, he did not devote any of the state’s surplus this year to funding them.

There is no guarantee next winter will end the drought. California has been in a drought in seven of the past 10 years, exacerbated by climate change which increases temperatures and wildfire risk.

Although agriculture accounts for 80% of the water that people use in California, many urban systems rely on their own local reservoirs and local groundwater supplies for some or all of their water. On Monday, the 10 reservoirs operated by the Santa Clara Valley Water District, which serves 2 million people in Santa Clara County, for example, were just 23% full.

In recent weeks, some major water agencies have begun to take more steps. Earlier this month, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power announced it will allow customers to water lawns just twice a week — and for 8 minutes. The East Bay Municipal Utility District put in place three-day-a-week watering rules, along with an 8% water surcharge, and policies that by this summer will result in the names of its biggest water users being made public.

The Santa Clara Valley Water District will vote Tuesday on a plan to hire “water cops” to write tickets of up to $500 for people who are wasting water.

Meanwhile, in another signal of the worsening drought playing out across California and the West, the state water board is set to vote Tuesday to ban all watering of lawns at office parks and industrial sites with potable water with fines up to $500 for offenders.

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