California is not known for its rainy season. Now entering a fourth year of drought, the state will need three seasons of above-average rainfall to exit the dangerously dry zone.

 A bit about the drought

Jay Famiglietti, senior water-cycle scientist of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, told the Los Angeles Times last month that California needs 11 trillion gallons of water in storage to get back to a “manageable situation.”

He said the state receives an average of 22 inches of rain annually. While that translates into an estimated 60 trillion gallons, two-thirds is lost to evaporation and runoff and what’s left behind is used for irrigation and municipal and industrial use.

The State Water Resources Control Board released figures, Jan. 6, showing California residents used 9.8 percent less water in November 2014 than the same month in 2013. While that is an improvement over October, when the year-over year use was down only 6.8 percent, it is still short of the 20 percent reduction goal that Governor Jerry Brown set in January 2014.

The San Francisco Gate reported that Southern California has conserved the least, compared to the rest of the state. Residents in Los Angeles and San Diego areas are using only 3.2 percent less water when compared with the prior year.

You, yes you, can conserve water.

Here are some tips for conserving water (from wateruseitwisely.com):

• Designate one glass for your drinking water each day, or refill a water bottle. This will cut down on the number of glasses to wash.
• Keep a pitcher of drinking water in the refrigerator instead of running the tap. This way, every drop goes down you and not the drain.
• If you accidentally drop ice cubes, don’t throw them in the sink. Drop them in a house plant instead.
• Turn off the water while you brush your teeth and save up to 4 gallons a minute.
• Run your washer and dishwasher only when they are full. You can save up to 1,000 gallons a month.
• At home or while staying in a hotel, reuse your towels.
• When running a bath, plug the bathtub before turning on the water. Adjust the temperature as the tub fills.

Your yard is a conservation goldmine

While those suggestions work great for the inside of your home, there is plenty you can do to the outside of your home to make it more environmentally friendly.

The first thing you need to do is make sure none of the pipes in your outside drainage system are leaking. You can tell if you have a leak if you see water pooling anywhere in your yard. If that is the case, you need to call a drainage expert, like those at Weinstein Construction, to come out and check your pipes. If the pipes are leaking or otherwise in disrepair, an expert can help you to come up with an affordable fix.

If your drainage is all up to snuff and you’re still looking for ways to conserve water with your yard, you should consider installing a Flo-Well Storm Water Leaching System. With the Flo-Well, water is discharged into the subsoil rapidly and easily, recycling the storm water (or other excess water) for irrigation. Not only is it small, easy to install, clean to use and affordable, but it effectively restricts fresh runoff water from going into the ocean, retaining the water below ground instead.

The Flo-Well system is easy for an expert to install in one to two days. A hole is dug in your yard for the Flo-Well system to be placed and it is connected to the drainage system in your yard. It is ultimately covered at an 8” minimum depth and matches the original landscaping so you can conserve water without sacrificing the beauty of your landscape.

The water collected in the Flo-Well system is stored in an underground single or multilayer chamber and can be used to water your lawn and shrubbery. After the chamber fills, the remaining water raises the below groundwater table index.

Conserving water isn’t so hard

Calling an expert, like those at Weinstein Construction, can help you to plan how to conserve water in your yard. Conserving water inside your home is easy to do and now conserving water in your yard is easy too.

California’s drought isn’t going away any time soon and it is up to each Californian to do their part.