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BACKGROUND In January 2014, the governor declared a State of Emergency due to the California drought, as did the Alameda County Flood Control and Water Conservation District Zone 7. In February, the City Council activated Stage 1 of the City's Water Shortage Contingency Plan and requested that customers voluntarily reduce water usage by 20%. Unfortunately, those conservation levels were not achieved. In April, the governor issued an executive order asking Californian's to reduce water usage by 20%, and Zone 7 also asked all water retailers, including Pleasanton, to reduce water usage by 25%. In May, the City Council declared the City's water shortage situation warranted Stage 3 mandatory 25% water reduction, and proclaimed a Local Drought Emergency. In late July the City reached the 25% overall reduction for calendar year 2014 as compared to 2013. The challenge will now be to keep reductions low enough to attain the goal through the end of this year. DISCUSSION Attached for City Council information is a chart summarizing a comparison between 2013 and 2014 water usage. As indicated, the City realized a 27% water reduction in May, a 34% reduction in June, and a 36% reduction in July and as such, year to date we have achieved a 25.1% reduction. While the community should be commended for its efforts in meeting the 25% reduction target, the remaining five months of this year will be equally challenging if we are to reach this target for the entire year. Most notably, November and December may prove to be the most difficult remaining months because of limited opportunities to obtain saving through reduced outdoor irrigation. Nonetheless, staff remains confident that the community will continue to be engaged in meeting the reduction targets. Moving forward this year, there are still indications that the State will release a 5% allocation of available water on September 1, 2014 which would provide some temporary relief. Looking forward to 2015, the State has finalized its mandatory requirements for all California water agencies, which includes provisions to prohibit water waste through at least April of 2015. This means we will still have some sort of mandatory drought program through that time and potentially through all of 2015 depending on precipitation through the winter months. We will return to Council as things develop and make recommendations to our program as needed. In an effort to continue our overall community awareness efforts, we will continue to keep the drought center open and assist residents and businesses in conservation efforts. In addition, listed below are a few highlights regarding programs and usage: Page 2 of 3