Green and Dry : Residents have adapted to drought conditions by making changes, some of which are permanent. Now we have to keep it up.

Drought news: This week, Ventura County supervisors received a solemn note from our resource management agency that concluded: “Although many water purveyors have provided some relief to customers from the mandatory water cutbacks, this should not be taken as a sign that water supplies will be adequate.”

This reminded me of an old European practice of shouting “Long live the king!” on the occasion of royal funerals. It seems they did this because they knew from experience that there was another king in the wings. And since there was no way to get rid of him, they decided to make it easy on themselves.

In other words, the drought is here to stay under one name or another. And our choices are to emigrate or adapt.

In our county, we seem to have adapted pretty well. We have a good record of customer restraint when told that it’s necessary to cut back water use. We have shrewd programs in place, such as the Freeman Diversion, so we don’t let rainwater just run off into the sea, and our use of reclaimed water is expanding. Districts in western and northern Ventura County are contemplating pipelines from Castaic Lake to Ventura.

But our big strength hereabouts is our tendency to accept individual responsibility for water use. The city of Ventura, for instance, has achieved 30% water savings during the drought. Some of these savings are permanent because they were achieved by putting in low-flush toilets and low-flow shower heads, fixing leaky plumbing and installing water-efficient appliances. Contractors have been required to put low-flush toilets in new buildings since the beginning of the year.

Because our savings effort and even the recent rains are not enough to change the climate of Southern California, further water savings must be pursued.

For instance, our biggest water savings didn’t come from shorter showers but from shorter lawn soakings. Outdoor use of water constitutes more than half of what towns and cities use, according to Nancy Settle of the county’s department of water conservation.

Which doesn’t mean that we are advocating ripping out lawns and chopping down trees to be good citizens. Letting your lawn die isn’t water-wise either.

“A brown lawn is an environmental mistake,” said Ron Nichols, chairman of the Ventura County chapter of the California Landscape Contractors Assn. It may be in his interest to keep us from switching to shiny white rocks or redwood chips for a front yard. But environmentally, it makes sense to have trees and grasses surrounding us--eating up carbon dioxide and giving off oxygen. As long as they are low water-use plants, which Nichols and his group advocate.

Statistics show that every five years or so, many people go for some sort of outdoor planting change. Sometimes gradually, sometimes on a whim. Fred Gienke, spokesman for United Water District, one of the county’s major purveyors, suggests that as part of this process, you switch to drought-tolerant plantings of a sort that don’t look much different from those you had before.

Ironically, this season’s heavy rains made this an ideal time for drought-tolerant planting. Water-conserving plants need a lot of water in the season of their initial planting--until they become established.

As you can see, I’ve been hanging out with people who preach water “dieting” rather than abstinence. The trick is to strike a balance between our old habits and the new reality that the county’s population is outgrowing our finite water supplies.

Maintaining Michigan lawns in Moorpark makes it necessary to pipe water in, perpetuates our dependence on outside suppliers, and leaves us at the mercy of their ideas about how much to charge and when to raise prices. This July, by the way, the Metropolitan Water District, which pumps into the southeast county, will increase its prices by about 50%.

Just back from a meeting last week of conservation experts convened by the state Department of Water Resources, Ojai water consultant Connor Everts told me that the coming pinch has prompted more people than ever to become water conservation officials.

“I thought with the end of the drought that attendance would be down. It’s up from 50 to over 200. They can see that the last two years are only a taste of the next 10, and they’re getting ready.”

Lynda M. Pinizzotto, another Ojai-based water consultant, with clients as big as the MWD and as small as individual homeowners, told me: “Even though the local rainfall was 150% of normal recently, it will take six years at that rate to get back to pre-drought conditions. And that’s unlikely.”

This week’s water policy report to the county supervisors says conservation is a way “to prevent a negative impact on business, industry and maintenance of a healthy economy.”

So it seems that the thing to add after shouting “The drought is dead!” is “Long live conservation.”

* FYI

* For the latest information on how water consumers should deal with our apparently permanent water shortage, call the Ventura County Water Program at 654-2440. For professional advice on domestic and commercial water economy, call Lynda M. Pinizzotto at 640-8701.

* For recommendations on low water-use landscape services, call Ron Nichols, chairman of the Ventura County Landscape Contractors Assn., at 482-4398.