This is actually a really funny post for me, because way back in September, I wrote about a very similar topic for my first passion blog. It was about the struggles Californians were facing while going through a drought, and a creative solution for Californians to keep their lawns looking green. Since they were saving as much water as possible, a company was going around town spray painting resident’s lawns green to keep them looking as lush as ever. It seems that not much has changed since September.
https://sites.psu.edu/clb5923/2014/09/03/could-silicon-valley-use-some-help-from-happy-valley/

In fact, the drought has gotten significantly worse. It has gotten so bad that Governor Brown of California declared this drought a state of emergency in January. This YouTube video shows Governor Brown declaring the state of emergency, as well as pleading with all Californians to come together and help support each other by restricting their water use.

As many people know, California is not the best place for water. There are almost no freshwater sources in the state and as such, they are forced to irrigate their water from the Hoover Dam. This is normally not a problem for California, they have been doing this since the dam was built. However, record breaking droughts over the past five years have made the water shortage astronomical.

With this water shortage, there are all kinds of cutbacks being made on water usage. In fact, there are so many restrictions that the state of California had to create an entire section on their website to cover all of the different rules and regulations for water use (). This plan outlines what the government will be doing to help alleviate the water crisis, and only posted this to make their actions more transparent and to show that they are taking steps to solve the problem. Other than this outline, the government also strongly encourages individual households to help conserve water, and boy, did they get creative.

One of the most creative solutions, and my favorite by far, is rock skiing. The entire concept of rock skiing stemmed from sights like this:

Since water conservation is crucial, one of the first areas to receive cuts were ski resorts. Obviously, freezing huge amounts of water into snow for ski resorts is extremely wasteful so they stopped using it and ski resorts in California haven’t been the same since. Skiing and snowboarding enthusiasts were not going to let this stop them, so they came up with rock skiing. It’s exactly what you would imagine.

This video is more of an advocacy project than a highlight reel, as the final words of the video say “No snow. No water. #Climatechangeisreal”. It shows that even though there are still people out there that say climate change is a hoax, there are people out there living through the proof. But these people do not let the state of emergency stop them from doing what they love, and Californians will always be able to find ways to adapt and survive. I absolutely support all of them in their struggles, and you should too. Check out ca.gov/drought for ways to help the state of California.