Am I wasting water?

California is in the grip of a three year-long drought, a drought that shows no sign of ending soon. In response, water districts across the state are urging their customers to take sensible measures to conserve water.

To convince people to conserve water, agencies like the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power are using both carrots and sticks. The carrots include public education campaigns and offering items like low-flow shower heads to its customers for free. The sticks include restrictions on what days people can water their yards and beefed up water waste enforcement units that will be increasingly ready to issue hefty fines when water waste is spotted.

But despite those measures and all the drought and water conservation news, it can be difficult to wrap our heads around just how much water all of us use in our daily lives and how best to go about reducing our individual water consumption.

I decided to get personal with the issue by inviting the DWP’s top water conservation enforcement official to my own home to conduct a kind of residential water use physical.

You can also get more information about water education campaigns and ways to save water at Save Our H2O.

Here are some of the tips I learned:

• Water your garden in the morning and late afternoon hours instead of midday

• Spend five minutes or less in the shower

• Find home leaks and fix them

• Don’t wash your car in the driveway.

Listen to the story of my visit with a DWP water official below: