California drought: Dozens of communities are at risk of running out of water

 In Fort Bragg on the Mendocino Coast, city leaders are rushing to install an emergency desalination system. In Healdsburg, lawn watering is banned with fines of up to $1,000. In Hornbrook, a small town in Siskiyou County, faucets have gone completely dry, and the chairman of the water district is driving 15 miles each way to take showers and wash clothes.

So far, California’s worsening drought has been an inconvenience in big cities. But it is already imperiling an alarming number of communities, especially between the Bay Area and the Oregon border, threatening the water supplies for more than 130,000 people.

The severe shortages are not just in small towns and rural hamlets that rely on one or two wells or streams that have run dry. Larger towns, with their own reservoirs and water departments, are in trouble too.

As the state struggles with its worst drought since at least 1977, no one has a complete list of which of the state’s 7,500 public water systems are facing the most severe shortages.

But in May, officials at the State Water Resources Control Board in Sacramento set out to create one. They called it: “Public water systems likely to have critical water supply issues by the end of August.” It currently includes 81 water systems that serve 132,559 people — from tiny Mammoth Pool Mobile Home Park in the Sierra foothills near Yosemite National Park, to well-known Northern California towns like Ukiah, Lakeport, Bolinas, Healdsburg, Cloverdale and Fort Bragg...MORE