With the snow pack at 85 percent and reservoirs sitting at 75 percent, the story is not all that grim, but even with recent rainfall, we're likely to see mandatory water rationing this summer. This bad news is due mainly to reduced allocation from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the Colorado River aqueducts.

Residential watering of lawns and shrubs consumes approximately 10 percent of all water used in the state. Therefore the most significant water reduction by homeowners will come through repairing exisitng residential systems, installing weather-based controllers and replacing lawns and shrubs with drought-tolerant vegetation.

Water has an accompanying bad taste. The bitterness comes from the energy needed to acquire, store, treat and distribute this precious commodity. Nineteen percent of all electrical energy used in the state is for powering these water-related tasks.

Save water, save energy and reduce the impact on our environment.

There are many brochures and websites to help the homeowner but I would like to suggest that our water companies do more.

These companies have limited resources, so how do we get the best leverage for our conservation dollars? Why not start with the gated communities which have from several hundred to several thousand homes?

Our water companies, working with homeowner associations and their landscape companies, could offer a free consult and irrigation audit for each home development.

The resulting water and cost savings will provide the incentive to kick-start the program and make water conservation a longterm earth-friendly annuity. Steve Forman Newbury Park