Severe water restrictions have begun in Southern California, as the Metropolitan Water District has announced that residents of certain areas will be limited to watering outdoor plants just once a week, as the state suffers a third year of severe drought.

The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday:

Southern California officials on Tuesday took the unprecedented step of declaring a water shortage emergency and ordering outdoor usage be restricted to just one day a week for about 6 million people in parts of Los Angeles, Ventura and San Bernardino counties.

The outdoor watering restrictions will take effect June 1 under the decision by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and will apply to areas that depend on water from the drought-ravaged State Water Project.

Much of Southern California depends on the State Water Project, which carries water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in Northern California to the farms of the Central Valley and the metropolitan water districts of the southern regions.

Water deliveries have been restricted to farms using the State Water Project, and residential restrictions are a next step.

The Times added: “Some of the larger communities that fall under the new rule include: Thousand Oaks, Calabasas, Van Nuys, Woodland Hills, Hollywood, West Covina, El Monte, Monrovia, Claremont and Fontana.” More restrictions are expected.

Some areas of Southern California have begun looking for alternatives, such as desalination, which already supplies San Diego County with 10% of its water. However, environmentalists and some policymakers have opposed more desalination, arguing that it has a negative environmental impact, especially through the use of fossil fuel energy to power the process.

The Democrat-run state has not built new water infrastructure since the last severe drought, which ended in 2017.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.