Dry California tourist town to guests: 'Please conserve'

Tourists flock to the coastal town of Mendocino, California, for its Victorian homes and cliff trails

MENDOCINO, Calif. -- Tourists flock by the thousands to the coastal town of Mendocino for its Victorian homes and cliff trails, but visitors this summer are also finding public portable toilets and signs on picket fences pleading: “Severe Drought. Please conserve water." Hotels have closed their lobby bathrooms and residents have stopped watering their gardens in the foggy outpost about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of San Francisco after two years of little rain sapped many of the wells Mendocino depends on for potable water. Mendocino's water woes were compounded in recent weeks when the city of Fort Bragg a few miles to the north — its main backup water supplier — informed officials that it, too, had a significant drop in its drinking water reserves after the Noyo River recorded its lowest flows in decades. “This is a real emergency,” said Ryan Rhoades, superintendent of the Mendocino City Community Services District, which helps manage the water in the town’s aquifer.