Jay Famiglietti, a senior water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, made a dire warning last month — there is only one year’s worth of water left in the state’s reservoir storage and river basins. Not only that, Famiglietti said, but even nature’s oldest water backup supply — groundwater — could be gone soon after the reservoirs dry up.

Some 38.8 million people live in California — or about one of every eight people in the US. California also produces many of the food products that make it to people’s tables across the country and the world. So people are rightfully fearful.

The California drought is throwing the ecology of the state and the region into crisis, and ordinary people are scrambling for ways to help. Many restaurants have stopped serving table water unless requested by customers. People have stopped flushing toilets willy-nilly, are taking shorter showers, and aren’t washing their vehicles as often.