The government might tell you to take a shorter shower. Here's why

Americans across the nation are being asked (or ordered) to conserve water, thanks to widespread drought made even worse by a punishing heat wave.

It's being felt this summer in Virginia, the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, Colorado, New Jersey and more.

Take shorter showers. Turn the water off while you brush your teeth. Don't wash your car at home or water your lawn. These are some of the asks of residents in communities around the country. Some asks are voluntary, while other areas have outright banned water wasting with threats of fines.

Meanwhile, agriculture uses far more water than households in the United States.

So does your shorter shower or unwatered lawn actually make a difference?

Yes, but it's complicated, said Shimon Anisfeld, a water conservation expert at Yale School of the Environment and the author of "Water Management: Prioritizing Justice and Sustainability."

Household water comes from a limited supply, often unrelated and closed off from a vast agricultural water supply. Though that setup varies by region, local governments often do actually need people's help to protect their limited residential water supply.

The bottom line, Anisfeld said: For a shorter shower to make a difference, everyone needs to get on board.

"It's just like voting. Any one vote doesn't matter, but collectively, voting matters," he said. "If you live in a city of 1 million people, your 15% cut (in water use) isn't going to save the city, but if everybody does it, or half the people do it, then you really have an effect."

Cities plead with residents to conserve water amid severe drought

As of July 2, the U.S. Drought Monitor recorded that nearly half of the continental United States (48%) is in at least a moderate stage of drought, and more than 30% is classified as at least severe drought. Regions stricken with the worst drought conditions include the West, where wildfires have been raging, parts of the High Plains, the Southeast and the Mid-Atlantic regions.

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger is urging all state residents, and especially those in Southside and Central Virginia, to conserve water as the drought creates "challenges for communities and farmers" across the state. The suggested measures include reducing lawn and garden watering schedules to alternating days and watering only between dusk and dawn. Also recommended: turning off ornamental fountains, cutting back on washing vehicles and paved surfaces, and limiting filling swimming pools.

On July 1, the city of Richmond, Virginia's capital, along with Chesterfield, Goochland, Hanover, Henrico and Powhatan counties, announced voluntary water restrictions, saying such measures are implemented when average water flows drop to 1,700 cubic feet per second for 14 consecutive days. Those measures also focus on outdoor watering.

Nelson County, Virginia, residents are asked to do the following on a voluntary basis:

• Turn off faucets while brushing teeth, washing hands and shaving.
• Water lawns only when necessary and before 10 a.m. to reduce evaporation.
• Take shorter showers and baths.
• Use a commercial car wash instead of washing cars at home.
• Wash only full loads of laundry and dishes.
• Fix leaky pipes and running toilets.
• Reuse water for watering plants or cleaning instead.

In Cañon City, Colorado, authorities are aiming for a 20% to 30% reduction in water use while asking residents to voluntarily conserve outdoor water consumption.

In some places, including some New Jersey communities and in the Carolinas, restrictions are no longer voluntary.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, there have been 748 violations of the Stage One water restrictions as of June 29, Raleigh Water Assistant Director Edward Buchan told USA TODAY in an email. Violators get warning letters before fines are given, and ultimately, water may be disconnected. One $50 civil penalty and one $200 civil penalty have been issued, he said.

Residents also are requested to limit their consumption to 65 gallons per person per day.

Stage One measures in Raleigh mainly focus on outdoor irrigation, he said. But during all stages, the following are also mandatory:

• Irrigation systems and water customers must "operate in a manner to prevent water waste and the application onto impervious surfaces, such as streets; sidewalks; parking lots and driveways."
• Restaurants can serve drinking water only upon request.
• Hotels can change linens only when guests request it.

Do all these water restrictions really help?

When a city, county or local water utility company asks its residents to start conserving water because of drought conditions, it usually means there is an increased strain on that municipality's water supply, Anisfeld said.

On a local scale, water consumption is broken up into three categories: household use, industrial or commercial use (restaurants, hospitals, factories and the like) and non-revenue water (which accounts for firefighting water and things like leaks in the system), Anisfeld said. In most cities, household use is the biggest of the three.

Shorter showers 'more important' in 2026

In some regions of the country, a lot of that household use is made up of outdoor use, like for watering lawns and filling pools. In wetter climates where residents don't have to water their lawns, indoor use, such as for showers, is more impactful.

When water restrictions are in place, the mandatory ones tend to be focused on outdoor use, but cities and counties still urge residents to voluntarily conserve where they can indoors.

"Showers can actually be the biggest single water use in the house," Anisfeld said, noting newer appliances like dishwashers and washing machines use less water than they once did. "Showers have become actually relatively more important as everything else has gotten more efficient."

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average shower time in the United States is about eight minutes and uses about 16 gallons of water. More than 1 trillion gallons of water are used every day in the country on showering alone. If every person reduced their shower time by one minute, the nation would save 170 billion gallons of water each year, the EPA said.

What about big water users like agriculture?

In many parts of the country, municipalities are allocated a set amount of water that goes to homes, businesses and public works within their jurisdictions. That water supply is not the same water supply that goes toward agriculture, which accounts for a huge portion of the water used in the country, Anisfeld said.

Though it might seem counterintuitive that reduced showers, limited residential lawn-watering and washing laundry only with full loads could make an impact when these uses don't come close to the amount used in agriculture, Anisfeld said, the water supply for municipal use is different from the supply for agriculture, and they can't really be interchanged.

"It's different water," he said.

For one thing, city water is treated so it can be safely consumed, while agricultural water isn't. Also, how much water municipalities get to use is governed by states' various water rights, or laws on how they decide to allocate water. Depending on where you live, reallocating water from agricultural to municipal use in a water shortage would be difficult – if not impossible – both legally and physically, he said. In some parts of the country, entire new pipe systems would need to be built.

"Generally speaking, a city has a limited water supply. At the scale of the city struggling to provide water during drought, then households are critical," Anisfeld said. "At the scale of the state of California, say, households are really important, but there's where (agriculture) has got to be part of the solution."

Another water use controversy comes from data centers increasingly used to fuel artificial intelligence, which use huge amounts of water and can drive up utility rates for nearby residents. Large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons of water a day, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. That's as much as a small town.

An analysis published by the Guardian found that the majority of hundreds of planned AI data centers are expected to be built in areas undergoing drought. And often, data centers are pulling from municipal water supplies, Anisfeld said.

Though data centers use a small fraction of the overall U.S. water supply, Anisfeld said, "at the local scale, if you've got a large data center and you have a drought, you may get those messages that really piss people off, because they understand they're being asked to sacrifice for something they didn't ask for necessarily."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The government might tell you to take a shorter shower. Here's why

Reporting by Jeanine Santucci, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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Copyright Reuters or USA Today Network via Reuters Connect

This story was originally published July 5, 2026 at 3:02 AM.