Catalina's debilitating water shortage is a bad omen for California

I’m like a two-minute shower,” Boyd says. “My daughter, on the other hand, is about a 10-minute shower. ... That’s a long shower. Are you kidding?”

It’s an effort to meet some of the most stringent water restrictions in the country.

“All customers have to conserve 50 percent of the water they were using pre-rationing,” says Ron Hite, who manages Catalina’s water district, where the island’s main reservoir is critically low. Even though a second desalination

plant is now up and running, it’s still not enough.

So contractors use bottled water to mix concrete, landscapers ship in water to irrigate what’s not already astro-turf, and some hotels ship out their laundry to the mainland.