Washington: Governor of the US State of California Jerry Brown has declared an end to the state's water emergency following a five-year drought that reduced rivers to trickles, farmland to dust and forests to graveyards of dead trees.
Four of the driest years in state history marked the period, which cost California's economy billions of dollars.
Brown issued an executive order that lifts the drought emergency in all but a handful of San Joaquin Valley counties where some communities are still coping with dried-up wells.
He also made it clear that the need for conservation is not going away.
"This drought emergency is over, but the next drought could be around the corner," Brown said in a statement. "Conservation must remain a way of life".
The official end to the drought that has parched much of the US's most populous state for five years means an end to emergency water restrictions for much of the state. Brown lifted a 2014 state of emergency for all but four counties.
But the state will maintain requirements for water use reporting and prohibitions on water waste, and Brown tied the executive order ending the state of emergency to the launch of a plan to remake California's water conservation strategies.
Increasing water conservation, improving water use efficiency for homes and farms and planning for the next drought "are critical to California's resilience to drought and climate change," he said in the executive order.
The five-year drought was the most severe in California's recorded history. It devastated farm production, harmed wildlife, drained drinking water supplies and killed an estimated 100 million trees.
The declaration of the drought's end came after a winter rainy season that refilled reservoirs, dumped record snowpack on mountains and turned dried-out hills and fields from brown to green.
