Dwyane Wade apologises after going half a million gallons over water limit amid California’s extreme drought

Former basketball All-Star Dwyane Wade and actor Gabrielle Union have had a problem at their Los Angeles county home.

Amid devastating drought in California, the celebrity couple have used a massive amount of water.

The couple reportedly went 489,000 gallons over their allotted water budget in May — about three-quarters the size of an Olympic swimming pool.

They then went 90,000 gallons over their allotted budget again in June, according to reporting by the Los Angeles Times.

California has faced dry conditions for months on end, with more than 97 per cent of the state in “severe” or worse drought, according to the US federal government’s drought monitor.

Water supplies have run perilously low as a result, prompting state and local officials to implement mandatory restrictions in some areas to conserve resources.

Mr Wade and Ms Union live in the celebrity enclave of Hidden Hills, just outside the city of Los Angeles. A spokesperson for the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District (LVMWD), which includes Hidden Hills and nearby areas like Calabasas and Agoura Hills, told the LA Times that they determine each property’s water budget individually based on factors like the number of people living there and the size of the property.

The couple’s 489,000-gallon overshoot made them the worst offenders in the district that month, the paper reports.

In a statement to the Times, the couple blamed a broken pool for their water woes.

Mr Wade and Ms Union said that they “have been doing everything we can to rectify the situation and will continue to go to extensive lengths to resolve the issue.”

The couple have reportedly replaced parts of their pool and installed artificial and drought-tolerant plants.

Per their statement to the paper, they said that they have “taken drastic steps to reduce water usage in accordance with the new city guidelines” and “will continue to work with the city and the water distribution company to make sure this isn’t an issue moving forward.”

Ms Union and Mr Wade are not alone in over-using water, either. Other celebrities in the LVMWD who’ve gone over their budget recently include Sylvester Stallone, Kevin Hart and Kim and Kourtney Kardashian, the LA Times notes.

Overall, more than 2,000 households got notices from the water district that they had exceeded at least 150 per cent of their water budget at least four times since a drought emergency was declared last year, the paper adds.

LVMWD has installed 20 “flow restrictors” — inserts to home inflow pipes that severely limit the rate of water that flows through — in some properties that have exceeded budgets, the Times says.

Many of California’s reservoirs are well below capacity as a result of the drought. For example, Shasta Lake in the north, the state’s largest reservoir, is at just 35 per cent capacity.

Many of the water shortages also come from declining snowpack this year. Melting snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains provides about one-third of California’s water supply — but a dry start to 2022 left just 38 per cent of the normal amount of snow in the mountains come April.

California and the rest of the western US are in the grips of a decades-long “megadrought” that has decimated water resources for over 20 years. According to one recent study, this megadrought — which has been powered by the climate crisis — has been the driest two-decade period in the region for at least 1,200 years.

And as the climate crisis intensifies, these conditions could get a lot worse. One study from the University of California, Los Angeles found that even if the world takes steps to mitigate the climate crisis, the Sierra Nevadas could see an average of 30 per cent less snow each year by the end of the century.

If the climate crisis continues unabated, however, the mountains could see up to 64 per cent less snow in that time.