San Francisco Water Use Has Declined Since Last Drought — What Else Can You Do to Conserve? We're once again going to be having conversations this summer about water use, and hearing about ever more strict mandates coming down from counties and the state about what we use water for. But is San Francisco's household water use really the problem? The drought is bad, and it's getting worse. A big swath of the Bay Area was just put in the "exceptional" drought tier last week by the U.S. Drought Monitor, and the rest of the Bay Area is in the second-worst or "extreme" drought category, along with about three-quarters of California.