As the state’s drought worsens, Californians are going backward on water conservation, and on Tuesday state water officials provided the first look at just how much each community will be required to save.

While those that use the least water per capita — such as Santa Cruz, Hayward and Daly City — will have to cut water use by 10 percent, communities that use the most — like Hillsborough, Morgan Hill and Beverly Hills — will be forced to slash their water consumption by 35 percent.

Residents in many Bay Area cities that fall in between — like those served by the San Jose Water Co. and the East Bay Municipal Utility District — will be mandated to cut 20 percent; while others that use more — such as the Contra Costa Water District — are under the gun to make 25 percent cuts.

The new targets from the State Water Resources Control Board — the first-ever mandated by the state after a year of fruitless voluntary conservation cuts — come with a stiff penalty for communities that fall short: fines of up to $10,000 a day.

That could be an expensive lesson for communities across the state if Californians continue to slide on conserving water.

Urban residents reduced their water use by only 2.8 percent statewide in February, compared with the baseline year of 2013, according to figures released Tuesday.

“I was horrified when I saw the numbers,” said Felicia Marcus, chairwoman of the state water board. “It was hot in Southern California in February, and they got less rain than Northern California. There’s the psychology of people saying, ‘My lawn is going to die, let me water it a little more.'”

Marcus said cities and water districts have not done nearly enough to reduce consumption by the state’s 38 million residents — particularly on lawns, which use 50 percent of all residential water — and that with reservoirs and groundwater levels falling, they should be preparing for a drought that could last 10 years or more.

“People who don’t hit their targets will be fined. We don’t have time to waste,” she said. “It is going to be a buckle-your-seatbelts kind of a year.”

Executive order

Last week, standing at a news conference in a dry Sierra Nevada meadow that normally would be under 5 feet of snow this time of year, Gov. Jerry Brown signed an executive order requiring California’s urban users to cut water consumption by 25 percent compared with 2013 levels. An early spring storm that passed through the Bay Area this week dumped up to a foot of snow in the Sierra but will have little impact on the drought.

The conservation targets released late Tuesday were designed to reward cities that have already cut water use and penalize those that haven’t, including many of the wealthiest communities in the state. The state board will vote on the final rules May 5.

Many big water providers said Tuesday that they are preparing to crack down now.

“We need people to conserve more,” said Abby Figueroa, a spokeswoman for EBMUD, which serves 1.3 million people in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

“If they don’t, and we don’t get much rain next winter, it just means that 2016 will be that much harder. It could mean draconian cuts like we have never seen before in California — like no outdoor watering at all, or no new development.”

EBMUD’s seven reservoirs were 53 percent full on Tuesday. Their historic average for this date is 82 percent full.

The district has so far been asking its customers for 15 percent voluntary conservation. In February, they reduced by only 6 percent.

The district’s board will vote next Tuesday on a host of new water-conserving actions. Among them: deciding which two days a week people can water lawns and imposing an “excessive use penalty.” The district also plans on raising water rates by 24 percent on the average homeowner, in part to cover the costs of buying more water to make up for supplies it lost in the meager snowpack this year.

San Jose Water Co., which provides water to 1 million residents, has not said how it plans to comply with the new rules. It has asked customers for odd-even water days, but has not done any enforcement for people who ignore the rules. Nor have most cities on the Peninsula.

“I’m looking out my front window and I see a lot of green lawns,” said James O’Keefe, a small-business owner in San Mateo. “And there are corporate offices with lots of landscaping. My family went to Easter brunch on Sunday, and the restaurant served us water without us asking. We all say we have a drought, but I just don’t think we as a state are taking it seriously enough.”

Missing the mark

In January 2014, the governor asked Californians to cut water consumption 20 percent voluntarily. So far, they have reduced by less than half that, 9.1 percent. Ominously, the Los Angeles and San Diego region increased water use in February by 2.3 percent, compared with 2013. Residents of the San Francisco Bay Area cut their use 8 percent, and Sacramento-area residents cut their use 14 percent.

Farmers, who use 80 percent of the water that people in California use, already have taken a major cutback, seeing their deliveries of federal and state water from the Delta eliminated entirely in many cases. Many are fallowing fields, laying off farmworkers or pumping already-depleted groundwater tables to stay in business.

“The drought has been real for two or three years for agriculture and the environment,” said Jay Lund, director of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. “With the governor’s announcement last week, it’s just now becoming real for urban areas.”

Paul Rogers covers resources and environmental issues. Contact him at 408-920-5045. Follow him at Twitter.com/PaulRogersSJMN