As California enters year four of one of the most severe droughts in state history, officials on Tuesday welcomed a host of temporary water measures that limits landscape irrigation and restricts how restaurants and hotels use the vital resource.

Under the new rules, districts that haven’t already restricted outdoor watering to two days per week are required to do so, restaurants and bars must ask customers if they want a glass of water before automatically serving one, and hotels and motels must offer guests the option to not wash their sheets and towels daily, among other provisions.

Though the new measures are among the most drastic efforts taken by the State Water Resources Control Board to reduce water use, many water conservation groups are disappointed the restrictions did not go further.

“The State Water Board’s extension of the water conservation regulations are a logical and reasonable next step, but this epic drought calls for deeper and permanent reform,” Sara Aminzadeh, executive director of California Coastkeeper Alliance, said in a statement.

Last summer, officials approved emergency measures that prohibited people hosing down sidewalks, driveways and patios, washing cars without a shutoff nozzle and using drinking water in ornamental fountains.

Officials on the board said the growing severity of the drought demanded new action. Days before the vote, Nasa released new data that showed the state has only about one year of water left.

“We are not seeing the stepping up and the ringing of alarm bells that the situation warrants,” Felicia Marcus, chair of the State Water Resources Control Board, said during a meeting in Sacramento, the state capital, on Tuesday.

The new measures will first be reviewed by a legal team, and, when approved, will be put into effect for 270 days. Those caught in violation of the measures could face a fine of as much as $500, though critics say enforcement will be difficult.

“Local jurisdictions have to implement and enforce these measures to actually reduce water usage,” Liz Crosson, executive director of Los Angeles Waterkeeper, said in a statement. “Many of the State Board’s mandatory measures are still not enforced in Los Angeles. Until Californians take the drought seriously, we will continue to see reserves depleted and the future become more uncertain.”

Last year, the board directed the state’s major urban water advisers to implement measures that limited landscape watering. But the response was piecemeal and didn’t have the intended impact.

“The way we wrote things this last year, in hindsight, was probably too big of a loophole to leave open,” said Max Gomberg, a senior environmental scientist at the water board, told the Sacramento Bee.

The latest measures are meant to tighten this rule by requiring water agencies to limit landscape watering to certain days. Smaller water agencies would also be allowed to impose new rules that would help minimize usage, but are not required to specify watering days. The move, however, is expected to have little impact on cities in the southern half of the state, where local agencies already have strict restrictions in place.

New data released in January shows that the state fell short of the governor’s emergency drought order that called for reducing water use by 20% each month. The data showed that Californians reduced their water usage by just 8.8% in January compared to what they used in January 2013.