As residents cut water use, even the rich rage at the mysterious ‘Wet Prince of Bel Air’, who used 11.8m gallons in one year

Dean Gamburd has been a Bel Air resident all his life. Normally, he has nothing but good things to say about his neighbourhood, one of the most affluent in Los Angeles, where the streets are lined with opulent houses and well-tended flowerbeds. Jennifer Aniston, Nicolas Cage and Kim Kardashian have homes here. It’s a nice place to live.

But today Gamburd, a former firearms consultant in his 60s, is angry. Very angry. “It’s criminal,” he says, sitting at a table outside Starbucks. “There’s no other word to use.”

The subject of his ire is not some hardened gangster or local tearaway, but an unknown resident who has been dubbed the Wet Prince of Bel Air. This anonymous person has recently been outed for using an astonishing 11.8m gallons of water in one year while the rest of the state is struggling to tackle one of the worst droughts in living memory.

The Wet Prince is the biggest known residential water consumer in the state, according to records obtained by the Centre for Investigative Reporting in California. In the 12 months to April, they used enough water to sustain 90 average households or flush a toilet 20,000 times every day.

“It’s hard to imagine how someone could use so much water,” says Max Gomberg, climate and conservation manager at the State Water Resources Control Board. “It’s appalling. What are they doing on that property?”

The city authorities have refused to identify the culprit, citing data protection issues. But, just like Dean Gamburd, many of the other residents of Bel Air are seething.

“It’s selfish and self-indulgent” says Kate Stensland. “What’s the bottom line? For these people it seems to be: ‘Well, it’s not me, not my world, it has nothing to do with me’.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A woman walks her dog on the drought-stricken hills above San Francisco. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Jerry Brown, the governor of California, declared a state of emergency last year, and in April imposed a mandatory 25% cutback on water use. That means any outdoor watering that causes “runoff” (excess water running down a pavement for instance), or washing your car with a hose can land you with a $500 (£332) fine.

Public information campaigns have urged Californians to do everything to help, from limiting their toilet flushing to putting a bucket in the shower to catch overflow to water their plants. The campaign has been a success: in August, the state authorities said urban customers had cut their use by 31%.

But well-heeled residents in the wealthier parts of Los Angeles often choose to pay the fines simply in order to keep their swimming pools full and their landscaped gardens lush. Bel Air is home to 19 customers pumping more than 2.8m gallons a year. In Beverly Hills, 32 customers used that amount or more.

Many of LA’s multimillionaires have several properties across the globe and might not be aware of any leaks. Whatever the explanation, their water consumption has a deleterious impact.

“The situation is really bad,” says Gomberg. “We have communities who have literally run out of water because the wells have run dry.”

Los Angeles is a city built on desert that relies on water sourced hundreds of miles away from the Colorado river, the Delta in northern California and the snow pack of the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains.

“We have the lowest snow pack in 500 years, which is a third of our water supply,” says Gomberg. “We lost 22m trees because of the stress brought on from the drought and because the wildfires have been so much worse because there’s no moisture. Fish are dying because the water in the river is not there. Over 10,000 people are out of work because hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland have been left fallow because of the lack of water supply.”

Faced with this grim situation, the residents of Bel Air have taken matters into their own hands. The Los Angeles Times has reported the existence of “a drought posse” who scour satellite maps and trace neighbourhood gutter flows. There is even talk that one inhabitant is using a camera-equipped drone to identify the water guzzlers.

No one yet knows who the Wet Prince might be, but Bel Air is not a place where anyone does anything by halves. A billionaire called James Goldstein, for instance, has recreated a tropical jungle in the gardens of his mansion. (The house itself has been used as a backdrop for a Snoop Dogg and Pharrell Williams music video and Rihanna held her birthday party there this year.) There’s no doubt that maintaining a tropical jungle in a desert climate probably requires a fair amount of water.

Gamburd knows of several houses where the fountains are left flowing 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Walking around Bel Air, one is immediately struck by the lushness and verdancy of its vegetation.

There is the near-constant sound of trickling water from behind high hedges which shield the more impressive houses from public view. On the street, parked between the Porsches and Range Rovers, are vans bearing the insignia of pool maintenance companies.

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Maureen Levinson, a member of the Bel Air Beverly Crest Neighbourhood Council, nevertheless insists that most residents “have engaged in water conservation efforts”. The bigger concern, she says, is the construction of super-sized luxury homes in the area (locally referred to as “giga-mansions”).

“These development projects include excessive numbers of pools and water features,” says Levinson. She cites one instance where the city authorities have approved five massive pools for a single family dwelling.

“If the city wants to curb the excessive water usages, we need to push and support our city council for change in building codes and ordinances – and to scrutinise the overall consequences of out-of-scale, new speculatively built, commercial-sized ‘single family dwellings’ currently under construction.”

Back at Starbucks, Gamburd says the 11.8m gallon water guzzler could be one of several people. “I don’t believe he’s the only one,” he said.

A uniformed caretaker has started watering the flowerpots in front of us. He is carrying a bucket which is only half full. He stops at one pot, bends down, presses the soil with his thumb to check the moisture and then moves on without watering it. Across the street, in the gardens of the mega-rich, the decorative fountains continue playing.