For the fourth year in a row, California is in severe drought. Water allocations from the state and federal water projects will be far short of what farmers and cities want — in many cases, zero — and pressures on the state’s ecosystems are worsening. There will be plenty of pain to go around. There are also strategies for avoiding some of the worst consequences but our water leaders — from local water managers to the governor — must step up now.

The National Weather Service sees hot weather with no significant increase in rainfall persisting for California for the next three months. With time running out for the 2015 wet season, this is really bad news for California’s environment, vulnerable farmers and farmworkers, and a growing number of towns and cities with constrained water supplies. Snowpack is less than 20 percent of normal. The state’s reservoirs are only 40 percent full. And groundwater basins are millions of acre-feet of water in the hole.

Here is what the state can expect, barring an increasingly unlikely “March miracle:”

•The delivery of only a fraction of demanded surface water to customers of the large Central Valley and State Water projects.

•Fallowing of more agricultural land than in 2014, when between 5 and 10 percent of cropland was left unplanted.

•Controversy among farmers about water rights, measurements and reporting of withdrawals and allocation priority.

•Continued and accelerated overdraft of groundwater in watersheds where there is no groundwater management, monitoring or control, such as much of the Central Valley.

•A growing number of towns where municipal supplies will dry up, requiring emergency responses, including trucking in water for basic needs.

•A shift to mandatory urban water use restrictions in most California cities.

•Collapsing aquatic ecosystems and potentially the destruction of some of California’s endangered fisheries.

•Increased energy costs for ratepayers and increased air pollution, due to reductions in hydroelectricity generation and increased combustion of natural gas.

Based on years of research by my organization, the Pacific Institute, here are key water-policy strategies that should be implemented immediately:

The state should create and implement a water bank. It did so previously to great success. Here’s how it would work: Senior water rights holders able to cut use through efficiencies or by changing crops would sell saved water; the bank would resell that water at a higher price to willing buyers; profits would go to buy water for critical fisheries and ecosystems.

Federal and state agencies should provide finance assistance to farmers to help them replace inefficient irrigation systems. This can save both water and the economic health of the farm sector.

California should accelerate implementation of the state’s new groundwater law to eliminate permanent overdraft.

Urban water agencies should greatly expand efforts to inform urban water users how to cut water use and costs. Particular efforts should focus on programs to convert water-guzzling lawns to low-water use landscaping, and efforts to replace inefficient indoor fixtures, identify and fix leaks and modify water-using behaviors.

New management practices are needed to price water so that it encourages efficiency and conservation, protects affordability, cuts overall water bills and protects the financial health of water agencies.

State agencies should accelerate the use of the state water bond funds for disadvantaged communities and accelerate water reuse and stormwater capture.

The drought forecast calls for pain, but our responses now will determine how much and for whom. (With full appreciation and credit for Robert Cray’s rocking blues piece, “The Forecast Calls for Pain.”)

Peter H. Gleick is president and co-founder of the Pacific Institute in Oakland. The institute produces a weekly drought update at www.californiadrought.org.