When I was at Riverside County's Fifth Annual Water Symposium last week, one Inland water official from the mountains said he knows residents who take a bucket into the shower with them and use that to water their plants.

Are there other creative ways out there to save water? And if we are indeed in a water crisis, as everyone says, should there be mandatory conservation?

The most aggressive city in Southern California so far has been Long Beach. That city bans its residents from watering their lawns to the point that it creates runoff or hosing down sidewalks or driveways. They also only allow residents to water their lawns three days during the week and it has to be outside the hours of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.

And if they don't follow the rules, their neighbors may snitch on them. Some 3,500 residents have complained by e-mail, phone or a form on a Web site since August, said Ryan Alsop, a spokesman for the Long Beach Water Department.

The city doesn't issue fines, but rather it sends a letter to the person accused explaining the water crisis and the measures the city has taken to deal with it, Alsop told me last week.

"A handful of people are rubbed the wrong way -- 'It's so 1984, Nazi Germany' -- and my explanation is it's no different than if you saw someone dumping oil down the storm drain," he said. "We're running out of water, and it's a very serious situation."

Since October, Long Beach's water use has dropped 7 percent below the 10-year average, he said.

Some Inland water officials say they are considering such a program. Should it be sooner rather than later?