EDITORIAL : GO EASY ON THE WATER THE DROUGHT IS OVER, BUT THE NEED FOR CONSERVATION ISN'T.

SAVE water. Conservation is an everyday necessity, like water itself, in California.

When six consecutive years of drought gripped the state from 1987 to 1992, the public became well aware of the need to use water sparingly. Reservoirs were low, rationing was imposed and sacrifice was the norm.

Today the need for conservation is still great, but public awareness seems to be going down the drain.

Here's an example: Los Angeles residents cut their per-capita water use from a pre-drought level of 174 gallons a day to 128 gallons a day in 1991-92. Now that the drought is just a memory, however, people are using more water. During 1995-96, the daily per-capita use in Los Angeles rose to 144 gallons.

We are thankful that there's no drought now, and no one is predicting that reservoirs are about to go dry. Still, it's important to limit water use and take other reasonable steps to safeguard this important commodity.

In February 1993, when that year's deep Sierra Nevada snowpack signaled the end of the drought, Gov. Pete Wilson renamed the office of California's Drought Center to the California Water Conservation Center, and said the hardships caused by the drought made clear the need for additional water resources, including storage facilities, and continuation of water conservation strategies.

``It should be part of an ongoing environmental ethic for all Californians to conserve water, not waste it,'' Wilson said.

For residents, that includes shorter showers, not letting the garden hose run while washing the car, and repairing repairing leaky faucets, pipes and connections as quickly as practical. Local water conservation ordinances are still on the books, and you might be stung if you hose down a sidewalk or driveway, or if you let your lawn sprinklers flood the street.

Residents also must resist the urge to tune out whenever decision makers discuss water as an issue of public policy.

Remember, those six straight years of drought cost California thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in losses to businesses including farms, fishermen, ski areas, landscapers, foresters and nurseries - in effect, everything from sales at the neighborhood nursery to the salmon catch offshore.

With the state and local governments feeling pressure to make water-policy decisions that reflect heightened environmental sensitivity, while also feeling pressure because of the demand for water by the growing population and businesses, the subject of water might seem rather dry at times but it's a topic that cannot be made to vanish with a simple twist of a valve.