Water in California IS plentiful! But 85% of the water that is used is used by agriculture, leaving people and businesses to fight over the rest. Also, water "saved" in homes actually does not save any water, because it then gets used on a farm. Each gallon Californians reduce in homes produces one additional almond, but it gets used either way.
What's worse is that California is effectively exporting 40% of the water in the form of agricultural products. That is, half the food produced is exported. California sells their water, much like oil, to the rest of the world. And half of the exports are foreign exports (rather than to another state).
Did you know California exports a very large amount of rice to Asia? There are rice paddies surrounding Sacramento.
Davis has ride paddies… and ubiquitous grass fires every summer. The water problem in California likely wont be fixed, I suspect that once the aquifers give up it will allow the bigger interests to claim too big to fail and sponge up the lions share due to emergency conditions.
1. Transition water rights from basically unlimited (subject to priority) to a specific, generous amount (i.e. double your yearly average over last 5 years or something). This would still be subject to priority order, and the sum of amounts would still be far more than the available water. So in this step, practically nothing changes. But it moves the problem from unlimited rights to a shared resource, to limited rights.
2. Have the state do a reverse auction to start buying back the water rights, starting with very low bids. Remember that those at the back of the priority line still aren't getting any water anyway, so buying those rights should be very cheap. The state keeps buying back the rights until whatever our goal is has been achieved.
In some sense, everybody would win. The people of the state get back control of the water. The lowest value use gets sold back or shifted to higher-value use. And the farmers don't have their water taken from them - in fact they get to sell it back if and only if they want to.
What's worse is that California is effectively exporting 40% of the water in the form of agricultural products. That is, half the food produced is exported. California sells their water, much like oil, to the rest of the world. And half of the exports are foreign exports (rather than to another state).
Did you know California exports a very large amount of rice to Asia? There are rice paddies surrounding Sacramento.