Don't let this and other articles fool you: there is absolutely no shortage of water in Californian cities. Every year an absolute mountain of snow drops on the Rockies and melts in the spring. But it gets diverted through an arcane series of water rights, grandfathered deals and outright corruption.
Meet the Resnicks [1], who are agricultural billionaires and control a huge chunk of California's water supply.
This is why you should get mad whenever you see California invest in desalination [2]. Would you ever use desalination to grow oranges or almonds or alfalfa? No, it's way too expensive. But when you build desalination plants in a place like California what you're really doing is further subsidizing inefficient uses of water for agriculture when you could totally solve the problem by simply growing less water-intensive crops and/or letting some arid land, well, stay arid.
Meet the Resnicks [1], who are agricultural billionaires and control a huge chunk of California's water supply.
This is why you should get mad whenever you see California invest in desalination [2]. Would you ever use desalination to grow oranges or almonds or alfalfa? No, it's way too expensive. But when you build desalination plants in a place like California what you're really doing is further subsidizing inefficient uses of water for agriculture when you could totally solve the problem by simply growing less water-intensive crops and/or letting some arid land, well, stay arid.
[1]: https://story.californiasunday.com/resnick-a-kingdom-from-du...
[2]: https://water.ca.gov/News/News-Releases/2023/April-23/Califo...