As bad as that sounds, all that water (plus all the water used on residential lawns) is included in the 3-5% of California's water that goes to residential use.

As bad as that sounds, all that water (plus all the water used on residential lawns) is included in the 3-5% of California's water that goes to residential use. You could drain every pool in the state and barely touch the total water consumption. And as DannyBee mentioned above, per-capita water use has already been cut 30% over the last 20 years. You could shut off all residential water supplies entirely, to cut residential use by 100%, and still only reduce total water consumption by 5% at most. Pools aren't the problem. Lawns aren't the problem. Residential use isn't the problem.