There's an apocryphal Mark Twain quote, that "Whisky is for drinking, and water for fighting over". That saiod, pistachios, pomegranates etc are high-value cro

There's an apocryphal Mark Twain quote, that "Whisky is for drinking, and water for fighting over". That saiod, pistachios, pomegranates etc are high-value crops, not like the alfalfa the Saudis grow using senior water rights and then ship to feed cows in Saudi Arabia. The big problem is that California is too chicken to flatten the baroque system of senior and junior water rights because of the decades of litigation that would entail, and at the same time agricultural water is heavily subsidized and there are perverse incentives for farmers not to invest into more efficient irrigation schemes, often simply flooding entire fields.