But agricultural water could be entered into the market for residential usage - the current legal structure incentivizes using the water for agriculture, rather than allowing reselling for higher-value-per-gallon uses.
I was curious about the almond statistic above. Sounds like "1-3 gallons" is exaggerated, but that 1-gallon-per-almond is at least on the right order of magnitude, but farmers are working to reduce water use. https://farmtogether.com/learn/blog/dispelling-miconceptions...
In some cases water could be repurposed into the residential market, for a price. The state could buy the farmers lands and water rights, or buy out their preexisting contracts with water suppliers.
The taxpayers don't want to pay for this, so the water is effectively off limits.
Is requiring compensation for seizure the challenging legal structure you mentioned?
The gallons per nut argument is pretty arbitrary. If you look at calories per gallon, nuts are better than almost all vegetables, most meats and many fruits. The high water per mass is basically a result of nuts being one of the most energy dense foods, and photosynthesis requiring water to create calories.
If you want to go down that rabbit hole, you can start looking at the gallons per mass for different foods and comparing their caloric density.
I was curious about the almond statistic above. Sounds like "1-3 gallons" is exaggerated, but that 1-gallon-per-almond is at least on the right order of magnitude, but farmers are working to reduce water use. https://farmtogether.com/learn/blog/dispelling-miconceptions...