>"One acre-foot, about 326,000 gallons (1.23 million liters), is enough water to supply one or two households for a year"
Did anybody else find this number astounding? That's 3370 litres PER DAY per household. Assuming this numberis accurate, this is not people living in condos. This is people watering their lawn daily, filling their backyard pools, liberally washing their cars every week. I think the water crisis will be an easy fix as soon as the immediacy of the problem causes people to accept higher pricing. No other incentive will eliminate the lunacy which is watering lawns and every-backyard pools in the deserts of Utah, Nevada, and Southern California.
I can't be sure but I _think_ what that's referring to is _all the water_ that a household uses including externalities like the water used to grow their food.
California's water use is dominated by agriculture[0]. 10% of the water is urban use, how much of that is commercial vs residential? Average is around 100 gallons (~370 liters) per day or much less, depending on the season) Higher prices are already a reality. The cycle is reduce usage, not enough money being made, a water main blows in DTLA [2] since they're 100 years old, increase rates, repeat.
Domestic use (lawns, showers, toilets, etc) is a small percent of the overall water use in the west. For example, in Colorado 89% of the water usage is for agriculture and only 7% is municipal and industrial (https://waterknowledge.colostate.edu/water-management-admini...). So, we can rip up as many lawns and install as many low flow toilets and it is barely a drop in the proverbial bucket.
Did anybody else find this number astounding? That's 3370 litres PER DAY per household. Assuming this numberis accurate, this is not people living in condos. This is people watering their lawn daily, filling their backyard pools, liberally washing their cars every week. I think the water crisis will be an easy fix as soon as the immediacy of the problem causes people to accept higher pricing. No other incentive will eliminate the lunacy which is watering lawns and every-backyard pools in the deserts of Utah, Nevada, and Southern California.