I think it's a shortcut to saying "Price water appropriately for industry before giving us water restrictions." There's no political/industry will in solving this, so people are largely impotent on this front. Without water being appropriately factored in to pricing, it's not like the industry could be relied upon for pushing out accurate information and adjusting consumption. Best the consumer can get is maybe broader third party info ("x gallons to grow an almond", and not per-producer stats.
From my point of view, it's to put things in perspective. When people start ranting about where the water for a new apartment building will come from, when they live in some single family unit with a big lawn... it's kind of ridiculous. It's just NIMBYism.
Of course, we should all strive to preserve water as a precious resource. But to do that at a systemic level, you have to understand where it's going.
Also, there's agriculture and there's agriculture: growing, say, alfalfa to feed to cows is way less efficient than other crops.
Eh, a lot of it is for stupid agriculture. Growing very water hungry things basically in the desert. Plenty of other places in the country / world to grow these things in places where it rains. Dairy doesn’t need to come from California where it requires enormous amounts of irrigation
It’s for businesses which want to profit from growing desirable water-intensive crops, but hate the prospect of paying market rate for their water. A huge percentage of that water is growing things like animal fodder and, sure, a lot of people like eating cheap beef but at some point we have to question whether the side-effects of all those short sighted decisions are better than some combination of cutting our consumption or paying a little more.
