The number had previously been 100 million. That might reflect rounding or failed to reflect reused water, or might just have been the result of less precision in field reporting.

Most of the water is from aquifers. The claim is that it's non-potable and not fit for agriculture. That's true of a lot of aquifers. Fossil water need not be fresh; infiltration often leaches nasty things from rocks into aquifer water. Most of the aquifer water is supposedly returned to the aquifer. It's often contaminated, but these are mostly confined aquifers and weren't of much current use anyway. Hard to predict future use for the water as it was or after it was returned.

There are things to complain about that in that--maybe well founded, maybe not--but that's hardly a solution to or cause of water restrictions.

What remains is the water that is taken from the CA water infrastructure or depletes otherwise freshwater aquifers. The numbers are all over the place for that.

A report was due 4/31/15 and should have been released by now, required by Calif. state law on hydrofracking water resource source and disposition. I can't find it. If you can, send me a PM.


Never fear, the arch-conservative state of Texas is not stealing water from California. Much of the water in Texas comes from the Gulf--that's TS Bill, for instance. Most of the rest comes from air streams that run north or south of the worst of the drought area, depending on the front in question and whether it's fed by water from the Gulf of California or the westerlies. Let's face it--the drought-afflicted areas aren't providing a lot of atmospheric moisture. Even if the moisture did pass directly over Barstow on the way east, there's no way to prevent its forming rainclouds if the conditions are right. And if there were, I'm fairly sure it would be visible. I mean, how do you stop condensation without either increasing the temp of a lot of air (to make it more stable) or without removing nuclei (which would reduce particulates) without being noticed?

Cloud seeding is a kind of water theft, but only informally. The moisture in the clouds would pass over Colorado, for example, and might bring rain to areas farther inland. Or perhaps not. Not all clouds are ripe for seeding. Conditions have to be just right for condensation nuclei to actually produce condensation.