I’m not going to say water is in endless supply in Illinois, we do get dry periods. As a rule it’s easy to get water with a well but not always cheap. Sulfur smelling water is the only problem around here.
With this situation, are they trying to encourage people to use less water or are they just going for a cash grab? Are they going to start charging for use of the sun for people with solar panels?
The goal of the legislation is to preserve groundwater and limit the damage to aquifers from overdrawing them. Basically, prudent, long term water management. The legislation specifies areas of concern where the groundwater levels have dropped, wells gave gone dry, and there are known to be issues with subsidence. Those areas have water management/allocations being implemented. Other areas, not in one of the aquifers of concern, have just reporting requirements for the moment. We would fall into that bucket if we went over two acre feet/yr, which won't happen. We use 10-15,000 gallons per month for all of the animals, us, and a few trees and flowers. The letter that was the basis for the clickbait article at the beginning was just notifying the landowner of their reporting requirements. I don't know many growers p, but the few that I do know have installed meters and gone on with life. Many growers in the Central Valley received 0% of their irrigation water this year, on top of getting 5-10% last year. Water levels in wells have dropped a hundred feet or more in some areas. You have to be pretty clueless in California not to realize that there is a water shortage and something needs to change.
It is a big deal if there is no water to drink, regardless of whether you live in a city, or your well ran dry. With Lakes Mead and Powell dropping almost to outflow pipes, it is about to get very real for a big area of the Southwest as the Colorado river dries up. Whether you want to call it a record drought, or climate change, it doesn't matter; there isn't much water left in the ground or in the reservoirs. Around the world, some very big cities have come close to having no water in the last few years; Chennai, São Paulo, Johannesburg.
Three of the five homes near us don't have any lawns, two do, one less than 40x40' and one 20' x20'. There are definitely many California who don't act like they are in a desert where it rains ten inches a year, but many do. Our local cities have been ratcheting up the restrictions against lawn watering, and the incentives to remove them. On the other hand, twenty five miles from here gets 70+" of rain a year.
The state is a mixture of dry and wet areas, but generally, everything inland is dry, as is pretty much everything from Los Angeles south. In recorded history the Central Valley has flooded from Sacramento to Bakersfield, an area roughly 350 by 50 miles. It would be great for the aquifer, but a little hard on the crops and folks living there now. It may still happen if the levees aren't maintained.
Clean drinkable water is a life giving, and limited resource.
All the best,
Peter