About 408,000 million gallons of water were used each day (Mgal/d). Of that, about 346,000 Mgal/d was fresh water and about 62,300 Mgal/d was saline water. California used the most water, about 51,200 Mgal/d, with most of that going towards irrigation. The state with the second-highest water use was Texas, with about 29,600 Mgal/d, mostly for use in the power-production industries and for irrigation.

The Environmental News Service had an article titled: "California Faces Water Rationing, Governor Proclaims Drought Emergency" on February 27, 2009. Governor Schwarzenegger urged Californians to ration their water use and here is a quote from the article:

The governor called for a statewide water conservation campaign and asked all urban water users to immediately reduce their individual water use by 20 percent. He asked all Californians to reduce their water use as much as possible.    

Quoting RAND corporation(Research and Development Co. is a nonprofit global policy think tank in the U.S.), which is the source of the chart above:  "A large percentage of the water is found in the Amazon basin, Canada, and Alaska. About three-quarters of annual rainfall comes down in areas where less than one-third of the world’s population lives." SOURCES: Igor A. Shiklomanov, Archive of World Water Resources and World Water Use, Global Water Data Files, State Hydrological Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia, CD-ROM, 1998; Peter H. Gleick, “The Changing Water Paradigm: A Look at Twenty-First Century Water Resources Development,” Water International, Vol. 25, No. 1, 2000, pp. 127-138, available online as of March 2006.

“If you live in a slum in Manila, you pay more for your water than people living in London.” Much of the world lives without access to clean water. Privatization of water resources, promoted as a means to bring business efficiency into water service management, has instead led to reduced access for the poor around the world as prices for these essential services have risen.

What if the Colorado River aqueduct (the supplier of about 40% of San Diego county's water) breaks when a major earth quake hits Southern California?

Can San Diego and Los Angeles depend on the Los Angeles aqueduct and the California aqueduct entirely?

Do the Sierra Nevadas and Crater Lake in Oregon have the potential to supply Southern Californnia with its water needs and can these other aqueducts replace the Colorado River's role in our region?

Are water desalinization, waste water fees,  increasing water use efficiency with incentives topics that we need to look into as people living in Southern California?

For example, Los Angeles doubled the waste water fees in 2008...

Water desalinization: Saudi Arabia pays large energy and financial costs to desalinate water and the Gulf Arab country uses fossil fuel energy to convert saltwater to drinking water. Do Southern Californian counties have the money needed to invest in new water-desalinization clean energy techniques?