Why Californians Should Care about Water Rights
Certainly California and virtually everyone in the United States has for the past century been blessed to have a reliable and safe water supply. As “Last Call” notes, the overall water footprint of each American – taking into account direct uses such as drinking, flushing toilets and washing clothes, and indirect uses such as producing food that is eaten – is about 2,000 gallons of water per day, according to a 2011 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That compares to 900 gallons per day for residents of the United Kingdom, less than 800 gallons for people in China and just 2.5 gallons per day for the world’s poorest people.
