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Bloomberg has an excellent article on what, exactly, "environmental uses" means. Essentially that's every gallon of water that, once it has settled into a river, successfully flows into the ocean. If any water is released from behind a dam, any part of a river is downstream of any dams... if, in short, a river in California has a mouth, then the water coming out of it is part of that oft quoted 50%.
We can absolutely choose to see that as a waste, but it doesn't change the fact that agriculture uses four times as much water as everything else. KQED had some great stats and graphs on residential water use. A little more than half of it is used outdoors. So if everyone in California stopped watering their lawns and gardens, stopped washing their cars, and gave up their swimming pools, the state would save as much water as if farmers decreased their water use by 12.5%.
Agriculture is absolutely important to California's welfare, but is it four times as important as everything else combined? As many others in the thread have said, California doesn't have a water problem. It has an agriculture problem.
My guess is that more and more of us are living in Ellen Ullman's"Museum of Me":
It is in this sense that the Internet ideal represents the very opposite of what democracy is, democracy being a method for resolving differences in a relatively orderly manner, through the mediation of unavoidable civic associations. Yet there can be no notion of resolving differences in a world where each person is entitled to get exactly what he or she wants. Where all needs and desires are equally valid, equally powerful, I’ll get mine, you get yours, no need for compromise or discussion, I don’t have to tolerate you, you don’t have to tolerate me, no need for messy debate or the whole rigmarole of government with all its creaky, bothersome structures. No need for any of those. Because now that we have the world wide web, the problem of the pursuit of happiness has been solved. We each click for our individual joys and disputes may arise only if something doesn’t get delivered on time.
Combine that concept with one from Alexis de Tocqueville, 167 year earlier:
Inside America, the majority has staked out a formidable fence around thought. Inside those limits a writer is free but woe betide him if he dares to stray beyond them. Not that the need fear an auto-da-fé but he is the victim of all kinds of unpleasantness and everyday persecutions. A political career is closed to him for he has offended the only power with the capacity to give him an opening. He is denied everything, including renown. Before publishing his views, he thought he had supporters; it seems he has lost them once he has declared himself publicly; for his detractors speak out loudly and those who think as he does, but without his courage, keep silent and slink away. He gives in and finally bends beneath the effort of each passing day, withdrawing into silence as if he felt ashamed at having spoken the truth.
On the internet, he need not withdraw into silence. He needs merely to find where everyone else who stated his particular opinion has withdrawn to. Further and further towards the edges of Pew's graph, most likely.