and I believe agriculture is above 80% of the water usage. At the moment, they're supplementing their water needs by pumping their aquifers dry. That's going to have some very serious long term consequences. If you pump significantly more than it replaces, the ground compacts and can't retain as much water.
Actual agriculture is maybe 60% of the 80%. When the .gov does the figuring, they include golf courses, local, state, and fed parks, and environmental applications as part of "agriculture". So all the water wasted on the Delta Smelt for instance, is considered "agricultural use".
As to sinking lands, there's a good recently released NASA report on it (I would have linked directly to the paper, but the stupid JPL site is not responding right now):
http://www.livescience.com/51943-california-sinking-faster-than-thought.htmlAg of course isn't the only problem in CA. When you have hoards of people migrating in, especially to the areas of the state that end up having to pump groundwater, and tons of new housing going up, you're not exactly helping the problem. Though again, a few strategically placed dams would have eliminated most of the kerfuffle. CA still needs to come up with some water use regs. We're the only state in the West that doesn't have them. Of course when CA regulators end up introducing them, they'll end up being 1000% more stringent than they need to be and probably kill farming in the state.
