[Roberton3]

A price mechanism would (I presume) be the better system for managing water in California. Nevertheless it seems kind of strange to think that a lot of rain should automatically change California's water policy outlook. That's the type of short-term-driven behavior that got the Western U.S. into this mess in the first place.

You got it.  Better pricing would greatly reduce some of the wasteful uses of water (e.g., growing relatively low-value, water-intensive crops such as alfalfa and rice), and wouldn't significantly cut into high-value uses.  It has worked very well in other areas where water is scarce and needs to be divided between urban and agricultural users (such as the Australian state of New South Wales). 

But I'm not optimistic, partly because the legal history makes that relatively difficult to do in California compared to some other places, and partly because water pricing would be a moderate compromise in a political environment dominated by the extremes (in this case, the "I should be able to use as much water as I want" folks that Stupac2 criticized and the "asceticism is a virtue" folks that Garvin criticized).

[Roberton3]

A price mechanism would (I presume) be the better system for managing water in California. Nevertheless it seems kind of strange to think that a lot of rain should automatically change California's water policy outlook. That's the type of short-term-driven behavior that got the Western U.S. into this mess in the first place.

You got it.  Better pricing would greatly reduce some of the wasteful uses of water (e.g., growing relatively low-value, water-intensive crops such as alfalfa and rice), and wouldn't significantly cut into high-value uses.  It has worked very well in other areas where water is scarce and needs to be divided between urban and agricultural users (such as the Australian state of New South Wales). 

But I'm not optimistic, partly because the legal history makes that relatively difficult to do in California compared to some other places, and partly because water pricing would be a moderate compromise in a political environment dominated by the extremes (in this case, the "I should be able to use as much water as I want" folks that Stupac2 criticized and the "asceticism is a virtue" folks that Garvin criticized).