I do wish that "Silicon Valley" would have been elsewhere less useful, though. As mentioned, before it became the tech hub, the Santa Clara valley was extremely productive agricultural land that is now paved over.
There is no sane system of water rights which is why there are cotton fields in Arizona.
While there may be no sane system, the legacy of "first come, first serve" and ",use it or lose it" is particularly insane.
More frustrating is all the water waste due to "use it or lose it" type policies around commercial and agricultural water allocations.
What's worse is that California is effectively exporting 40% of the water in the form of agricultural products. That is, half the food produced is exported. California sells their water, much like oil, to the rest of the world. And half of the exports are foreign exports (rather than to another state).
Did you know California exports a very large amount of rice to Asia? There are rice paddies surrounding Sacramento.
Is this a bike joke or a typo?
1. Transition water rights from basically unlimited (subject to priority) to a specific, generous amount (i.e. double your yearly average over last 5 years or something). This would still be subject to priority order, and the sum of amounts would still be far more than the available water. So in this step, practically nothing changes. But it moves the problem from unlimited rights to a shared resource, to limited rights.
2. Have the state do a reverse auction to start buying back the water rights, starting with very low bids. Remember that those at the back of the priority line still aren't getting any water anyway, so buying those rights should be very cheap. The state keeps buying back the rights until whatever our goal is has been achieved.
In some sense, everybody would win. The people of the state get back control of the water. The lowest value use gets sold back or shifted to higher-value use. And the farmers don't have their water taken from them - in fact they get to sell it back if and only if they want to.