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How much water does California use annually compared to Texas and Arizona?
Executive Summary
California’s commonly cited statewide withdrawal of roughly 38 billion gallons per day, which converts to about 13.9 trillion gallons per year, comes from USGS-era compilations and sector breakdowns showing heavy irrigation demand, but that figure does not provide a complete apples-to-apples comparison with Texas and Arizona because the available documents do not supply contemporaneous statewide annual totals for those states. Arizona has a clear, state-level figure of about 7.0 million acre-feet used in 2017 with 72% for agriculture and 22% municipal use, while Texas’ statewide total is not presented in these materials; instead, Texas sources give city-level per-capita patterns and historical state estimates, leaving a gap for direct modern statewide comparison [1] [2] [3] [4] [5].
1. Why California’s 38 billion gallons/day headline dominates — and what it actually means
The most prominent number in the materials is California’s reported withdrawal of 38 billion gallons per day, which the analysis converts to roughly 13.87 trillion gallons per year, emphasizing that three quarters of California’s freshwater withdrawals are for irrigation, while thermoelectric power dominates saline withdrawals. That figure originates from USGS water-use compilations and is helpful for scale: it highlights California as a very large water user nationally and clarifies the sectoral drivers—primarily agriculture—but it is not a fully reconciled annual consumption figure across all categories and timeframes, and the secondary materials caution that users should consult the USGS National Water Dashboard for state-specific, methodologically consistent data [1] [5]. The USGS-derived number is useful for order-of-magnitude comparison, yet it requires careful alignment with other states’ reporting methods before concluding absolute rankings.
2. Arizona’s concrete totals and Colorado River context that matter
Arizona’s dataset is more explicit in the materials: 7.0 million acre-feet used in 2017, with 72% agricultural allocation, 22% municipal, and 6% industrial—a clear sectoral profile for the state’s water footprint. The analysis pairs this usage with the Colorado River allocation framework—Arizona’s legal entitlement and deliveries exist against a lower basin allocation system where apportioned volumes (for example California’s allocation of 4.4 million acre-feet and Arizona’s 2.8 million acre-feet of mainstream Colorado River water) do not necessarily equal actual consumptive use because river flows have been below historic averages for decades. The materials underline that legal apportionments and hydrologic reality diverge, and Arizona’s 7.0 MAF figure is an observed use snapshot rather than an entitlement cap [2] [6].
3. Texas — city-level patterns without a clear statewide headline
The Texas sources in the packet do not provide a single, recent statewide annual total comparable to California’s 38 BGD or Arizona’s 7.0 MAF; instead, they present municipal per-capita usage in selected cities, with figures from roughly 138 to over 200 gallons per capita per day, and historical water-use estimation frameworks maintained by the Texas Water Development Board. Those city-level metrics reveal wide intra-state variation driven by climate, conservation programs, and water pricing, but they stop short of delivering a consolidated contemporary statewide withdrawal total in these materials. Consequently, any direct ranking that treats Texas as higher or lower than California or Arizona based on the provided documents would be incomplete without additional statewide compilation [3] [4].
4. Legal allocations versus actual use — why the Colorado River numbers complicate comparisons
The packet includes the Arizona v. California Supreme Court materials clarifying Colorado River apportionments—California 4.4 MAF, Arizona 2.8 MAF, Nevada 0.3 MAF—as legal allocations that shaped decades of water policy. The analyses point out the important distinction between allocated rights and actual deliveries or consumptive use, noting that the river’s long-term average flow has been below the Compact-era assumptions and that lower-basin deliveries have sometimes been constrained. This legal-hydrologic mismatch matters when comparing states: allocations do not equal total state withdrawals, and relying solely on Compact numbers can obscure other water sources (groundwater pumping, local rivers, reused water) that matter for real-world use accounting [7] [6].
5. What’s missing and how to get a rigorous comparison
The assembled materials make clear what is missing: a contemporaneous, methodologically consistent set of statewide annual withdrawal or consumptive-use totals for California, Texas, and Arizona. The USGS National Water Dashboard is presented as the authoritative next step for state-level reconciliation, while Texas documents point to regional historical estimates and municipal surveys that must be aggregated to match the USGS framing. For a rigorous, up-to-date comparison, the next step is to extract state totals from a single national dataset (e.g., USGS water-use compilations) and reconcile units (gallons vs. acre-feet) and definitional differences between withdrawals and consumptive use; the provided materials supply pieces of that puzzle but not the finished table [5] [4] [2].