Water rationing in California: Could it happen here? Why not?

AMERICA’S guitar-and-chorus chronicler of the Great Depression, the Dustbowl, and social injustice, Woody Guthrie, once described California as “a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see...” and even if he was warning those forlorn, destitute farmers fleeing the Midwest’s Dustbowl not to go to California, he could hardly have imagined that something approaching a Dustbowl catastrophe might hit the Golden State. 

Yet, in one of those unimaginable, undeniable levelling moments history and nature are so fond of inflicting, it has.

On Wednesday California governor Jerry Brown ordered residents and businesses to cut water usage by 25%. This is the first time California has been forced to impose such drastic measures.