If LA wants more water, I think they need to desalinate rather than diverting more and more long distances to populate the desert. I know that's not easy. And of course cutting way down on almonds is a great idea and needed, but still the central valley is already poor as hell and the water you want is all their little wealth. You have to think about how making these poor communities poorer and LA richer will effect people and places. There's only a few million less people in the valley than LA country. And about almonds, the enormous factory farms just north of LA need to be the ones taken out, not family ranches. But the thing is, LA will only ever want and demand more.

LA needs to figure something out to not be completely reliant on other places as they continue to expand. You talk about population carrying capacity, I'd say LA has already hit it then, very naturally. Use all that wealth to make some of your own. They just like to take with their might. We saw what happened when they created the largest ecological disaster in California history diverting water. I think we need to see they are serious, and they need to put up and make big investments instead of always taking. For every gallon we give them, they should have to create a gallon of their own. It's fine and true to say almonds are wasteful, but that doesn't mean it should be LA's water.