[nonameiguess]

Excellent comment by dragonwriter. Unfortunately, you're wrong about California, even if what you write is true in most places. You can read more about the history of water in Los Angeles here: https://waterforla.com/water/history/

Most today comes from the State Water Project, which pumps all the way from northern California where the Sierra Nevadas drain into rivers and this is the principle source for both Los Angeles and for the Central Valley. Los Angeles also still gets some from the Colorado River pumped across the Mojave, but this is arguably even more insane as it feeds four major metros in Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas, and Phoenix, none of which have their own local water sources to sustain a large city.

LA basin was a pretty terrible place to put the country's second largest metro. LA did originally get its water from local groundwater basins, but those tapped out when the population was still around 6,000. It was solved by building the original Los Angeles aqueduct to pump all the way from Owens Valley. What other city can say its most famous street is named after a water engineer?