[eru]

It would help to make water more tradable in California and get proper prices. Right now, a lot of agricultural water is of the use-it-or-lose it variety.

I'm not sure about the situation in Israel. I know that Australia had some very good experience with water markets that helped them grow their agricultural productivity despite long droughts.

[baq]

To downvoters of the parent, I’m all for equal access to water for people, but we aren’t talking about people, we’re talking about industrial water use, which is amazingly inefficient and a proper market for water would help here in the long run.

[eru]

Industrial and agricultural.

The amounts you need for drinking (or even for flushing your toilet) are relatively small by comparison.

And, of course, the way to help poor people is not to forbid markets for everyone, but to just give them money.