The population explosion of the Southwest in general has caused this but also less run off from the Rockies. I live in the high desert of Arizona but did live in SoCal for a while. SoCal was a desert before man turned it into a lush green paradise. That takes a lot of water. Around here you don’t see green grass yards like you do in SoCal. SoCal needs to get with the fact they live in the desert. Make sure the parks and zoo’s have the water they need but everything else needs to be redone in desert style landscaping.
It probably would not take a lot of weather engineering to push things just enough to cause the lack of water. We have not been getting the usual amount of rain from the monsoonal season for years.
Something else is at play. It would not surprise me one bit if the reset crowd did have a hand in it.
“less run off from the Rockies.”
Wrong. The Rockies have had the same average runoff as it always has had.