I would think that fruit trees require lots of water, or how else would they yield juicy fruit.
They do indeed. He's putting that water to good practical use rather than wasting it on a lush lawn or a swimming pool.
For his older trees, he uses gray water from his kitchen sink, and a rickety system of PVC pipes propped up on bricks to collect rainwater off his roof. Those pipes are dusty these days because of the drought, but when it rains, instead of running down his nearly vertical driveway into the street, all that free water gushes down the gutters around his roof and into the orchard soil, made spongey and friable by years of compost and mulch.
“I would think that fruit trees require lots of water, or how else would they yield juicy fruit.”
The guy in the article lives in L.A. The basin imports a huge amount from canals, reservoirs, and lakes from all over California. Surprisingly more trees are lost to over-irrigating than probably to any other cause. Over-irrigation combined with poor drainage especially leads to tree death. For the period after leaf drop in the fall and until shoot and leaf growth get underway in the spring, trees normally will not need irrigation.
https://homeorchard.ucanr.edu/The_Big_Picture/Irrigation/
In the San Joaquin Valley, north of L.A., one of the highest yield of fruit tress of different types in the US exists. And as long as they can get water from the Sierras and still have ground water, they can do quite well. The drought they are having over the last decade is effecting snow in the high mountains more than lack of rains. If it weren’t for irrigation in the valley the place would be a desert.
wy69