California looks Down Under for help with drought

San Francisco

AUSTRALIAN farms and cities manage almost every drop of available water to make the most of supplies on the driest inhabited continent. No wonder California is looking Down Under for help with its record drought.

Four years of historic water loss have left the most-populous US state with depleted reservoirs, fallow farmland and billions of dollars in emergency spending to keep faucets open. Unlike Australia, where water is tightly regulated and tracked by meters, usage in parts of California is unmonitored, urban supply remains cheap, and aquifers can be tapped by almost any landowner with a permit to drill a well.

"We are very, very inefficient as a society on how we use water," said Felicia Marcus, chair of the State Water Resources Control Board, which regulates supplies for 39 million residents in Californ…