It always bothers me when I drive past suburban office parks in the Chicago area and see lawn irrigation systems at work in the middle of a rainstorm. I have planted mostly native grasses and flowers, and hardly watered them at all this dry summer. Yeah, they did not floweer as much and the flowers did not last long. Still, I would rather have that than be spraying water over a manicured green lawn every day. A lot of research has gone into visual preferences in landscaping. Unfortunately, from a water-saving perspective, most people are not like me. They would rather have the neatly trimmed green lawn instead of the overgrown prairie.
I wonder, though. Water is likely to become the defining issue in many jurisdictions. Ignore the overseas locales - we have major cities, little towns and agricultural regions throughout the west that already do not have the water resources to meet demand. What happens when the aquifers begin to dry up? And as for the Colorado River, well, it already doesn't reach the sea. Yeah, how we use water is something to be concerned about.