Comment by deaddodo

The CWP is designed for robustness, on top of delivery. Those aqueducts you're pointing to that feed into the municipal portion of the Inland Empire are frequently empty because the IE has it's own (mostly) self-sufficient water store (the San Bernardino Mountains). They exist in case there is a point in which those regions need water fed in. You can literally just drive down to them at pretty much any time through the year and see that they're dry.

Additionally, if you're focused on the 6% (out of 11% total) water allocation that goes towards supporting the infrastructure of 22million people over the 50% that goes into non-optimal agriculture (almonds, for instance) in-between the two...then you're missing the forest for the trees, my friend.