Using California, specifically Southern California's heavy irrigation and consumption of water pumped in from Northern California and elsewhere, director Jacob Morrison examines a growing water crisis involving far too many players fighting over far too scarce a resource.
At the heart of the film is the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta which provides water to much of the state including Los Angeles, San Francisco, and one of the largest (and most profitable) corporate industrial agricultural businesses in the world. The Delta also provides water to its existing area, including farms and an increasingly fragile ecosystem feeling the effects of decades of too much water being taken out of the Delta. The documentary offers examples of the ecological disaster of Lake Erie and the destruction of the Owens Valley as potential futures for the Delta unless changes are made.
