why is California always in a drought crisis, but landlocked states in the Midwest are not?
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Apart from the other answers about agriculture and rain patterns, one thing to keep in mind is also just how massive the infrastructure to bring water to California is and what a big business that is in and of it self. Most of the Western United States is pretty much a desert and for that reason people traditionally haven’t settled there much. There’s some areas of California that are naturally wetter but farming in the Central Valley depends on 100 of miles long aqueducts bringing water in from elsewhere. Notably those were built by the US Military even if the benefits primarily go to a very narrow slice of rich land owners and the engineering effort would have ultimately been better spent elsewhere.
As such part of the answer is the same as “why is there a labor shortage?” or “why is it bad when interest rates rise?”. Some people have made a lot of money off a certain system and now they want to create a sense of crisis to get everyone else to pay to extend the life of that system. I was in California in 2015 where we were told to take 2 minute showers to save water but lawns were still watered during the day, suggesting that maybe the there was no real crisis.
I can suggest looking up Oligarch Valley for more on how the ecology and economy of California depends on a lot of water imports, even if it mainly benefits a pretty thin slice of the population and everyone else pays.
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