For the first time since 1991, California has declared that it's officially in a drought. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger made the announcement last week, perfectly timed to support a law that the state's Legislature has just passed to help curb its growing water crisis. Starting now, any new housing development plan in the state will have to prove an ample water supply for the next 20 years, or the plan will be vetoed.

Already, development plans in Riverside, San Luis Obispo, and Kern counties have either been denied or scrapped because the developers could not find adequate water supplies. And some of these plans have been for enormous developments -- one was to include 1,500 homes.

California has become an economic superpower in recent decades, with Silicon Valley, wine, other agricultural products, and of course, entertainment being chief industries in the state. As such, its population has skyrocketed: currently 38 million people reside in California, and experts project that number to increase nearly 20% by 2020, to 45 million.

Nevertheless, the state has wisely recognized that while economic and population growth are great for California, lacking sufficient water for that surplus population is bad for everyone. It will result in higher costs for fresh water supplies, a strained agricultural industry, and of course, a dehydrated population of old and new Californians alike.

California also recently approved plans to treat sewer water around Los Angeles to make it drinkable, an initiative that could provide up to 70 million additional gallons of water per day to the area.

And while homespun water conservation awareness campaigns, such as college students timing their showers and turning "speed bathing" into a kind of dormitory sport, are wonderful, we simply need major initiatives like the one in California to achieve immediate and widespread benefits.