I honestly can't speak on the Californian mindset since my experience living there was only a few months so I can't say for sure it would work. I think it would give leverage to the people trying to enact agriculture changes though.

Once people can't water their lawns you can quite easily say "You can't water your lawns but look at this footage of MegaAgriCorp flooding this near desert field for days on end(I saw this near Delhi where a maybe 10 acre field that was rock hard was covered in plastic and flooded for a week then planted) just to get an extra few acres of land." and you will have a lot more advocates for change even if most people just go 'Meh'.