Pugsley; in California authorities use real time monitoring of both water meters and satellite vision to detect exploitation of water for irrigations.
NOT in Australia, it's oh so easy to put in a large black tube and just siphon water without ever being held to account - let alone fooling with meters.
As for extracting water from a system as if there's no end to supply; clearly our pollies are NOT taking any notice of what is happening downstream of those great big water guzzling cotton farms.