"The meat industry consumes over half of all water used for all purposes in the United States. Most of this water is used to irrigate cattle feedlots."
I don't really see a comparison of the meat industry in California compared to other agriculture in the state. I see a lot of facts and numbers comparing eating a steak vs showering, for example, but if the steak came from the other side of the country, then it would make little difference in terms of the Californian drought.
Looking at a source from the HuffPo article (http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1405/pdf/circ1405.pdf), I can see 188 million gal/day used in livestock in California, while a staggering 23,100 million gal/day is used for irrigation.
So no, giving up meat would not really help with the Californian drought. It is true that meat consumes a bunch of water, but that is a drop in the bucket compared to the agricultural use.
Except that the bulk of water used by cattle production is that >same< irrigation. I can't find numbers breaking down the irrigation usage, but I would be surprised if it doesn't comprise the bulk of agricultural irrigation.
"By far, the largest component of beef’s water footprint is the huge volume of virtual water consumed by cattle through their feed, in this case both forage and grain."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-j-rose/how-to-take-long-s...
http://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/californias-drought-whos-...
"The meat industry consumes over half of all water used for all purposes in the United States. Most of this water is used to irrigate cattle feedlots."
http://darwin.bio.uci.edu/sustain/global/sensem/MeatIndustry...