Comment by mlyle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mlyle | Hacker News Reader

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> Get back to us with real numbers for non-farm use of water and you may have an argument.

E.g. urban water use was about 6 million acre feet in 1970 and is about 8 million acre feet now-- +33%, but a small share of the total. Agricultural water use was about 30 million acre feet in 1970 and is about 37 million acre feet now-- +23%.

So, agricultural uses of water have increased a big fraction of urban increases on a percentage basis, and 3.5 times as much on an absolute basis.

> If they've indeed moved towards more water intensive crops

Almonds have grown from 100 million pounds a year in 1970 to 3.1 billion pounds in 2020-- +3000%. This is a change in allocation that no one rational would make with the scarcity of water in California, but artificially cheap agricultural water encourages it.

> as noted elsewhere taking their water rights away will not be cheap as it's a "taking" as used in the Bill of Rights

While occasionally a court has agreed with this argument, for the most part federal judges have rejected this line of argument.

> While occasionally a court has agreed with this argument, for the most part federal judges have rejected this line of argument.

If you're open to naked theft as so much of the US and world is today, that's going to have long term consequences you won't like. Water rights are a real thing in US jurisprudence, their abrogation by Federal judges, especially I assume in the 9th Circuit doesn't make them any less so. As I said, "if the rule of law still means something...."

> If you're open to naked theft as so much of the US and world is today

So, uh, I don't think that property rights should extend to a large share of all water produced in the state in perpetuity. It's been bad law from the beginning and we should not be stuck with it forever. Fortunately, California never really went down this path.

In California, the State Water Resources Control Board issues water right permits, and can modify them. They have a "senior interest" in property law to the individual holders of these permits.

Of course, snatching back water rights isn't necessary for sanity to prevail. All that has to happen is the state needs to start moving to charging a true market cost for agricultural water use, and this is well within the state's taxation powers. One of the most commonly agreed legitimate uses of governmental power is to allocate the cost of externalities.

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