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Comment by lumost | Hacker News Reader

The southwest water rights situation is a clear case where eminent domain is required. The current situation leads to predictable disaster, eminent domain the water with a steady free market price scheme introduction. If necessary, Ban the production of high water crops in the short term to shore up supply.

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Agreed. If users can’t act responsibly, and they haven’t been for years, then effectively nationalise the river. Cheaper to pay farmers to not grow high water use crops, cease meat growing like cattle, and leave the ground fallow for a decade at least.

In case, like me, you had to look up "Eminent Domain":

> Eminent domain refers to the power of the government to take private property and convert it into public use. The Fifth Amendment provides that the government may only exercise this power if they provide just compensation to the property owners.

they arent really water rights, they are fictitious entitlements to more rainfall than exists.

A contract promising something that breaks laws of phisics would be considered invalid. These rights should be too.

That's not really how it works. No one has the right to pull more water from a river than exists in the river. You have a seniority system where the most senior gets to use as much water as they need, and then the second most senior does, and then so on. At a certain point the water runs out no one gets water at that point.

California just gratuitously rejected a desalination plant: https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/12/us/california-water-desaliniz..., too: the state is not serious about water. It rejected that plant and won't charge one price for water regardless of user; agricultural uses are subsidized. Get a free market in water and we'll see what happens.

One thing to note is that the "free market price" for water would probably result in far MORE irrigated lawns than currently exist in CA.

Farmers pay nothing for water (they have water rights), and vastly exceed residential use. So if you shifted all water consumption to pay-per-gallon, you'd make it very easy for suburban families to pay chump change to irrigate .2 acre yards.

Not saying it's good or bad, but it would happen.

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