OT Just how bad is the drought? Just curious OT

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

H. L. Mencken

Jun 15, 2015 - 02:30pm PT
Farmers are generally not permitted to sell their water rights to cities. If they started selling them it would devastate farming communities economies, further distorting the screwed up mess we have created by giving away water to one class, and charging another class ten times as much.

California's drought is so bad that farmers in Northern California are finding that their crops aren't their most valuable asset anymore—it's their water rights. So they're selling their water back to the state at crazy-high prices.

So it really doesn't matter how much goes abroad. If all of it stayed here it's still a bad investment.

In the winter of 1915, southern California was experiencing a devastating drought that had drained area reservoirs to record low levels over more than three consecutive years, causing massive agricultural and ranching losses. Residents of San Diego County were so desperate that the city of San Diego hired a man called Charles Hatfield, known as "the Rainmaker" [later immortalized in song by Bob Dylan as The Rainman]. The city promised Hatfield $10,000 if he could make it rain significantly by the end of the year. Hatfield's venture was apparently a success, but it is not known what actually caused the massive floods that tore through the county beginning December 9, the day after he started his inconspicuous scheme.

More than thirty-nine inches (991 mm) of rain fell during the following month, and storms continued deluging the county well into early 1916. The area's rivers and streams rose to their highest recorded levels in years. More than 200 bridges were washed out, entire communities were swept away, levees collapsed, and valleys were inundated. All the bridges along the San Diego, Sweetwater and Otay rivers were washed out except for a rail bridge that was left standing alone with its ends missing. The earthen Otay Dam, several miles southeast of the Sweetwater on the Otay River, burst on January 27 sending a wall of water into southern Chula Vista. Flooding deposited so much sediment that the southern end of San Diego Bay was filled with it – much of the sand remains today in the form of shoals that must be periodically dredged to accommodate boat traffic

“It’s actually stealing,” said state Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg, R-Sterling, a northeastern farming and ranching town on the plains, who voted against the rain barrel measure when it landed in the Agriculture, Natural Resources and Energy Committee he leads. “You might say, it’s a little bit of water, just a barrelful, how much damage could that do to someone downstream?”

But, he continued, “If it’s just a little bit, why wouldn’t we allow everyone to go to into 7-Eleven and take just one bottle of water, just a little bit?”

Jun 16, 2015 - 07:11am PT
I'm not sure what unsubsidized rates or market rates means in terms of farming. Irrigation water from any source in California is heavily subsidized by the federal government infrastructure in the form of the dams, canals, and basically free land to pump the water to. Without the water it's desert and worthless. There is no possible way to have the users pay for what it cost and economically farm.

Sure if you roll back the clock 75 years. But in today's reality, no. The water infrastructure is already paid for, in large part. Except of course for net new delivery systems and repairs. Let the rate payers cover those costs, as we do in my water district.

Its moot, We are not going to go that route anyway, so clarification is useless. We will go the opposite and fully socialize the water table, top to bottom, within a generation.

And there ain't gonna be no canal to bring down Canadian water to douse desert lands in old Mexico.

DMT

90.40.010
Eminent domain by the United States.
The United States is hereby granted the right to exercise the power of eminent domain to acquire the right to the use of any water, to acquire or extinguish any rights, and to acquire any lands or other property, for the construction, operation, repairs to, maintenance or control of any plant or system of works for the storage, conveyance, or use of water for irrigation purposes, and whether such water, rights, lands or other property so to be acquired belong to any private party, association, corporation or to the state of Washington, or any municipality thereof; and such power of eminent domain shall be exercised under and by the same procedure as now is or may be hereafter provided by the law of this state for the exercise of the right of eminent domain by ordinary railroad corporations, except that the United States may exercise such right in the proper court of the United States as well as the proper state court.


[1905 c 88 § 1; RRS § 7408.]

The researchers found that the Arabian Aquifer System, an important water source for more than 60 million people, is the most overstressed in the world suffering rapid depletion with little or no sign of recharging.

The Indus Basin aquifer of northwestern India and Pakistan is the second-most overstressed, and the Murzuk-Djado Basin in northern Africa is third.

California's Central Valley, utilised heavily for agriculture and suffering rapid depletion, was slightly better off ..