Another article about water in California that doesn't mention agriculture and uses gallons instead of acre-feet to make the numbers look huge. Pools, even five of them for one house, are a red herring.
Some farmers in the Imperial Valley (east of Los Angeles) have an abundance of water because it comes from the Rockies and they have strong water rights. Another group near Sacramento have strong water rights as well. All of the farmers in the central valley are getting 0% of their water allocation for the last two years which kinda puts 25-40% voluntary reductions in perspective.
And as for water rights, the western water system (i.e. "prior appropriation") is the problem -- along with the non-regulation of groundwater extraction -- not an excuse for it.
It doesn't seem like pointing the finger at the farmers who are bearing the brunt of the drought is very fair or productive. Just makes farmers feel like their livelihood and way of life is being threatened. What would you do if you were in their shoes?
I'm not using prior appropriation as an excuse, just pointing out that the more egregious wasting of water in agriculture is the exception not the rule. It'd be the equivalent of farmers citing the Bel Air resident as representative of all city dwellers.
If prior appropriation is the problem, what would you do policy wise to move forward? It's a very hard problem to solve and I'm sincerely curious to hear proposed solutions.
To put things in perspective, alfalfa and corn both of which are overwhelmingly fed to animals and the former of which is exported in large quantities to be fed to animals in Asia, together consume more water annually than all residential users. And those are just two, low value (per acre-foot of water consumed) crops.
As for what should be done:
1) The implementation date for sustainable groundwater pumping enforcement should be moved up from 2040(!) to 2018.
2) As an intermediate step in the elimination of prior appropriation, several secondary doctrines that reduce transferability and encourage overuse should be eliminated. Including but not limited to: no harm to juniors, anti-speculation, beneficial use, and appurtancy.
3a) Put together an all star team of taking clause and due process experts to figure out the least expensive way to seize and retire all water rights consistent with the fifth and fourteenth amendment, then do that.
3b) Replace prior appropriation with an annual water permit auction for surface and subsurface sources. Use the money to pay off whatever debt was incurred in 3a and thereafter use the money for the general welfare.
So really 3 is your solution: compensate rights holders and then have the government sell water rights on the open market. I'm open to this idea. Would everyone be buying water on open market? or would you support subsidies for cities, industry, environmental causes, etc?
I really feel like you can make the argument for 3 without demonizing farmers.
P.S. 5th amendment = right to not incriminate yourself. 14th amendment is equal protection and due process. Not sure how they are related.
The fifth amendment technically only applies to the federal government, but the fourteenth amendment due process clause has been held to "incorporate" the just compensation clause against the states. The due process clause also has direct implications for eminent domain under the procedural due process cases.
With an auction system, I don't see any reason to subsidize anyone at wholesale. Environmental "use" (i.e. not letting rivers run dry) would be, and should be, considered when setting the total withdrawal permits. Given relative demand, it is highly likely that the market clearing price would be such that it would make up only a very small portion of the total retail cost to urban end users, the bulk of those costs are in purification and delivery. If anything I expect wholesale costs to urban water districts to go down. Whether or not state or local government should subsidize potable water delivery to (poor) end users is a separate issue.
Finally, I don't see what's either laughable, ugly, or demonizing about stating the facts of the matter plainly. California agriculture makes up more than 80% of California's annual water consumption. The shortfall due to reduced precipitation is far less than that.
To add more perspective, over 100 days that 30,000 gallons of water per day could bear eight and a half acres of corn.
Most of California's crops use more water than that but that is one comparison with agriculture.