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Comment by avgcorrection | Hacker News Reader

That’s terrible.

Is the primary reason overconsumption from farming (70% of the consumption according to Yahoo News)? If so then I guess they could import more agricultural products. That’s easier than having most of the residents use less water.

But another problem might be: where would the food come from? California also has a drought problem. I don’t know.

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Much agricultural use of water in the american west is intentionally wasteful to protect the farmer's future rights to use water. Farmers are afraid of losing a possible edge over their neighbors if they do the right thing. Not providing a legal mechanism to fix this, even during this worsening crisis, is an utter failure of our country.

The Midwest would be great. It’s right next door and the largest piece of arable land in the world.

Water levels supporting much of midwest[1] farming and ranching have been dropping for decades, far faster than the refill rate. Even areas that have formed water-use co-operatives have been unable to convince themselves to reduce draw enough to matter. Even if they zeroed their usage, the co-ops don't cover enough land area to make up for the surrounding areas that are drawing from the same aquifer.

[1] Leaving aside the cultural oddity of USA-ians who think the living not only east of centre, but as far east as any part of Ohio, counts as "midwest".

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