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> Saying that people in Salt Lake should cough up enough cash to outbid the people who want to grow alfalfa to sell it to China is kinda gross

It's also incredibly easy; SLC could outbid the farmers hundreds of times over and it wouldn't be even a rounding error in the city budget. It's difficult to see anyone opposing this as anything other than useful idiots for the ag lobby.

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Because it’s easy is not a valid reason to charge the public to compete with business for the right to keep the lake and not get sick living near it. We need to restrict business interests from driving critical resources into the ground for profit. I’m all for farming and farmers making some money, but we can’t let that be unlimited like it has been forever.

And it’s incredibly short sighted to suggest we should go down that road even if it’s easy. The only reason it’s affordable now is because way-too-cheap water rights have been grandfathered in for decades and decades. There hasn’t been free market prices ever, so if we introduce them, the prices are going to skyrocket immediately, and it won’t be so easy anymore.

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