[mdavis6890]

The best plan for CA to get their water under control is:

1. Fix agriculture water rights to numerical limits, somewhat higher than what is already being used. This will cap water usage and move away from an all-you-can-drink model, but not penalize existing farmers.

2. Buy back those water rights from farmers using a reverse-auction, allowing the farmers who generate the least value from their water to sell it back to the state.

[boringg]

3. Allow Purple pipe for a majority of uses

4. Minimize amount of people with wells which is depleting the aquifer (the really big problem)

5. Minimize growth in SoCal & Desert communities

[mdavis6890]

3. What is purple pipe? 4. They have to get their water from somewhere, and clearly there is not anywhere else to get it. Wells are not the problem - farming is the problem. 5. SoCal and Desert communities don't use a meaningful amount of water. This is the whole point. ALL communities, businesses, industry, etc - put together - use very little of the water. Nothing is helped by limiting those uses of water. Only farming matters.

[boringg]

No, wells are part of the problem.

Purple pipe is recycled water.

Annual rainfall is like your surplus/deficit - Aquifer levels are how much money you have in the bank. Unregulated wells tap the aquifer and don't allow it to replenish which then dries the ground causing it sink amongst other problems.

Have you ever driven through all of California - Ag valley, desert, norcal, east of the sierra?

5. Desert communities don't use meaningful amount of water - what are you talking about?

[whiplash451]

Interesting. How is this implementable realistically, though? Asking genuinely.

[mdavis6890]

1. Place a moratorium on any new water rights. (So no starting new farms with new claims, etc)

2. Identify all existing water rights holders. Every single farm/lot with some kind of water privileges. I'm sure there are thousands.

3. Determine how much water they used over, say, the last 5 years. This is obviously the hardest part, but it's no harder than many other large government projects. You'd probably have to use some estimation, formulas, etc - and it won't be perfect. It would take a couple of years and there would be a lot of wrangling. Similar maybe to housing assessment values. Probably include an appeal process as well, just like you can appeal a house assessment.

4. Give each user a new numerical water cap (say, 500k acre-feet), that is 125% or so of above usage. This will avoid hurting existing farms by allowing them to continue using water as they have been, with even some room for growth - but still puts a fence around the problem.

5. Require metering of all ag water, with random audits for enforcement and stiff penalties for violations.

6. Use the state's very large budget surplus to buy up those numerical water rights from the lowest bidders until the water crisis goes away.

[s1artibartfast]

1-5 already describes the legal process in California that has been used for the last 40 years to adjudicate water conflicts.

Number 6 is the sticking point and why we see so much gnashing of teeth.

[s1artibartfast]

really simple. If a city wants more water it writes a big check and buys it from someone who has it.