Historically farmers (and most people really) have sucked the area dry before getting worried.
US farmers are certainly doing that right now, the incentives encourage it, and they're quick to lobby against changes in incentives.
That's also what you get from a prisoner's dilemma, a farmer switching to conservation will increase their production prices and / or lower their yields (as they'll at least need to invest in new farming methods, probably new hardware, and will have to learn those), and they'll fall behind their neighbours to say nothing of the market as a whole.
You make a good point, but perhaps that one “their own” is at the helm can make a difference in ensuring trust so as to break the prisoner’s dilemma (see point 6 in the executive summary).
It's only because agriculture is the big user, and the most dependent on overdrawing water resources. Farmers are no different from other people, and the oft-quoted line of Upton Sinclair that "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his livelihood depends upon his not understanding it," answers your question. Farmers who have built a livelihood on irrigation are resistant to the notion that their water use is the problem, because if they admit it, they have to drastically change, or maybe give up, their way of making a living.
It's really no different from trying to convince a tech mogul that social media is harmful to children and adolescents. They can't see it, because they won't see it, or they won't see it, because the can't see it, since seeing it invalidates their business model.
I'd extend a bit more sympathy to farmers. When they purchased the land, they were also purchasing bundled water rights; land without the related water rights would have been a fraction of the price. And the property, inheritance, etc taxes they pay on the value of the land are assessed at a price that includes those rights. And all of a sudden when those rights become much more valuable, people want to take it from them?
It's a bitter pill to swallow, particularly when the farmer (not without reason) sees it as an attack on their way of life.
Yes, but I'd temper my sympathy with the knowledge that small farmers have mostly been pushed out by extremely large corporations. I have considerably less sympathy for them.
I am sympathetic with anyone whose livelihood and investments are threatened by external realities or evolving social expectations. But that has nothing to do with what I was saying, which is a realistic assessment of whether farmers will voluntarily alter their water usage. Most won't, and most won't even admit that their usage is a major problem that needs to be fixed. And it's for the reason I quoted: almost no one is able to see themselves as the problem if their livelihood or personal self-respect is invested in their not being the problem.
This isn't an abstraction to me. My parents were basically forced off the farm I grew up on, and their homestead made nearly valueless, by neighboring farmers whose hog-raising facilities and manure management made the place uninhabitable due to stench and dust. Their neighbors never saw their practices as a problem, at least until they retired and moved to town. I don't believe they were disingenuous in this. They simply were not equipped to imagine that their farming practices, on which they were dependent for their livelihood and self-respect, could be a terrible problem. It is precisely because they were deeply invested in them (both in $ and personal terms) that they could not see it.
ISTR some mentions of social media tech moguls raising their children either without access to social media at all, or at least severly limiting their screen time.
Having lived in Utah rural areas for "a while", they will have to have a dust bowl 2.0 in the ag area to be brought to their senses, it's that simple. No amount of logic or begging from liberals will change that. Reality has to set in
You see a similar effect in California, where farms continue to grow almonds and pistachios, highly profitable crops that require ridiculous amounts of water. Although some farms have starting switching away from these crops as water prices have soared, you can still see nut orchard after nut orchard as you drive through the central valley. Moreover, Big Ag is fighting tooth and nail to prevent any restrictions on water usage, claiming that dams are the only answer. Maybe try switching to a more sustainable crop? But that would mean less profit.
The Antelope Valley Aquifer in California has had thousands of feet of ground water depleted growing Alfalfa. It’s part of the Mojave Desert.
There used to be artesian springs over much of it, now the ground water is over 2500 feet below ground, and starting to be widely contaminated with arsenic.
It’s pretty mind blowing, frankly. This was generally all done via wells sunk on private property.
There has been ongoing litigation to get this under control for several decades that is starting to finally result in action.
> A factory or “fab” for making semiconductors needs a lot of water to operate. It’ll guzzle between 2 to 4 million gallons of water a day by some estimates, using the water to cool down equipment and clean silicon wafers. That’s about as much water as 13,698 to 27,397 Arizona residents might use in a day. Fabs are also pretty picky when it comes to water quality, they need to use “ultra-pure” water to prevent any impurities from damaging the chips.
While it would obviously be ridiculous to blame a political party for the weather... we can indeed lay blame on a political party for refusing (and blocking attempts) to build new water reservoirs in an ever-expanding, highly populated and frequently dry state.
Because that is a political decision, for better or worse.
California is currently drowning in water from the recent storms... and an awful lot of it will run straight out to the ocean. During the summertime... we deliberately open upstream dams so that downstream rivers can be full enough to support Tubbing, Boating and Recreational Fishing... which is kind of weird if you think about it.
California isn't one region, and the monsoon season does the same thing to Arizona as it does to Southern California. The opening of dams to support sports is usually a bipartisan decision (conservatives as well as liberals like their electorates to be happy).
You're right about the sporting uses... it's just absurd given California's dry history.
However, the lack of sufficient reservoirs is indeed a real problem. The population and it's water needs have greatly eclipsed the state's storage capabilities, which creates a negative feedback cycle during dryer seasons/years.
Sorry, I thought the comment was associating politics with environment.
Utah is already one of the most urban states (90%). And "conservative technocrats" mostly run things at the state level (SLC itself is very Democrat), so I'm a bit surprised the governor comes from a farm.
The real problem here is not seeing that nature doesn’t draw arbitrary lines in the soil. What affects Utah will make its way to California. Keystone ecosystem disruption is very bad news.