Canadian Politics Today

Over the previous decade, the price per pound for pecans and pistachios has roughly doubled, driven largely by demand from China. But those nuts, like almonds, require an exorbitant amount of both water and capital to farm. An average orchard can cost more than $20,000 an acre to clear and raise, in part because the trees don’t bear nuts for five to 12 years. In the valley, where land is a fraction of the price of California’s, the principal cost for nut farmers is water. During sapling years, trees consume only about two acre-feet of water a year but grow to require as much as six acre-feet when mature, among the highest of any crop. To ensure a consistent supply of water from an aquifer already plummeting deeper every year, farmers often drill a well every 160 acres, each to a depth of at least 1,000 or 1,500 feet. One farming conglomerate, expanding from Minnesota, bought or drilled 293 wells, some pumping more than 2,000 gallons a minute.

Suddenly, the very qualities of the valley that had nurtured generations of family agriculture — its cheap ground, its lack of groundwater regulation — seemed to threaten its existence. In the span of a few months, Intent to Drill notices increased almost fivefold, as Chase Farms and the National Pecan Company, two of the largest pecan growers in the world, bought and consolidated several thousand-acre farms. Soon, tree-nut orchards blanketed about 20,000 acres, forcing the state to put a six-month moratorium on new farms. (Today, there are 35,000 acres of tree nuts in the valley.) The groundwater had created, as local farmer Ted Haas put it, “a gold-rush mentality,” which in the next five years yielded a dozen new vineyards, as well as 20,000 acres of corn and wheat and 16 greenhouses for NatureSweet Tomatoes, the country’s largest producer. As yearly water consumption doubled, the sands and gravels within the aquifer began to shift and collapse, causing the elevation to sink more than 15 feet in places. About 50 miles of earth fissures ruptured the surface of the valley, even splitting a major highway in half.

To Seitz, the farmers’ arrival seemed like a blessing at first. “There’s more outside money moving in, and it’s great for the area,” he said. “That’s good for the John Deere dealership. I’m in the crop-consulting business — if I sell product, it’s good for me. It’s good for irrigation companies.” But a few weeks after the community meeting, Seitz sent a concerned email to 15 of his clients and business partners. “We need to get together and figure this water thing out,” he wrote. As more farms arrived and more families lost water, Seitz had come to realize that the boom was “good for the area on one hand, but we’re still shooting ourselves in the foot.” Most of the recipients were, like Seitz, prominent local farmers who owned modest, family-run acreages with long legacies in the valley.

Because the "government=bad" idea is so entrenched, they can't get it together to push for some kind of sane management.  Meanwhile the lobbyists (they don't really think government is bad as long as they do what they say) are still getting new developments approved.

Can't put a price on water, just like you can't put a price on carbon. That is anti-capitalist.

READ THE DAMN ARTICLE

A clean safe supply of water costs money, it just doesn’t appear out of your tap. You will pay for it one way or another.

Water should be a right....   for the individual.  For a corporation, they need to pay the true price of the resource.

So you'd be fine with privatizing water resources then?  Like gas and electricity?