My only point is whether all that water going to California agricultural use is the highest and best use of the water. In areas I appraise in agricultural water rights may be measured in the $100's of dollars per acre foot in some rural areas. In urban water basins it's thousands or tens of thousands.
Seems to me that you could shut down a lot of that marginal agricultural use in California and use some towards conservation and re-allocate the rest to under-served urban areas. Are we going to miss a lot of that alfalfa?
Nevada's not griping. They're doing something about it. Time will tell whether taking water from northern agricultural aquifers and piping it down to Vegas will cause problems or not.
This is not a 'highest and best use' issue. Water is not just an economic commodity. It's life and death for all beings here on our planet.
We're talking food and feed production here. Before anyone moves to shut down farmers, it's first time to shut down municipal golf courses, quit watering grass on the medians, and shut down home owners to a small patch of grass or small gardens on their own sites.
Can farmers minimize waste? You bet. My area is served by an intricate system of irrigation ditches that feed off the Rio Grande River. Many of the ditches are dirt bottom, including the main canals and drain ditches that feed to and from the river. About the only ditches that are lined with concrete are the private, final destination canals. We could do light years better with simple heavy duty plastic liners in the bottom of these main ditches.
Were it me running the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy, I'd move to up the annual taxes ( A pittance. I pay $75 for 2.5 acres/year) to fund the project and the minute those canals were shut down for the season, I'd begin dredging and then break out the rolls of plastic and get busy. The semantics of the process could be worked through. It's imperative. We'd save somewhere between 60 and 80% of our agricultural water useage.
The California farming operations I've personally seen in Camarillo and Oxnard are far advanced in comparison to the similar food production operations I see in the southern end of my state and we truly need to adapt some of those practices. Mulch, black plastic, and specific delivery systems rather than flood irrigation would be huge. Unfortunately, the power to run pumps is also huge, which is why many have hung with the flood irrigation instead.
Marginal farming? That 'marginal' farming puts food on American tables, whether it be personal use or commercial production.
