ON THE BRINK OF TRAGEDY: REASSESSING GROUNDWATER MANAGEMENT IN CALIFORNIA

摘要

Agriculture has been the lifeblood of California's Central San Joaquin Valley for decades. Valley fruits, grains, nuts, vegetables, meat, and dairy have fed the United States and, to some extent, the entire world. There is no question the world depends on agri-business and agribusiness depends on water. However, competing interests for water set the stage for a complex game of resource allocation and assertion of preexisting legal rights resulting in more water being promised to users on paper than actually exists. Users claiming "paper" water rights may presume that water is available when allocated and that each other user claiming a right to it will take only their lawful reasonable share. This system of prior appropriation creates order to the distribution of water resources placing senior rights over junior appropriators. By its nature, this system places all but the most senior rights holders in a state of perpetual uncertainty about their respective water deliveries.