[HN Gopher] Wells are running dry in Southwest as foreign-owned ...
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Wells are running dry in Southwest as foreign-owned farms feed
cattle overseas
Author : rntn
Score : 164 points
Date : 2022-11-06 13:08 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lite.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lite.cnn.com)
| renewiltord wrote:
| Foreign ownership doesn't matter since domestic owned farms will
| do the same. Drive down California's Central Valley to LA and
| you'll find farmers' signs decrying Newsom for "wasting our
| water" (letting the rivers flow into the sea).
| labrador wrote:
| A civilization in the desert and that wastes the limited water
| supply for the profit of the owners at the top should fail. When
| the last drop runs out maybe people will wake up. That's my view
| from a distance.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Except then its an expensive emergency for the state to deal
| with, it would be far less expensive for the average stake
| holder to create a political solution that either resolves the
| shortage or creates a way for the towns to depopulate in a
| dignified way over time.
| tzs wrote:
| Here was an interesting recent longer story about megafarms vs
| residents conflicts over water in one particular Arizona county
| and what residents are trying to do about it: "The Cochise County
| Groundwater Wars--A thirsty megafarm is driving a libertarian
| enclave in Arizona to embrace a radical solution: government
| regulation" [1]. I submitted it to HN a few days ago but it went
| nowhere [2].
|
| It's one in a series of several articles on climate change and
| megadroughts [3].
|
| [1] https://grist.org/regulation/arizona-groundwater-cochise-
| cou...
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33407914
|
| [3] https://grist.org/series/drought-parched/
| selimnairb wrote:
| Seize all foreign-owned land, put capital controls in place to
| keep this from happening again.
| pjc50 wrote:
| .. very Cuban. This kills foreign investment, and possibly
| results in retaliatory seizure of land overseas owned by US
| nationals.
| latchkey wrote:
| > Seize all foreign-owned land
|
| According to Native Americans, we already did that.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Precedent.
| Danieru wrote:
| What I find most interesting is how this plays into Warren
| Buffet's complaints about the American trade deficit: America has
| been selling long term assets to buy short term toys.
|
| In Warren Buffet's explanation he uses selling farm land as this
| exact example.
|
| Of course under free trade we would expect foreign buyers to own
| bits of land. The challenge for America: these are not land
| swaps. America is not buying up bits of land elsewhere. Instead
| America is selling these bits of land for trinkets.
|
| The US Dollar is a global reserve currency. Which in the abstract
| sounds nice to have other countries sell US things in exchange
| for more US debt: but in practice that means selling assets. US
| Government Bonds or US Farm Land. Both are assets openly traded.
|
| The issue is not foreigners. The issue is America is running up a
| debt and is selling the farm.
| causality0 wrote:
| Here's a hot take: nobody anywhere should be able to purchase
| land they're not allowed to live on.
| bparsons wrote:
| I would go further. No one should be able to purchase land
| they do not live on.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| You think the state should own all land except residential?
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| Functionally they own all land. There's just contract law
| blocking the direct seizure.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Here's a hot take. China did it right by not selling land and
| only selling a 75 year land lease agreement.
|
| US would be better off if land was owned by the people and
| reclaimed by the people after a generational time period.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Leasehold comes with its own problems.
|
| Part of why China now has a imploding property market is
| that governments got addicted to leasehold revenues to keep
| taxes low, and so encouraged a lot of artificial scarcity.
| Affordability is much worse there; house prices in NYC are
| 10.5x income, SF is 12, LA is 13.
|
| Shanghai has a house to income price ratio of 47
| pjc50 wrote:
| So, like H1B but worse; if you're an immigrant but not a
| permanent resident, if you get stopped at the border for a
| visa error your house gets seized?
|
| (it's quite bizarre how this story seems to have brought out
| a desire on HN for Soviet levels of state controlled
| farming!)
| vkou wrote:
| It's not bizarre, when you consider that the why of the
| communist revolution was driven by a popular desire for
| land reform. (Also Bread and Peace, neither of which could
| be offered by the provisional government of the February
| revolution. [1])
|
| And nothing about our current land use and tax policy
| results in _good_ land use. It can, at best, result in good
| land use for some of the people owning it, but that doesn
| 't optimize for what is good for anyone else.
|
| If you let the situation rot too much, the same factors
| that drove that revolution can result in similar political
| instability. I don't believe we are close to that point,
| though.
|
| [1] Of course, ironically, a coup backed by a strong public
| desire for peace resulted in a civil war which was in every
| respect worse than World War I for every participant.
| mushbino wrote:
| A huge amount of farmland in Ukraine has been bought recently
| by American corporations.
| hulitu wrote:
| They are there to help. Themselves.
| User23 wrote:
| The great thing about selling land to foreigners is that
| foreigners can't vote and we can just eminent domain it back.
| See Kelo vs. New London.
|
| Incidentally the debt America is running up is ultimately owed
| to the Federal Reserve, which is a creature of the US
| government. There are major unsustainable problems with US
| economic policy, but Congress borrowing from a bank that it
| controls[1] isn't one of them.
|
| [1] As Dune taught us the power to destroy a thing is the power
| to control it, and Congress can assuredly destroy the Fed.
| klipt wrote:
| But thankfully we don't live in a libertarian utopia where
| owning all the land means that you automatically run the world.
|
| The land remains in America subject to American law which is
| decided by American voters. The value of the land can be
| recovered for Americans by e.g. taxing it and spending the
| money on services for citizens.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| The land is already being taxed? I suspect though the water
| (in this case) is not -- or not effectively.
| klipt wrote:
| Right taxing negative externalities more would be a good
| thing, but I think that's kind of independent of whether
| the land is owned by a foreigner or a local?
| kodah wrote:
| > But thankfully we don't live in a libertarian utopia where
| owning all the land means that you automatically run the
| world
|
| Not a libertarian anymore, but this sentiment has nothing to
| do with libertarianism. You also can't recover something like
| water with taxes. It takes years to refill those aquifers if
| you begin overusing them.
|
| Edit: Very disappointing to see reductive politics do so well
| on here. Keep in mind, Libertarians only have ever garnered
| 1.2% of the national vote. Your dishing is literally just a
| signal of your own shittiness.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _It takes years to refill those aquifers if you begin
| overusing them._
|
| Thousands of years if not longer in the case of fossil
| aquifers. In regions where the aquifers are capped by an
| impermeable layer, rain water does not replenish the ground
| water at any meaningful speed. In these regions, using
| ground water is unsustainable no matter how much money
| you're charging for it or what you're using it for. Some of
| these aquifers were filled thousands of years ago during
| climate conditions drastically different from today, and
| these will never refill under present or foreseeable
| climate conditions.
|
| Let people farm there using the finite water supply and
| they'll make a lot of money up front, but that gravy train
| has to stop eventually. But by the time the water runs out
| they've made a lot of money, and probably use that money to
| lobby for wetter regions to hand over their water too.
|
| Tapping fossil aquifers should be illegal. If you can't
| make due with surface water and/or aquifers that refill
| regularly from surface water, then you should go somewhere
| else. Don't farm in deserts.
| jmyeet wrote:
| You're touching on the Triffin Dilemma [1]. Basically, running
| a trade deficit is almost inevitable with any global reserve
| currency. There's not much you can do about that other than ot
| be a global reserve currency and there's simply no way that's
| going to happen voluntarily. The US derives too much power from
| the status of the US dollar.
|
| The other issue you've touched on is a mistake that even
| economists make, which is to conflate the freedom of trade with
| the free movement of capital. These are two entirely different
| things. If you buy something, that's trade. If you sell land,
| that's the movement of capital. You can and should have policy
| that honors that distinction.
|
| About the time the TPP was being rejected, I saw this comic
| [2], which honestly is worth a read as it explains pretty
| accurately this distinction.
|
| Another angle to this is debt trap diplomacy [3].
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma
|
| [2]: https://economixcomix.com/home/tpp/
|
| [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt-trap_diplomacy
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Same thing happened in the 90s and 00s. There was worry that
| the Japanese were buying everything.
| CountSessine wrote:
| Yes exactly - and the US dollar plunged afterward and sank
| most of those investments. Trading goods for capital
| investment isn't the one-sided trade it appears to be.
| ethotool wrote:
| This reminds me of the toll roads here in America. We can't
| afford to take care of our own roads so we've opened it up to
| foreign investment. Companies based internationally now own our
| roads too.
| whatthesmack wrote:
| And unsurprisingly they're some of the best roads on which to
| drive. Also, I've never been able to drive faster than I have
| on a toll road in Texas. Also, the idea that the people who
| use it are the people who pay for it is pretty neat.
| ethotool wrote:
| What about the gasoline tax that we pay for on every gallon
| that's supposed to go towards our roads? Not only are we
| being taxed on every gallon but we have to rely on foreign
| investment too? It should be either or.
| oezi wrote:
| > America is not buying up bits of land elsewhere
|
| American investors incl. Private Equity are still owning and
| buying up quite a lot of foreign companies. European countries
| are quite afraid of the pockets of American PE and VCs to
| gobble up the most promising or profitable businesses.
| toss1 wrote:
| And not only the farm assets, but the other natural assets, not
| to mention the know-how of manufacturing (the stupidest thing
| we ever did was follow the MBA's recommendations that "labor is
| just fungible, ship it off to the lowest-cost markets").
|
| >>"You can't take water and export it out of the state, there's
| laws about that," said Arizona geohydrologist Marvin Glotfelty,
| a well-drilling expert. "But you can take 'virtual' water and
| export it; alfalfa, cotton, electricity or anything created in
| part from the use of water."
|
| Seems it is time to put a stop to a LOT of that. Fortunately we
| already are returning semiconductor & other mfg. Must keep this
| up...
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| What about labor that is fungible insofar as it is easily
| done by robots?
| toss1 wrote:
| Not to be rude, but you don't work much with manufacturing
| or robots, do you?
|
| Even if, and especially if, a mfg process is highly
| automated, it takes myriad _layers of expertise_ to get it
| right. That is the _LAST_ thing you want to ship overseas
| to your adversaries, which both increases their expertise
| in the field and your dependence on them.
|
| Economically, it is long-term-stupid. Strategically, it is
| suicide.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| High tech manufacturing is _even more_ important to keep
| domestic.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| > America is not buying up bits of land elsewhere.
|
| I can't comment for the rest of the world, but US corporations
| are certainly buying up farming and forestry land in my
| country, New Zealand:
|
| https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/united-states-buying-up-...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| applicable here -- "A reflection on the lasting legacy of 1970s
| USDA Secretary Earl Butz"
|
| https://grist.org/article/the-butz-stops-here/
|
| many American hippy environmentalists cried in pain, since some
| of these farms are their birthing grounds; but in the mix was a
| hopeless morass of post-Civil War small holders with provably
| dysfunctional operations, and the promises of Big Returns for
| Big Capital on the other side of that fence -- where the grass
| is always greener.
| jeffbee wrote:
| > America is not buying up bits of land elsewhere.
|
| What I always said about the Bush wars. For the cost of those
| wars, we could have bought all of rural Canada.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I don't think that would work; 89% of Canada is owned by the
| Crown. I doubt the Crown would allow even a substantial
| fraction of Canada to be sold to America. It's not as though
| they're strapped for cash, so what's in it for them?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Alaska was owned by the Tsar of Russia and they sold us
| Alaska. Who knows what kind of deal could have been struck
| with the Saxe-Coburg despot.
| mastax wrote:
| You could try to come up with a scheme that targets people you
| don't like, but that leaves you with an inconvenient truth:
| people you _do_ like are just as capable of sucking the wells
| dry.
| jeffbee wrote:
| True, the Americans of western Kansas have managed to drain the
| aquifers there right down to zero.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Not sure what point you're making. Let's pivot.
|
| Fresh water at the moment is not a short-term renewable
| resource. In some places fresh water takes a long time to
| correct when there is an input/output imbalance.
|
| So just like any non-renewable resource, particularly one vital
| to life and food, it should be guarded as a local and national
| security asset.
| mastax wrote:
| Let me be more clear.
|
| The article is very focused on the "evil foreigners" angle,
| which is understandable. I also do not like Saudi Arabia
| buying up farms and exporting water. But this problem is a
| tiny subset of the overall problem, which is unsustainable
| water use. I am concerned that by focusing too much on the
| evil foreigners, we'll end up with a solution targeted at the
| evil foreigners, or exporting alfalfa, and we'll end up with
| the same farms growing alfalfa for cows in California or
| Arizona which does not solve the problem at all.
|
| What we need is to cap all water usage to sustainable levels,
| ideally with a cap and trade or market system which would
| incentivize investing in water conservation and encourage
| efficient land use. Given how climate change legislation has
| gone in the US we'll probably end up with the worst water
| uses being banned, and subsidies for better water uses. It's
| politically easier to pay people for good outcomes than to
| charge them for bad ones.
| ericmcer wrote:
| I know the evil foreigners angle is associated with racism
| and ignorance nowadays but separate societies have
| different priorities and agendas right? A society should
| view its natural resources being sold externally as less
| beneficial than being used internally, unless in some kind
| of universally beneficial exchange. If a society doesn't
| exist to enrich its members then what is even the point of
| it?
| pwarner wrote:
| Yeah the foreign owned part seems like the least important
| part.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| It's not really so much that the farm is foreign owned, it's
| that the very water intensive crop is grown so it can be
| shipped overseas to feed livestock for foreign populations.
| This is essentially "exporting water".
|
| Which, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing, but
| it is when water is essentially so mispriced that it's a
| really bad deal for the place that is supplying the water,
| especially during a mega-drought.
| dehrmann wrote:
| But to the original point, with domestic ownership, the
| domestic owner would grow the same crops and sell them to
| the same foreign buyers because they're willing to pay the
| prices that make it work.
|
| The only solution is limit ground water extraction. Putting
| this on foreign owners dodges the solution no one wants to
| talk about.
| Maursault wrote:
| > it's that the very water intensive crop is grown
|
| The article is very much pot, kettle black. Agriculture is
| using the majority of the water and mostly for growing
| alfalfa to feed cows. Everything there is wrong. We don't
| need that many cows. If the town wants to save itself, it
| must start water-rationing for agriculture, and ban a lot
| of alfalfa growing.
| jacobolus wrote:
| > _If the town wants to save itself, it must start water-
| rationing for agriculture, and ban a lot of alfalfa
| growing._
|
| Or more effectively (because it is much simpler and can't
| be gamed nearly as easily), price the water appropriately
| based on the sustainable supply. Then it will not be
| profitable to use at huge scale for low-value water-
| intensive crops.
|
| If fairly pricing the water ends up hurting local
| residents, that would best be dealt with by directly
| paying cash to every resident to make up the typical
| difference.
|
| (We should do the same with other resources that are
| scarce or have negative externalities; e.g. gasoline
| should have the environmental costs of carbon emissions
| priced into it with a very steep tax, and then every
| resident should be directly paid cash enough to make up
| the difference for a typical person's transportation.
| Otherwise, people are incentivized to over-use resources
| that are effectively being subsidized, and the free
| market economy cannot perform its function.)
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _price the water appropriately based on the sustainable
| supply._
|
| In the regions where the water problem is most relevant,
| pricing based on the sustainable supply isn't possible
| because the water supply isn't sustainable, and won't be
| no matter how much you charge or how little you use.
| CaptainNegative wrote:
| Wouldn't that be a self-correcting problem as much of the
| population moves away due to enormous utility costs?
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| It would be, except that the farmers become wealthy from
| their unsustainable business practices and start lobbying
| for insane shit like piping in water from wetter regions.
| The problem needs to be nipped at the bud; ban farming
| with fossil water.
| Maursault wrote:
| The water-use by agriculture is unsustainable whether
| there is population or not. Compared to agriculture use
| of water, all other water uses are negligible. So if you
| eliminate the residential population and empty the
| cities, agriculture will still use all the water and
| fail. But if you eliminate the agriculture, there will be
| plenty of water for the cities and population. A desert
| has enough water to support a population. It was foolish
| to introduce industrialized agriculture in a desert.
| Maursault wrote:
| And this sort of thing would also kill individual
| residents that aren't agriculture conglomerates with deep
| pockets. Agriculture water use must be separated from
| residential uses. They'll never recover enough water by
| squeezing residential use because 86% of the water in the
| West is used for crops.[1] Over 30% of all the water used
| is for growing crops to feed cows.
|
| I don't agree with the solution advanced in the linked
| video of paying farmers not to grow alfalfa. I think we
| should reduce the cow population by 75% (bringing meat
| consumption in line with the rest of the world), raise
| the price of beef, and tax the hell out of it. We do it
| for tobacco, and meat eaters put the same kind of strain
| on the health system, so let them pay for their
| entitlement. And saving water isn't the only benefit of
| reducing the population of cows, which would include
| longer life spans and much, much less contribution to
| Climate Change.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0gN1x6sVTc
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > And this sort of thing would also kill individual
| residents that aren't agriculture conglomerates with deep
| pockets. Agriculture water use must be separated from
| residential uses.
|
| That's pretty easy to do with graduated rates, where
| customers are charged a low rate for the first X gallons
| of water, but then higher rates for more usage.
|
| The bigger issue, though, is water rights are completely
| fucked. In a lot of jurisdictions you are free to suck
| out any water you can with a well on your property. That
| means those with the "strongest pump" are essentially
| free to suck out all the water from their neighbors. Our
| system of water rights in the West needs a major overhaul
| that won't be easy due to entrenched, powerful interests
| and the difficulty of changing some of these laws.
| Maursault wrote:
| Residential water use _is not the problem_. Not even
| remotely. The penultimate problem is agriculture, and the
| singular ultimate problem is, seriously, _cows_. They can
| screw around with minor adjustments here and there, but
| the easiest and best solution is to adjust population
| diet, curb agricultural greed and entitlement, massively
| reduce the population of cows, raise the price of beef
| and tax it.
|
| The average American eats 55lbs. of beef a year, 4.5lbs.
| a month, _over a pound a week_. I guess we can wait until
| they all have massive coronaries, but it would be better
| to just stop this madness and restrict these eaters to 3
| quarters of a pound of beef a week.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > Residential water use is not the problem. Not even
| remotely. The penultimate problem is agriculture, and the
| singular ultimate problem is, seriously, cows.
|
| I completely agree, which is why I said that graduated
| rates are a good solution - they would tax agricultural
| (and any heavy user) heavily while leaving residential
| use cheap.
|
| However, I'm also not in favor of other solutions that
| are complete fantasies when it comes to our political
| system. You say "but the easiest and best solution is to
| adjust population diet, curb agricultural greed and
| entitlement, massively reduce the population of cows,
| raise the price of beef and tax it." Except that is a
| guaranteed political non-starter in essentially every
| country that has high beef consumption.
| Maursault wrote:
| > Except that is a guaranteed political non-starter in
| essentially every country that has high beef consumption.
|
| 50 years ago everyone smoked. What we need are Surgeon
| General reports linking eating red meat to cardiovascular
| disease, coronary heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes,
| and especially colon and rectal cancers, which shouldn't
| be too difficult because it's true. Then we need ad
| campaigns, "Mmmm _meat!_ Tastes just like cancer! " Then
| all that is needed is for the American Heart Association,
| American Cancer Society and American Diabetes Association
| to sue Tyson, JBS, Cargill, and National Beef, to find
| they lied to the American public about the deadly effects
| of their product, which they intentionally marketed _to
| children_ - the meat food group was always bullshit. Then
| comes taxing red meat and the collapse of these
| industries, because unlike nicotine, red meat is not
| addictive. Viola! Suddenly there is more water in the
| West than they know what to do with. Ranchers, cowboys,
| cattlemen and meat processors are retrained to work at
| all the water parks and recreational reservoirs that
| could then exist throughout the West, drawing in fortunes
| in recreational boating and tourism.
| jacobolus wrote:
| > _What we need are Surgeon General reports ..._
|
| There are observational studies demonstrating a
| correlation between red meat consumption and various
| health problems, but risks involved from eating red meat
| vs. smoking are not remotely comparable, nor is the
| scientific evidence anywhere near as convincing.
|
| Nor does some people eating meat directly affect others'
| health, the way smoking in enclosed indoor spaces does.
|
| It would be better to give people truthful information
| about what risks are known and what our confidence is in
| those, rather than trying to scaremonger or force
| lifestyle changes based on exaggerated health claims.
|
| Climate risks and environmental externalities are a much
| bigger problem with red meat than direct health effects.
|
| If you are just worried about health per se, it would
| make much more sense to start by targeting sugar and
| alcohol consumption, and follow up by targeting cookies,
| chips, etc.
| supportlocal4h wrote:
| Instead we need to be growing more chicken feed?
| ericmcer wrote:
| It is more relevant when you see all the signs and ads about
| neighborhoods "doing their part" to help conserve water by
| not watering plants and taking shorter showers. If those
| conservations are being used to enrich a microscopic part of
| population who is shipping all that water overseas it raises
| questions about who and what we are conserving for.
| steve76 wrote:
| naycombinator wrote:
| I've been following reporter Nathan Halverson on this topic (and
| other related ones) for years now. Some of his older work on this
| is still worth a read or a listen:
|
| https://revealnews.org/podcast/high-and-dry-a-deep-dive-into...
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/11/02/453885642/sa...
|
| He's also a producer/face on a new documentary making the rounds
| at film festivals this year:
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21820452/
|
| There's a trailer on https://www.docnyc.net/film/the-grab/ as
| well as online viewing in mid-November. I haven't seen it yet,
| but it's been well-received thus far.
| criddell wrote:
| Is the water free for anybody to take, or is there a system of
| water rights that have to purchased first?
| nkurz wrote:
| Water rights in the Southwest are complex, but in general,
| "surface water" (rivers and streams) is alloted according to
| historical water rights, but "ground water" (drilled wells) is
| available to whoever owns the land on the surface. From the
| article:
|
| _Groundwater is the lifeblood of the rural Southwest, but just
| as the Colorado River Basin is in crisis, aquifers are rapidly
| depleting from decades of overuse, worsening drought and
| rampant agricultural growth._
|
| _Residents and farms pull water from the same underground
| pools, and as the water table declines, the thing determining
| how long a well lasts is how deeply it was drilled._
|
| _Now frustration is growing in Arizona 's La Paz County, as
| shallower wells run dry amid the Southwest's worst drought in
| 1,200 years. Much of the frustration is pointed at the area's
| huge, foreign-owned farms growing thirsty crops like alfalfa,
| which ultimately get shipped to feed cattle and other livestock
| overseas._
|
| _" You can't take water and export it out of the state,
| there's laws about that," said Arizona geohydrologist Marvin
| Glotfelty, a well-drilling expert. "But you can take 'virtual'
| water and export it; alfalfa, cotton, electricity or anything
| created in part from the use of water."_
|
| _Residents and local officials say lax groundwater laws give
| agriculture the upper hand, allowing farms to pump unlimited
| water as long as they own or lease the property to drill wells
| into. In around 80% of the state, Arizona has no laws
| overseeing how much water corporate megafarms are using, nor is
| there any way for the state to track it._
|
| Essentially, this means that in most of Arizona, the water in
| the ground is free and unmetered for agricultural use by anyone
| who owns enough land to drill a well. As one would guess, this
| creates a crisis when some users are drawing enough water to
| lower the water table on surrounding land.
| supportlocal4h wrote:
| It is not true that ground water from wells is freely
| available to whomever owns the land. See recent judgements
| regarding multi-billion dollar disputes in Nevada, Idaho, and
| Utah.
|
| It is not a new thing for some wells to run dry because of
| neighbors' water use. And it isn't catching anybody by
| surprise. There's a whole lot of gunfighters flowing into
| these here parts. Uh hem, sorry. I mean lawyers.
| nkurz wrote:
| I was definitely handwaving when I said "in general", but I
| meant something like "in the absence of local laws to the
| contrary". And (without sufficiently specifying) I intended
| to limit my comment to Arizona because that was the focus
| of the article. Arizona is different than the other
| Southwestern states. Here's what seems like a more complete
| overview:
| https://groundwater.stanford.edu/dashboard/arizona.html
|
| Note that unlike the other states you mentioned, the
| standard in Arizona is "reasonable use". Texas is the other
| big outlier. Do you have links (or good search terms) for
| the recent judgments you refer to? I know some things about
| this area (certainly enough to call it "complex"), but
| there is a lot I'm ignorant of.
| supportlocal4h wrote:
| SNWA loses another water fight
|
| Great Basin Water Network court case
|
| SNWA water war
|
| Snake Valley production wells
|
| Tribal leaders oppose southern nevada water
| mjhay wrote:
| Those are in Nevada and Idaho, not Arizona.
| oefrha wrote:
| Reminds me of American corps draining water elsewhere, like Coca
| Cola in some South American towns:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/14/world/americas/mexico-coc...
|
| The irony!
| Justin_K wrote:
| The coke example differs, as the product is created and
| consumed in that region.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Well yeah but understanding this requires critical thinking.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Free markets
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Lack of proper free markets in water.
| kevingadd wrote:
| Is there an appropriate price for a child's drinking water?
| 500/yr? 5000/yr? What if a company wants to use all our water
| to make really expensive luxury food and earn back everything
| it spends? Should we sell them all our water since they're
| the highest bidder?
| TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote:
| Read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert Heinlein, for
| some perspective.
|
| On the former Soviet Lunar prison turned colony,
| electricity, water, and air are,by necessity not free.
| malyk wrote:
| Under 100 gallons a day (totally random choice), free-ish.
| Over 1 acre-foot per day, $100,000 (totally random choice).
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| How do you accomplish that sort of pricing scheme with
| free markets? You need government regulated markets to
| accomplish this.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I for one support this. Too many people in the thread are
| just saying a phrase like "Free markets" while making no
| point foolishly, followed by rhetorical questions. Allow
| me to be unambigious.
|
| If we agree that overconsumption of groundwater combined
| with under-replenishment of all frewshwater resources due
| to climate change implies a coming strategic shortage of
| water, then yes, absolutely, state and federal government
| should be severely scrutinizing where water is going and
| prohibit excess water consumption for luxuries and for
| exports.
|
| Another way to go about it would be what the person above
| you said: Create tiered pricing for water such that the
| reasonable monthly use of water is as close to free
| (minus upkeep of water infrastructure) as possible, while
| quickly ramping up marginal cost.
| vitiral wrote:
| Considering wars have been fought and blood spilled over it
| I'd say the answer is yes, but it's a price many would
| prefer not paying.
| ianai wrote:
| Have to wonder why the tie-in to overseas trade in an article
| about wells running dry. Feels more like stoking outrage over
| foreigners than drought.
| im-a-baby wrote:
| Why do countries exist? To protect the interests of the
| citizens. Water is an important issue
| simonsarris wrote:
| Depleting an underground reservoir is a matter of national
| security. Doing it to sell alfalfa to another country is off
| the charts a matter of national security.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| ...no matter who is doing it.
|
| Are we to believe the water usage would be less if Americans
| owned the ground?
| sbarre wrote:
| Would it be different if the farm was American-owned, but
| still growing alfalfa and selling it to another country?
|
| Are you suggesting export controls on vegetables?
| ianai wrote:
| Also the US long ago decided to make international trade a
| point of ensuring and reinforcing national security.
| Marshall plan and all that.
| red_trumpet wrote:
| How about restricting the amount of water one is allowed to
| extract from the aquifer?
| btown wrote:
| This. We already nationally regulate crop rotation to
| protect against erosion and disease, which can have
| effects beyond the boundaries of any given farm or owner:
| https://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/crop-rotation-
| prac.... It seems reasonable to me that access to an
| aquifer which also goes beyond the boundaries of any
| given farm would be a reasonable thing to regulate as
| well.
|
| And it's important for policymakers to have the context
| that international trade considerations have introduced
| incentives to the region that may not have been present
| beforehand - as a result, one should not simply say "we
| never needed to regulate this before" because there are
| material changes to the situation.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Are you suggesting this is not a problem, regardless the
| labels and frameworks currently available to describe it or
| address it?
|
| But sure, we can declare any kind of export control we
| determine a state interest in. Other people can play even
| better word games than you just tried to, to articulate
| both the problem and a response. You didn't show how it's
| an invalid idea at all.
| pjc50 wrote:
| As a non-American, I love how America is about individual
| freedom and the right to earn a living right up until the
| point where nationalism is invoked and everyone's back to
| advocating that the government confiscate farms.
| vitiral wrote:
| Some more coherent theories of ownership (geo
| libertarian) do not consider resources like land, ore or
| water to be individually owned - but rather owned "in
| common."
|
| Under such a theory this issue actually is regarding
| individual freedom.
| foobazgt wrote:
| As an American, I feel like you're missing the point.
| Generally the expectation is that you have the freedom to
| do anything you want as long as it does not impinge upon
| the rights of others. Of course, there's a lot of nuance
| buried there, but that's the general principle. I think
| it's a good framework.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| There are all kinds of potential ways to address this or
| any other problem besides confiscating a farm, and even
| confiscating a farm doesn't necessarily have to violate
| any individual freedom principles, since nothing is pure.
| There has always been eminent domain.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| In the case of farms that rely on fossil aquifers, there
| is _no_ way to address the problem other than shutting
| the farm down completely. If the farm relies on an
| unsustainable source of water, then it doesn 't matter if
| the farm is owned by Americans or foreigners; it isn't
| sustainable no matter what.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| You could regulate use of the water, or tax it, etc. All
| kinds of things. Have some imagination.
|
| If these things happen to produce a side effect that it's
| not profitable to use that piece of land to grow almonds
| or grass or whatever, so be it. You still didn't
| confiscate anyone's property that they ever had any valid
| right to in the first place in the libertarian
| fearmongering sense.
|
| Or you could mark the water resource as public and go
| ahead and confiscate the property for some reasonable
| market value (not a value based on selling a valuable
| public resource). It's not inconsistent with property
| rights and free markets or anything like that even if you
| do decide you have to plain take over something.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _You could regulate use of the water, or tax it, etc.
| All kinds of things. Have some imagination._
|
| Unless by regulate you mean ban, none of that will make a
| fossil aquifer sustainable. The best you can do is push
| back the date the water runs out, but the water _will_
| run out. You can 't call it sustainable just because it
| lasts longer than your lifetime. By that standard, coal
| mining was "sustainable".
|
| In regions with regular rainfall where shallow wells
| suffice, sustainable use of groundwater is simply a
| matter of balancing inflow with outflow. But in regions
| where aquifers are deep and sealed, or were filled
| thousands of years ago when North America was covered in
| a mile of ice, you cannot use the water and balance
| inflows and outflows because inflows are effectively
| zero. The only way to balance inflows and outflows of
| fossil water is to ban the use of fossil water.
| red_trumpet wrote:
| That sounds totally plausible. Do you know in which
| regions have fossil aquifers, and which have aquifers
| with reasonable inflow?
|
| Also, I don't immediately see why depleting a fossil
| aquifer would be bad (as opposed to using coal or oil,
| which affects CO2 levels). Do I miss any side effects? If
| not, it might be reasonable to use fossil water as long
| as it is available to make a region liveable, but
| restrict its use for e.g. agriculture, to make the water
| last longer.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| "Unless by regulate you mean ban"
|
| I mean regulate, as in devise some rule. The exact
| details are open ended and infinite. You could make up
| any kind of rule that says what the water may or may not
| be used for, how much may be extracted per time period,
| require other things that will eventually lead to the
| creation of some other water source while this one is
| being consumed, etc.
|
| All kinds of things.
| sbarre wrote:
| I was responding to the previous poster's specific claim
| that they saw this as a national security issue, and
| simply looking to clarify whether they believed the
| farm's ownership was a factor in that position, or
| whether it was about the actual exporting and sale of
| alfalfa to a foreign power.
|
| But sure, ignore that context when over-analyzing my
| response.. ;-)
|
| Also, not sure why you felt the need to take a shot at me
| in the end there. Apologies if my words offended you
| somehow?
| joshe wrote:
| our malnourished cavalry horses!
| nkurz wrote:
| A point probably worth making, but article is aware enough to
| consider it already:
|
| _With all of this, Gary Saiter doesn 't care if the farm is
| owned by a company overseas. The way he sees it, it doesn't
| make much of a difference who owns the farm; he just wishes
| they were better neighbors._
|
| _" I am kind of ambivalent about the Saudis," Saiter said.
| "You can't control where people sell stuff, and it's going to
| go somewhere."_
|
| _" I just don't like the crops they're growing and the water
| they're pumping," he added._
| ianai wrote:
| I'm pointing out the editorializing implicit in the framing.
| Apparently groundwater is used for crops all throughout
| Mexico and the southwest. I definitely wish it weren't the
| case and instead a national water grid like how we have
| national power.
| me_again wrote:
| Interestingly, the US doesn't have a true national power
| grid. https://www.epa.gov/green-power-markets/us-grid-
| regions
|
| The practical difficulty of transporting large amounts of
| water long distances is even worse than electricity, so I
| don't think it'll ever be easy to say "Minnesota has a
| water surplus this year, let's just adjust the pipes to
| send it to Nevada".
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _a national water grid_
|
| Awful idea. Why should the wet parts of the country pump
| their water into deserts where people shouldn't be
| living/working in the first place? If people want to live
| in deserts, let them find their own water. No other region
| should be obliged to supplement their unsustainable desert
| lifestyle. Let nature take her course and depopulate those
| deserts in due time. If you want water, move to where the
| water is.
| richk449 wrote:
| Why don't we apply that logic to other things? If you
| want carrots, move to where the carrots are grown. If you
| want a car, move near a car factory. You want oil? Move
| to Saudi Arabia.
|
| Everyone benefits from specialization and trade. I don't
| see any reason it wouldn't apply to water too.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Agreed. We can do shitty shortsighted things for money, but
| foreign money is "dirty"!?
| mtw wrote:
| The US exports $25B worth of soybeans per year, which is one of
| the most water intensive crop. Should these exports be banned?
| same for almonds, cotton, rice etc.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| None of the top states that grow soybeans are as water starved
| as the desert.
|
| https://www.cropprophet.com/soybean-production-by-state-top-...
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| We grow a butt-ton of soybeans in iowa, and I have yet to see
| anybody irrigating them anywhere. See, we water crops here like
| god intended - by water falling from the sky for free.
| [deleted]
| zamfi wrote:
| No but perhaps the negative externalities of water
| overextraction should start to get priced in.
| dahart wrote:
| How? When it comes to pricing the environment, we have a long
| history of missing the mark by _orders of magnitude_ , due in
| part to the extremely long delays between cause and effect,
| and also due to markets and financial vested interests
| preventing accurate information about costs, and even
| preventing the analysis of costs. https://scholarship.law.geo
| rgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...
| richk449 wrote:
| If the externality currently has no cost, then even pricing
| it low by orders of magnitude should be better than the
| status quo. Pricing it high by orders of magnitude would
| have negative consequences, but that seems unlikely to
| happen in practice.
| dahart wrote:
| > even pricing it low by orders of magnitude should be
| better than the status quo.
|
| No, while this assumption seems econ 101 logical for a
| second, it's not really true and the paper I linked above
| explains why. The pricing has to match the approximate
| order-of-magnitude cost of externalities for it to
| actually prevent any of the consequences we're discussing
| here (or more likely be regulated so that Saudi Arabia
| can't buy all the water regardless of price). There's
| enough price flexibility over water and high enough
| demand that increasing prices 2x or even 10x today will
| not slow consumption at all. Water in the US west is
| already over-subscribed, and people with more money have
| already lined up to buy whatever becomes available.
| Increasing prices a little will only change who buys
| water, not whether it gets used. It has to be high enough
| that people start choosing not to buy it, which with
| water is an _extremely_ high bar. In the mean time,
| draining our aquifers has ramifications for the next
| several thousand years.
|
| This is the whole problem with cost-benefit analysis and
| free market thinking. When it comes to things that all
| humans need, like air and water, we have never yet
| managed to calculate either the true costs or the true
| benefits correctly, and reducing the equation to money
| loses all sense of proportion, and more or less always
| frames things in terms that let rich people and
| corporations win and take whatever they want.
| richk449 wrote:
| I don't think it is as black and white as you make it out
| to be.
|
| Yes, there will be large demand for water even at higher
| prices. But less than at lower prices. Maybe a little
| less, maybe a lot less, but either way we are better off
| than now.
|
| Also, there are many other effects to consider besides
| how much the demand will change. As the price increases,
| alternative water sources become more economic - trucking
| water in, building pipelines and canals, building water
| capture systems, desalinization, etc. Rather than solving
| the problem by using less water it may be possible to
| solve the problem by using water that has less
| environmental impact.
|
| Generally speaking, I find your framework hard to parse.
| Free market thinking and cost benefit analysis are
| orthogonal, not two parts of a whole. Pricing
| externalities, as we are discussing here is not the same
| thing as cost benefit analysis.
|
| Cost benefit analysis is a bureaucrat sitting in an
| office and deciding what policies should be enacted.
| Pricing an externality means assigning a cost to use of
| some scarce resource, and letting the market decide if
| and when the resource is worth the cost.
| rubyfan wrote:
| Seems hard to put a price on some of those negative
| externalities. A tariff or something doesn't really fix or
| curb the problem.
| silon42 wrote:
| Has the tariff been tried? Increase it if the aquifer
| levels are dropping.
| vkou wrote:
| It's pretty easy, just charge ruinous usage rates for any
| water use that is beyond replenishment rates.
|
| It doesn't matter if these soybeans are going to China,
| Mars, or Washington state, the only thing that matters is
| whether the people growing them are exhausting their
| region's water supply.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| We really shouldn't be growing soybeans or corn in Great
| American Desert (the vast plains west of the Mississippi and
| east of the Rockies). That is arid land intended for grass, and
| then you should raise cattle and livestock on the grass, with
| at most occasional rotations for crops, say once every 30 years
| or so. That is why herds of buffalo roamed this area and only
| small regions were cultivated for corn, and only for a few
| growing cycles, before it again returned to grassland for
| cattle.
|
| This is how all civilizations traditionally cultivated
| grasslands -- as lands on which ruminants were raised, and then
| you drink the milk and eat the meat of the ruminants as your
| main source of calories.
|
| Trying to raise crops on arid cattle country requires you to
| deplete aquifers and then import large amounts of fertilizers
| because the land itself can't sustain that type of production.
| It can, however, sustain growing grass, with no fertilizer or
| water additions required. Then as the ruminants eat the grass,
| they fertilize the soil and the roots decompose, adding more
| nutrients. Do that over many generations, and you create a rich
| soil, and on the rich soil, a few crops can be grown, and then
| they need to be replaced again with grass and cattle.
|
| The decision to grow millions of acres of soybeans and corn in
| this desert is a short sighted policy. Milk and meat need to be
| food products from that region, given the climate. East of the
| Mississippi, there is a wetter climate, and that's where we
| should be growing most of our crops.
| pixl97 wrote:
| How much of the soybean crop is grown in the desert southwest
| versus the midwest?
|
| Almonds is really the only contentious item on this list as
| they are grown in areas with water insecurity.
| supportlocal4h wrote:
| Surely the irony is not lost that USians fret over alfalfa and
| oranges getting shipped overseas after so many decades of
| shipping oil, autos, bananas, etc. into the US from around the
| world.
| mym1990 wrote:
| USians?
| nkurz wrote:
| USian is used to mean people who live in the US. Some people
| choose it because it's shorter, some because they think it's
| too US-centric to call people American when there are many
| other countries on two continents that could match that
| definition.
|
| If you are a non-native English speaker, you probably want to
| avoid this term unless you are conscious that many readers
| will code you as "progressive left". It's not as strong as
| "Amerikan" (sometimes used to imply Americans are Nazis), but
| it has a similar register.
|
| Here's an HN thread from a few years ago about it:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9994159.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Wow, some people will really jump some extreme hoops to
| seem "progressive". Gave me a chuckle, thanks.
| [deleted]
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