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California water policy is a complete shambles because of the archaic system of “senior rights”, people or more likely corporations that get to use as much wate
by fmajid 6y ago
California water policy is a complete shambles because of the archaic system of “senior rights”, people or more likely corporations that get to use as much water as they want because someone nailed a notice to a tree in the 1800s, on a use-it-or-lose-it basis, before junior rights holders are served. Since water is not priced equally for all users, or even priced at all, this encourages irrational uses on low-value crops like alfalfa rather than high-value ones like almonds or pistachios or fruit.
Any effort to reform this system has been stymied by litigation, water rights being seen as property and subject to the takings clause of the constitution. In most countries with less stable governments revolutions led to land reforms and redistribution, also for water. As Mark Twain reportedly said, “whisky is for drinking and water for fighting over”. It’s like the UK where most land is still owned by the inbred descendants of feudal robber barons, and most residents of London don’t own the land under their houses, but only lease them for 100 years from the Duke of something or the other.
- tim333 6y agoThe London situation makes more sense as the freeholder / landowner is responsible for sorting things if the roof goes or similar and there are several flats who would argue about who does what.
- tweetle_beetle 6y agoIt's a nice model, but in practice it doesn't work like that. The older freeholders do as little as possible, sometimes employing managing agents to do as little as possible on their behalf. For example, see all the freeholders doing nothing about the unsafe cladding on flats. The new freeholders (developers of new build housing estates) have learnt that they can do as little as possible, increase the charges whenever they want and increase the price of buying them out: win-win-win! The system is so ridiculous that the record of who owns the freehold of many houses built over a century ago has been lost. Someone owns it, but no one knows who. So homeowners have to take out insurance to cover the payments in case the freeholder's descendants ever get found and come knocking.