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Family of mine just had to install a cistern after their well needed to be extended-it’s already been extended. Ie there’s just no more water there I think or s
by ianai 6y ago
Family of mine just had to install a cistern after their well needed to be extended-it’s already been extended. Ie there’s just no more water there I think or something.
Water in the southwest has obviously always been something to take seriously. But as someone who’s always lived here, this seems much more pressing than anytime in the past. Wish this was a problem society could and would tackle as a “group effort”.
- milkytron 6y ago> Wish this was a problem society could and would tackle as a “group effort”. From a macro level, it has been. There have been water pacts in the west for nearly a century. But these will likely need to change in order to address the severity of the issue. I'm curious how these will be changed in the future, it seems like there might need to be new legislation sooner rather than later.
- Arrath 6y agoThose water pacts are generally very out of date and haven't adapted to modern populations and usage volumes, though. Change must come.
- bobthepanda 6y agoIsn‘t there also an issue where water pacts were drawn up during what appears to have been a rainier period of time?
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y agoMost the US southwest seems to be organized around the concept of water rights, typically measured in acre-feet. Even though this assignment of rights is rather old and has a multitude of problems related to the way it doesn't describe current usage patterns, that's not the biggest problem: it doesn't help to have the water rights to 300 acre-feet on your property if that water doesn't exist!
- nradov 6y agoUltimately I think we'll need to have state governments seize those water rights through eminent domain (with fair market value payments), then institute an auction system to allocated only a sustainable level of water extraction. The problem today is that water prices are fixed below the market rate and fail to account for externalities so water users have little incentive to conserve.
- derekp7 6y agoHere's the other lovely thing, is the deeper you go with a well the worse the water quality. Deep water could have been sitting there for thousands of years and may have a higher radon concentration.
- linuxftw 6y agoWe are solving it as a society. You're free to move somewhere there's more water, or you can not have any.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- omegaworks 6y agoAh yes, the Ben Shapiro climate solution: "Just sell your house and move somewhere else!" Who, pray tell, will buy a house with no water?
- ianai 6y agoThat’s also not going to work if we’re talking about farmland. Not every parcel of land is exchangeable for every other. It’s one thing to point at a city and say “fewer people could live there” and another to point at farmland and say society won’t feel an impact from not growing the crops on it.
- hedora 6y agoTell that to Intel. They’re building a fab in Phoenix.
- linuxftw 6y agoThat's up to the people that live in Phoenix. If they want Intel to deplete their aquifer, that's their choice.