3 ms·

What are they unhappy about?

• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• AlotOfReading 2y ago
  (Most) water rights in California work on what's called a "prior appropriations" system: everyone with rights is ranked in order of priority, and those with priority are allowed to exercise their full rights before the next person can exercise any water rights. There's a separate issue where the nominal water rights in any given year significantly exceeds the amount of water available, so some people are left with no rights they can exercise and they're forced to buy from others. Further, the full natural flow isn't allocated to the water rights system. Roughly 60% of the natural flow goes towards so-called "environmental flow" to prevent various ecological disasters like salinization of the San Joaquin delta or extinction of various fish. Farmers would generally like more water to be available so that they can exercise their water rights and they either don't understand or don't care about the consequences of diverting the already-limited environmental flows. This is actually in the name of the EO being discussed here: Putting people over fish, which inverts a popular rallying cry for people opposed to environmental flows.
  • stouset 2y ago
    Thankfully, we all live outside of the environment.