I encourage you to read Felicity Barringer’s article on California’s effort (finally!) to exert some control on groundwater pumping.
Here’s the core line:
[F]or a century, farmers believed that the law put control of groundwater in the hands of landowners, who could drill as many wells as deeply as they wanted, and court challenges were few.
That just changed. The California Legislature, in its closing hours on Friday, passed new and sweeping groundwater controls. The measures do not eliminate private ownership, but they do establish a framework for managing withdrawals through local agencies. [Read the rest.]
Here’s to the legislators, farmers and other citizens who are beginning to recognize that the water-wasting norms of the anomalously verdant 20th century can’t be sustained.
For more, please click back to this recent post: “How Conservation and Groundwater Management Can Gird California for a Drier Era.”