
A free-market plan to save the American west from drought - cossatot
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/03/a-plan-to-save-the-american-west-from-drought/426846/?single_page=true
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dalke
As I wrote in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11080321](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11080321)
(which is the same story from Pro Publica instead of The Atlantic):

> In theory, states could step in and reallocate water according to modern
> economic priorities.

As the old saying goes, in the West, water flows uphill towards money.

When the US received the New Mexico territory, they agreed to accept the old
land grant system. There are still ongoing lawsuits over what that means.
Quoting from Nichol's "The Milagro Beanfield War", “The war never ended in
1848”.

In theory, states are supposed to follow these agreements.

> personal property is sacrosanct and farmers wield a lot of influence

Farmers aren't the only water rights holders in the West.

What is the "modern economic priority" regarding existing Navajo water rights?

> He supports the idea of setting aside what policy makers call “lifeline
> supplies” to guarantee households some minimal amount of water. ... Anyone
> who wants to fill a swimming pool, water a golf course, or use billions of
> gallons of Colorado River water to grow cotton in the Sonoran Desert, he
> says, should have to pay for that privilege.

What about the right to farm the land your family has had for 300 years, and
where the water rights have long been established?

> Deane told me he’d abandoned an effort to buy a distressed New Mexico
> property in 2014 after hearing about a local gas-station attendant
> who—opposed to the idea of investors buying up water—refused to fill the
> cars of workers who were drilling wells on the property.

Yes. New Mexicans have a long history of outsiders coming in to buy up water
rights.

