“What proposed groundwater regulation will end up doing is divvying up farm water to new political constituencies such as commercial fishermen, Indian Tribes, environmentalists, tourism real estate developers, and funding for U.C. Davis groundwater studies and basin management. Groundwater regulation will just worsen droughts because there will be more constituencies looking for handouts of free water and not paying for the costs of the imported water system, as farmers do now. For those who say farmers don’t pay full cost for their water, adding a bunch of free-riders will only worsen water subsidization not reduce it.”
Recently, the Washington Post published “Five Myths About California’s Drought” by Richard Howlitt and Jay Lund, two professors at the University of California at Davis as part of its weekly “five myths feature” challenging everything you think you know.…