Keep in mind the imperial valley's massive use of water predates the Colorado River Compact.
Think about it this way: you move somewhere and you're using 50 gallons per day of water. An agreement comes up that says you can keep doing that. 10 million people move in after and there's now a water problem. Were you over-allocated 50 gallons per day?
You could look at it two ways: you should sacrifice to help everyone else. Or, screw everyone else they shouldn't be here anyways.
My general opinion is that while there's benefits to growing food in the imperial valley, they don't outweigh the benefits of not having to move tens of millions of people out of the southwest - that's like throwing trillions in development into the trash. California has access to the ocean for desalination, and other southwest states don't. The best thing for the country as a whole would be for California to ween itself off the Colorado River. But I don't think that's going to happen, at least, it won't without a fight.
My opinion that the seniority should be settled once and for all in terms of date and volume.
Once this is done, parties can work towards solutions. The southwest states and users can start buying rights from California and farmers.
One reason there is so much fighting and acrimony is that each party thinks they can get more water for free by convincing a judge they deserve or need it more.
This is further complicated by the fact that the best way to demonstrate need it to increase your dependence and set yourself up for even worse disaster if you don't get what you want.
"Think about it this way: you move somewhere and you're using 50 gallons per day of water. An agreement comes up that says you can keep doing that. 10 million people move in after and there's now a water problem. Were you over-allocated 50 gallons per day?"
There was a time when factories could pollute legally as much as they wanted. Then things change and they had to adapt. We can't have people insist on water rights that were given at a different time. They have to adapt.
Land eventually exert pressure in the form of property taxes. For water rights there's no such thing.
In general, I feel like humans should not "own" natural resources. You can rent it from society, which is how I view property taxes, even though that's not exactly what they are.
I also don't think they should be arbitrarily seized. According to the article, some of the water reductions are being compensated for monetarily. I don't know the whole story there though.
AFAIK, you can't legally just buy a farm in the imperial valley and say you're going to use that water for residents in Arizona. Rights are based upon the use case.
Let's assume I agree that it should be a shared resource by all. How do you get from the current state to the desired state.
You start from a place where the state has granted water rights by law and told people that this is yours, you can use it up to the very last drop. This has been the law for 150 years and people have built businesses and lives based on the idea that the government upholds the laws and contracts it made.
Do you just start one day and tell people with water rights that it sucks to suck, but the people have decided that they want what we previously promised was yours forever. It's your fault because you believed that the government would be consistent and uphold it's commitments.
Think about it this way: you move somewhere and you're using 50 gallons per day of water. An agreement comes up that says you can keep doing that. 10 million people move in after and there's now a water problem. Were you over-allocated 50 gallons per day?
You could look at it two ways: you should sacrifice to help everyone else. Or, screw everyone else they shouldn't be here anyways.
My general opinion is that while there's benefits to growing food in the imperial valley, they don't outweigh the benefits of not having to move tens of millions of people out of the southwest - that's like throwing trillions in development into the trash. California has access to the ocean for desalination, and other southwest states don't. The best thing for the country as a whole would be for California to ween itself off the Colorado River. But I don't think that's going to happen, at least, it won't without a fight.