Who Gets the #Water in #California? Whoever Gets There First.

source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/14/climate/california-water-crisis-drought.html

The heart of it is that many of the area’s farms and irrigation districts have been drawing from the Delta’s braided channels for well over a century, before the state even had a water board. This gives them extraordinary privilege in California’s seniority-based system: When there isn’t enough water to go around, they get first dibs. And for a long time, a lot of them didn’t have to provide the state with many details about how much water they actually used.

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For decades, ranches and farms have been slurping the Shasta and Scott down to small fractions of their natural flows in dry years. Migrations of Chinook and coho salmon have plummeted, harming the Native American communities whose diet and culture center on the fish.

#climate #crisis #problem #usa #law #environment #agriculture #future #nature #news #justice