So to extend your discussion/logic on riparian water rights … given most of this water comes from snow pack in the mountains and those mountains are own by the Federal/State governments and by extension all of us, I guess we all have riparian water rights from those rivers? Maybe we (the state on behalf of all people) should claim rights up there close to the mountains and then resell it to municipalities and agribusinesses at more equal price? What would stop someone from using this approach to develop a more rational water rights framework for all stakeholders downstream?

Your example/argument regarding subsidy is convoluted and doesn’t make sense to me. How is ownership of an asset that appreciates in value a subsidy? Taxes do increase (albeit slower than inflation sometimes) even for homes purchased long ago.

Getting something below market value is a subsidy. The only way agribusiness can secure water so cheaply is for the rest of us to pay the rates we do. Otherwise, the cost of infrastructure would not be covered. From my perspective, the rest of CA is subsidizing the low water costs of CA agribusinesses.

I am no more “framing” the problem LARGE than Prof. Peter Gleick frames it “small.” As I have written repeatedly, you can pick your number based on how the water pool is framed. I just think the public needs to be told that we are not running out of water – as Prof. Gleick does – but we’re short on water management.

Perhaps you do not understand the concept of water rights? The farmers along the San Joaquin River have “riparian” water rights – meaning “river” water rights. A riparian right is to land which touches any body of water such as a river, lake, stream, or creek. The farmers paid for that right when they bought their land. And they bought that land probably decades ago. That is why they are entitled to have water at one sixth the price you pay – to put it in your terms. There is no subsidy to those who have riparian water rights.

Conversely, an appropriative water right is obtained by permit from an entity of government or a court. The Resnick farm may have appropriative water rights by permit. The San Joaquin Valley farmers on the other hand probably have riparian rights.

So you say that Resnick has a water subsidy. OK let’s assume that for the moment. All that HR 1837 is doing is repealing HR 146 passed in 2009 and backed by Sen. Feinstein. HR 146 takes water rights from farmers and transfers them to commercial salmon fishermen, sports fishermen, water recreational and real estate interests. The Republican bill HR 1837 would repeal HR 146 and give those water rights back to farmers.

HR 1837 would also limit the amount of water that can flow to the sea to 800,000 acre feet. The water that flows to the sea does not help the endangered Smelt fish, because a court found that fish to be mostly endangered by predator fish and runoff from urban sewer plants in the Delta area.

So you are welcome to say that 80 percent of water goes to California – but you must disclose that is not all the potential water or even all the available water – at least according to the State Dept. of Water Resources (not me). And please contact the Dept. of Water Resources and ask them why the official percent they use is 42% of water goes to ag. You are entitled to your opinion but not your facts as Senator Pat Moynihan used to say.

I’m not sure anything I post here will change your mind that “greedy” farmers are somehow getting a subsidy that you believe should be given to others. If you bought your house at a cheap price in 1965 and still live in it you are getting a subsidy and should have to take out a new mortgage and repurchase it at its current market value and pay higher taxes seems to be your logic.

But again I am not writing so much to convince you but to allow others to make up their own mind who read this post.

Thanks for stimulating the conversation.
WL

It is interesting how you frame the discussion. Of course, if one considered all rain that fell across the entire state of CA, agribusiness’s usage percentage would appear to be much lower. So would municipals’. But let’s not forget that agribusiness uses nearly 80% of water processed through our system.

Clearly people can’t take 100% of yearly rainfall. The key question is how much water the environment needs. Leaders of agribusinesses feel it needs a lot less that others believe. Hences these discussions/arguments.

While farm lands own 100% of the rainfall that lands on their land just like I own 100% of the rain that falls on my property, what should they be paying for common property – i.e. rainfall that lands on other public land? Is it right that they pay 1/6 of what I pay? I’m not sure but I’d be curious to get your take. This is a subsidy that people like Resnick hugely benefit from.

I appreciate that agribusiness would change if they had to pay the same wholesale price I did, but think about what would happen if this were the case. They would have moved much earlier to find new ways to conserve water. And they would have stopped growing water-intensive plants that didn’t make sense in CA.

So net, I have learned so far is that agribusiness uses nearly 80% of human water at 1/6 the cost of what I pay. They are pushing HR 1837 so they can be first in line with regards to water and satisfy 100% of their needs regardless of annual rainfall. Why should I support such a blatant grab of public property for the main benefit of billionaires like Resnick?

I will post here the tiered water rates for the Metro Water District of So. California that may help you.

Ag needs about 3 to 4 feet high of water per acre to be productive is my understanding. If ag water was, say, $100 per acre foot that would be $400 per acre for water cost. Maybe they get two crops a year per acre = $800 per acre per year. Then you would have to compare that with the type of crop and the yield of that crop per acre and the tilling, fertilizing, and harvesting costs.

Another way to look at it is that one acre foot of water supports one acre of homes in the city. On average that is about 2 tho 4 homes per acre. If each family’s water bill is say $50/month x 4 homes per acre = $200/month x 12 months = $2400/year per acre.

This is very rough but urban water costs per acre would be 6x ag water costs.

More later.
WL

In the meantime, why shouldn’t agribusinesses be required to pay the same wholesale prices as everyone else? If they didn’t, wouldn’t this be a large subsidy for them?

Do you have any sense for percent of total agribusiness costs that water represents? This would help determine potential impact of paying market rates.

One of the best sources is from Cal State University at Stanislaus posted at the link below (this is a slide show so scroll down the slides to the table labeled Water Balance Table)

http://www.csustan.edu/Agstudies/documents/…/CaliforniaWaterIssues.pptDr

It is a table showing:
1. Total potential water
2. Total available water
3. Total water for human use

The above three are then broken down by wet year, average year, and dry year and then further broken out by urban use, agricultural use, and environmental use.

Agriculture is shown using 78% to 79% of all “human water.” But that is not all the water in California.

If you consider the total precipitation and imported water, agriculture uses 8.2% in a wet year, 14.3% in an average year, and 19% in a dry year.

The official source of how much water agriculture uses is the California Dept. of Water Resources. I have interviewed their experts. The DWR uses 42% as how much agriculture uses in an average year. That is based on a proportion of all “available water.”

One of the things to note: in a wet year there is about 335 million acre feet of rainfall in the state. That is enough to support 1.675 billion people annually; or 335 million acres of farmland annually.

Even in a dry year there is enough water to support 100 million people, agriculture, and a thriving environment.

The critical question is not how much agriculture uses but capture, storage, conveyance and treatment of all our potential water resources. We have to manage our water resources better. There is no shortage of water only a shortage of water storage.

Historically, it has always worked best for farmer and cities to have separate water ditches (canals or pipelines). Farming is now a global agribusiness that should not be forced to pay urban water prices; unless we want to shift to buying all our farm products from Mexico and Chile.

WL

My credibility is not relevant here. And if you truly cared, you could figure it out given the email I am required to provide to post comments like this. I am NOT interested in having my name/email made public. The only reason why I brought up my background was to counter your inference that I’m a non-business environmentalist that can’t view things in a balanced way.

I’m not interested in being a “undermine the credibility of a critic” diversion for you.

Lay out the complete facts/sources on this topic and then we can all draw our informed conclusions.