
Who’s Taking America’s Water? | Climate Town
About this video
A Climate Town episode on who uses America's water, particularly Western water. It looks at agriculture such as alfalfa and animal feed, and at water-rights rules that discourage conservation.
Why it appears in the archive
HN points to it in Colorado River and water-use threads as an accessible explainer of why the Western water shortage keeps getting worse.
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From the Hacker News discussion
If you don't mind the presentation style, [VIDEO] is great presents an even direr situation: because water rights are "use it or lose it", we are actively encouraging water misuse, beyond just "it's cheap enough to misuse it".
Read original comment ↗Climate Town did a great video breaking down where a lot of this ends up, worth the watch if you want some more detailed background on the agreements in place that are leading to this happening: [VIDEO]
Read original comment ↗For anyone interested in the background behind this clusterfuck, Climate Town has a good explainer: [VIDEO] . It's not just drought, it's because many of the players involved are required to waste as much water as they can - the video has the details.
Read original comment ↗Residential water use is tiny compared to water used to grow things mostly cattle feed, Primarily alfalfa [VIDEO] The reason for the water shortages is not more people it’s a complete and utter mismanagement of the watershed
Read original comment ↗Arizona and California have outdated water management laws that basically mean that big agriculture gets free water. Until recently Saudi Arabia was using these laws to grow alfalfa in the desert. In California, water intensive crops like almond trees get free water. [VIDEO] [LINK]
Read original comment ↗Plenty of alfalfa and corn aren't going to food production. And much of those the remaining are not efficient. [VIDEO]
Read original comment ↗