Quote Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy View Post
I didn't say a word about intent Wiggin. I was objecting to your claim that anything but the most voluble possible flow of water into the oceans should be banned as "wasteful". Your arrogant and highhanded assumption that your way was the One True Way regardless of what actually fits the local conditions.
Perhaps I was unclear earlier (also, I'm not sure how what I said suggested that the highest possible flow into oceans was desired...?). When I said:
Quote Originally Posted by me
Then there's irrigation methods, already mentioned here. Drip irrigation should be the norm, and very wasteful water usage should be banned. Oh, if that offends the sensibilities of the free marketeers here, one could slap a high tax on water simultaneously with tax credits for switching to drip irrigation... consider it a Pigovian tax and call it a day. Wasteful household usage should also be curbed through a combination of financial incentives and education.
I did not mean to exclude entirely any non-drip irrigation method - just ones that are explicitly 'very wasteful'. I am not a hydrologist, but I would imagine that flood irrigation is not 'natural' in many of the circumstances in which it is used, and that there are ways to minimize other losses (to e.g. evaporation) without killing the aquifer.

My point isn't that drip irrigation is always best - though in habitually dry areas it does dramatically reduce the use of freshwater and/or treated water - but that choosing irrigation methods willy-nilly based purely on cost and ease of use does not seem particularly wise to me. What I've heard out of the reporting and data in California suggests that farmers are not particularly interested in tailoring their water usage to meet either a 'natural hydrology' demand or a 'minimize water consumption' demand, but rather a 'minimize costs to create the highest margin produce' demand. Maybe that sometimes ends up meeting your hydrology requirement, but I doubt it's intentional or particularly common.

That suggests to me that there are all sorts of externalities involved in water use for agriculture - certainly negative ones, but possibly also positive ones (e.g. aquifer recharge). Rationalizing incentives and prices to minimize the negative externalities and maximize the positive ones seems an eminently sensible policy, and one that is long overdue. I have no doubt there is subtlety and nuance involved in the ideal outcome, with wide variation over the very different geographies, types of agriculture, etc. present throughout California. What I'd like to see, however, is some rationality brought into the market. Unfortunately, said complexity suggests that crude market instruments such as higher pricing are likely to only improve matters somewhat. It needs to be coupled with appropriate changes in culture and education (using incentives if necessary) to craft better-tailored solutions for different regions and individuals.

That's a very long way of saying that I think agriculture practices in California and other dryish places need to change, and that they probably need a combination of price pressure and targeted incentives to do it.