I suggested taxes precisely because taxation is the most natural way to implement regulation on an industry. It’s easy to argue for reduced liability for fines. You can fight a ticket. But cheating on your taxes is a great way for any small business to go under in a heartbeat. You have water rights? They are now taxed as income. Have a nice day. Like the Okies of the Dust Bowl, it may be time for some California farmers to uproot and go somewhere else.
That’s weird, I didn’t say that:
This was my criticism exactly, I made a (hyperbolic) point to illustrate that even impractical solutions are still preferable to ultimately destructive solutions.
I very much imagine that there are many possible solutions that don’t involve the use of an impractical, expensive, fledgling technology.
I live in Santa Clara Valley, and I’m aware of the aquifer recharging going on in parts of the state. They used to recharge the aquifers in the Central Valley, too, but since the early '60s, they’ve been taking more than putting back, and it’s only gotten worse in recent decades. The thing is, there’s not really any water to put back in the aquifers at this point: it’s one of the driest places in California under normal conditions - look at their normal average rainfall - and any water they import into the area gets used in agriculture (with run-off too saline to use without desalinization). They could, at massive expense put water back, but they could’t also farm there, so I’m not sure anyone would bother at that point to un-do 50-odd years of groundwater depletion.
Did anybody say “ground water”?
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What you are seeing is the price we all pay for government sponsored farming and artificially low water prices.
Had either of these things not been allowed to exist this would be a non-story.
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