The drought in California is a maddening study in contradictions. The state is an epicenter for drought even as other parts of the United States are awash in rain. At the same time, many of the people of California are subject to strict very strict conditions on the use of water. However, not only are the restrictions rather harsh, they are not being applied in many cases to the people that use up to four fifths of the water in the state. This does not make much sense to many people on a number of levels but yet the problems and uneven enforcement persist. While there must be better ways to address the drought in California, the application of these better methods seems to be uneven at best according to the work of Vice and its reporters.
Analysis
The clips at the very beginning of the video lay bare the rather silly restrictions that are in place when comparing them to how people not under the restrictions are acting. Per the drone footage at the rice fields in Yolo County, it is clear that a lot of water is being literally wasted on 19th to 20th century technology in the flood-irrigated fields in that county. Indeed, the county...
It has gotten so bad for many residents that people are literally painting their grass green because watering the grass into health is not allowed for under the law. Something that makes the proverbial knife go deeper with the California water restrictions is that while agriculture is exempt from the cutbacks despite them using 80% of the state's water, the revenue from those agricultural efforts makes up only two percent of the state's economic dollar flow. In other words, the agricultural people are using eighty percent of the water yet they only account for two percent of the revenue. There is a factor of forty in between those two numbers (Vice, 2016).
Not only are the methods with which the water is used archaic, so too is how the people who use the water retain and wield those rights. Indeed, the Yolo water hogging stems from when the land was originally claimed, basically by people showing up first and putting up a sign. Beyond that, the people who retain those "senior" rights are compelled to use that water or they will lose those rights. Basically,…
