Abolish Private Property in Water? California Needs Markets (Stroshane Reconsidered)

MasterResource.org ^ | May 10, 2017 | Wayne Lusvardi

[WayneLusvardi]

It took some 6,000 years for persons to overcome slavery, serfdom, and oppressive rent and taxation to acquire secure property rights to farmland and to adjacent river water (riparian rights – see Joshua Getzler, A History of Water Rights and Common Law, [2004]).

Enter Tim Stroshane, a former Berkeley central planner, activist and environmentalist, who proposes to abolish such property rights because farming monopolists in California allegedly fail to “share” water with the hordes of urbanites that want it. This post revisits Stroshane’s case in his 2016 book, Drought, Water Law and the Origins of California’s Central Valley Project (Reno: University of Nevada Press).

But there is such a thin spot market for water in California, amounting to only about 1 percent of all water used according to Ellen Hanak of the Public Policy Institute of California, [2] that the thesis of Stroshane’s above-cited book is a non-sequitur and straw-man argument. Because there is no significant market for water in California, market failure cannot be blamed for the inability to manage drought years, which in California are 4 out of every 5 years on average.

[Quality_Not_Quantity]

If 4 out of 5 years is a classified as a drought, I would suggest that the area be reclassified as arid. The data supports it.

[mountn man]

because farming monopolists in California allegedly fail to “share” water with the hordes of urbanites that want it.

These are the same urbanites who want to spend billion$$$ in high speed rail, vs building and sustaining water retention and building water desalinization.

[mountn man]

California asks federal taxpayers to fund repairs at dam

[mountn man]

Jerry Brown’s administration blocks public review of Oroville Dam records

[JimRed]

Desalination plants of the passive variety (sun powered, think life raft emergency kits writ large) would provide all the water they’d ever need, with pure sea salt as a byproduct. But they’d rather spend on SJW projects instead.

[Vendome]

Tim Stroshane, a former Berkeley central planner, activist and environmentalist, who proposes to abolish such property rights because farming monopolists in California allegedly fail to “share” water with the hordes of urbanites that want it.

What an Asshole.

They share the water in the form of food, which the number requirement for agriculture and Farms...