The Los Angeles took over the existing small irrigation systems and built huge new ones in the 1920s and 1930s in Owens Valley and Mono Lake. San Francisco obtained the water rights to Hetch Hetchy in 1908, completed O'Shaughnessy Dam in 1923, and completed the system to bring it to the city in 1934. San Jose and the surrounding areas get their water from the underground aquifer, which is replenished by water from various small dams in the Santa Cruz mountains that were built and operated by San Jose. All of those were paid for with tax money from those cities. To claim they were built by farmers is nonsense.
Not quite that simple, both L.A. and the San Jose/Santa Clara area get a large amount of water from the SWP (”State Water Project”)...70% of the total water in the SWP system goes to cities. Farmers paid for part of the original SWP construction cost and of course continue to pay for their 30% of SWP water. And sometimes the ag interests get the shaft...in 2014 Westlands Water District paid for and “banked” water in San Luis Reservoir and won’t receive it until 2016 or later depending on rainfall.
CA water rights are a VERY complex topic!! Oh well, guess I’ll just watch “Chinatown” for an entertaining movie version! ;-)
http://www.water.ca.gov/swp/cvp.cfm
http://www.usbr.gov/history/cvpintro.html
I’m not claiming those were built by farmers, the overall majority were. For an individual instance, take the Klamath system, that was built for irrigation and VETERANS were settled there with the promise of water in perpetuity. They’ve since be screwed out of that promise.
The Central Valley Project dwarfs those systems you cited, and it was built for agriculture by the FEDs and State. The state was built on agriculture, and the way it’s political system is going, that’s what it’s going to end up returning to.
From 1902 through 1905, Eaton, Mulholland, and others engaged in underhanded methods to ensure that Los Angeles would gain the water rights in the Owens Valley, blocking the Bureau of Reclamation from building water infrastructure for the residents in Owens Valley.[8]:48–69[10]:62-69 While Eaton engaged in most of the political maneuverings and chicanery,[10]:62 Mulholland misled Los Angeles public opinion by dramatically understating the amount of water then available for Los Angeles' growth.[10]:73 Mullholland also misled residents of the Owens Valley: he indicated that Los Angeles would only use unused flows in the Owens Valley, while planning on using the full water rights to fill the aquifer of the San Fernando Valley.[10]:73
The water from the aqueduct carries water from the Owens Valley in the Eastern Sierra to irrigate and store water in the San Fernando Valley. When the aqueduct was built, the San Fernando Valley was not part of the city.[10]:74–76[11]:152[15] From a hydrological point of view, the San Fernando Valley was ideal: its aquifer could serve as free water storage without evaporation.[10]:73 One obstacle to the irrigation was the Los Angeles City Charter, which prohibited the sale, lease, or other use of the city's water without a two-thirds approval by the voters.[8]:18 This charter limitation would be avoided through the annexation of a large portion of the San Fernando Valley to the city.[8]:133 Mulholland realized that the annexation would raise the debt limit of Los Angeles, which allowed the financing of the aqueduct.[16] By 1915, the initial annexations were completed,[17] and by 1926 the land area of Los Angeles had doubled, making it the largest city in the United States by area.[18]The water from the aqueduct shifted farming in the San Fernando Valley from wheat to irrigated crops such as corn, beans, squash, and cotton. The Valley became known for its orchards of apricots, persimmons, and walnuts; and major citrus groves of oranges and lemons. These continued within the city environs until the growth of Los Angeles converted land use into suburbanization.