"If you shared an aquifer with a neighbor, wouldn't you want a law that your neighbor couldn't pee in his well? "
A law doesn't stop anybody from doing wrong. It only gives a means of punishment if they're caught.
You seem not to understand the basic premis underwhich our republic was meant to operate. You have to trust that people are basically good, and will do the right and moral thing if given the opportunity, the knowledge and the right to decide on their own. Plenty of water systems evolved in this counrty with shared aquifers that have been successful and friendly between neighbors.
You appear to have a bias against agriculture and farmers. Remember our government was NEVER chartered to give tax incentives to people whose behaviour they'd like to change. That is the WORST form of social engineering on the planet. Also, when the government tries to tell people how to farm, don't use those 'synthetic fertilizers', it is verging on Lysenkoism
Under Lysenko's guidance,
science was guided not by the most likely theories, backed by appropriately controlled experiments, but by the desired ideology. Science was practiced in the service of the State, or more precisely, in the service of ideology. The results were predictable: the steady deterioration of Soviet biology. Lysenko's methods were not condemned by the Soviet scientific community until 1965, more than a decade after Stalin's death.
You seem not to understand the basic premis underwhich our republic was meant to operate. You have to trust that people are basically good, and will do the right and moral thing if given the opportunity, the knowledge and the right to decide on their own. Plenty of water systems evolved in this counrty with shared aquifers that have been successful and friendly between neighbors.Sure I understand that. I also understand that pollution was so bad in the 1960s that Congress passed the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. Not everybody cooperated or did what was right. Though we wish that everyone would be right and moral in their dealings, not everybody is.
You appear to have a bias against agriculture and farmers. Remember our government was NEVER chartered to give tax incentives to people whose behaviour they'd like to change. That is the WORST form of social engineering on the planet. Also, when the government tries to tell people how to farm, don't use those 'synthetic fertilizers', it is verging on Lysenkoism
Government has been making recommendations to farmers on how to farm since the Dust Bowl days, if not before. They started to teach farmers how to practice better soil conservation when a large portion of Midwestern topsoil started blowing eastward. Currently, overuse of fertilizer contributes a heavy nutrient load to the Mississippi River, leading to eutrophication and sea floor anoxia in the Gulf of Mexico around the Mississippi River delta. Multiple states have agreed to work on modifying agricultural practices in the Mississippi watershed to reduce the nutrient load in the river.
More of that needs to happen. No "service to ideology": more efficient, less polluting, and less wasteful practices.