“Why…when most of us have to conserve, should someone be able to use up big chunks of the state’s supply to grow even more almonds and pistachios simply because their great-grandparents grabbed river-adjacent land from Indigenous people?”....
It also threatened the rights of landowners to divert naturally flowing San Joaquin River water for their fields. Instead of losing their rights, though, farmers who had land near the river agreed to trade their water to the federal dam project in exchange for “substitute water,” delivered to them from the Sacramento River.
This is one of several big water agreements, known as settlement or exchange contracts, that swapped water rights in order to permit construction of large projects in the 20th century, including the federal government’s massive Central Valley Project of dams, canals and aqueducts. In addition to the San Joaquin agreement, there are similar contracts for projects on the Sacramento and Feather rivers.
FULL STORY: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2 ... s-giveaway
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