• @xenautika@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    ah yes the Resnicks, friends of Bill Gates too. Stu Resnick has been going county to county and organizing water barons to claim literal aquifers as their property. the 2018 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) was designed to finally meter and value water (something California, one of the most important agricultural regions in the world, never bothered with for all its 180 year run). but the water barons have found loopholes in the legislation due to its emphasis on privatization; rather than improve the water resource situation, the state of California opened it up to abuse through privatization and created local jurisdictions that can be arbitrarily made by those who have the most share in water, and police themselves based on their own criteria.

    it’s all super fucked, and at this rate California’s ag economy, ecological health, as well as many many millions of homes dependent on groundwater, will all collapse.

    • @Shrike502@lemmygrad.ml
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      61 year ago

      water barons to claim literal aquifers as their property

      Mad Max was not supposed to be a user manual dammit!

      but the water barons have found loopholes in the legislation due to its emphasis on privatization

      What are the odds it was drafted like this on purpose?

      • @xenautika@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        What are the odds it was drafted like this on purpose?

        i have to look into the details again but SGMA was drafted with the stakeholder mentality in mind through the involvement of major water districts and landowners. who of course enable corporate agri-industry, such as the Resnick’s wonderful brands and paramount citrus, as the main political power of the state’s water resources.

        each groundwater region is managed by a groundwater sustainability agency (GSA), which develop strategic plans they have to submit to the state to be approve, after which they go about managing it with oversight through SGMA.

        GSA’s are a combination of land-owning farmers, ranchers, and water districts, such as aquifers, entities with natural surface water rights, canals or reservoirs. the GSA board is solely comprised of landowners of that GSA, elected by landowners in the GSA. Often wealthy farmers also serve on the board of the water district they receive water from. the formation of new water districts under the SGMA rules also gives them liberal flexibility to meet GSA formation requirements. for example, one water district consolidated three other districts, involving a nearby city, then moved to form the GSA. one decision was a one acre, one vote decision-making process: because of the aquifer and the nearby cities dependence on it and thus incorporation into the same GSA , the acreage of about 50 landowners now overules at least 60,000 people’s water rights.

        when you get more into it, you see this is some serious cartoon villain shit. and the state of California has been in collusion since the beginning: in the 1930’s, the very first and still-dominant state water infrastructure projects were done under direct leadership and control by the settler water aristocracy of Amerika.

  • @xenautika@lemmygrad.ml
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    121 year ago

    historically the state has always sided with capital. the california water project and central valley water project were designed by water barons such as JG Boswell and the city of LA to divert and destroy the massive wetland system of the region. these projects along with the hetch-hetchy-tuolomne and feather river-lake oroville projects continued the colonization of this land and are bringing about massive ecocide and desertification to a once incredibly abundant land (and still fairly abundant due to the indigenous legacy of land management, but not for long)

  • @whoami@lemmygrad.ml
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    61 year ago

    On kickstarter there is a documentary called Pistachio Wars. It’s been in the works for a while now, you should check it out. It covers the similar topics.