[ed. This is insane.]
Call them the fortunate ones: Nearly 4,000 California companies, farms and others are allowed to use free water with little oversight when the state is so bone dry that deliveries to nearly everyone else have been severely slashed.
Call them the fortunate ones: Nearly 4,000 California companies, farms and others are allowed to use free water with little oversight when the state is so bone dry that deliveries to nearly everyone else have been severely slashed.
Their special status dates back to claims made more than a century ago when water was plentiful. But in the third year of a drought that has ravaged California, these "senior rights holders" dominated by corporations and agricultural concerns are not obliged to conserve water.Nobody knows how much water they actually use, though it amounts to trillions of gallons each year, according to a review of their own reports by The Associated Press. Together, they hold more than half the rights to rivers and streams in California.
The AP found the state's system is based on self-reported, incomplete records riddled with errors and years out of date; some appear to be using far less water than records would indicate.
"We really don't know how much water they've actually diverted," said Bob Rinker, a manager in the State Water Resources Control Board's water rights division. (...)
More than half of the 3,897 entities with active senior and riparian rights to water are corporations, such as the state's biggest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. which creates hydroelectric power, and the Hearst Corp., which has water rights for its remote, Bavarian-style forest compound called Wyntoon.
Also among the biggest rights holders are rural water districts and government agencies such as the water departments of San Francisco and Los Angeles.
San Francisco, whose water rights date to 1902 when its mayor nailed a handwritten notice on a tree, also uses free Sierra Nevada water to generate power for its airport, schools and firehouses.
This year, the state cut water deliveries to farmers and cities by 95 percent, and the federal government also imposed sharp restrictions on its water customers. But companies, farmers and cities with water rights that pre-date 1914 were exempt this year from mandatory cuts, even though they collectively are the biggest water users in the state.
by Jason Dearen and Garance Burke, AP | Read more:
Image: Jae C. Hong/AP
