Here's an editorial about water from a North Carolina newspaper - http://www.salisburypost.com/Opinion/080108-edit-water-plan and it gets into issues pretty much all of us will be grappling with in the near future, if we aren't already.
I'm curious what people think of more government intrusion into water use, whether by regulation, pricing or whatever. I'm especially interested in what people think about this quote - "Municipalities and counties have little authority to regulate withdrawals of groundwater during droughts. Yet in counties such as Rowan, a majority of residents are on private wells. What safeguards could help sustain underground aquifers and other groundwater sources?" Taken to its logical conclusion, that could even mean metering & billing for private wells. The word socialist is only mentioned once in the comments following the article, but it's clearly what some people are thinking.
However, a similar thing recently blew up in NM, where a court recently ruled that the state's water laws were being violated by allowing homeowners to sink wells. Like other western states, NM's water law is the law of prior appropriation, meaning it belongs to whoever started using it first. When homeowners sink wells, they can be taking water already belonging to someone else. It wasn't government that sponsored the change, by the way, it was some of those prior appropriators. The state has appealed the ruling.
It's complicated and, since this is what I do now, I'm interested in the range of opinions about issues around water. People aren't shy about stating opinions at Terraforums, so I thought I'd ask. It's also relevant become environment often gets ignored in water wars and a few feet of drawdown can eliminate the homes of CPs and other wild things.
I'm curious what people think of more government intrusion into water use, whether by regulation, pricing or whatever. I'm especially interested in what people think about this quote - "Municipalities and counties have little authority to regulate withdrawals of groundwater during droughts. Yet in counties such as Rowan, a majority of residents are on private wells. What safeguards could help sustain underground aquifers and other groundwater sources?" Taken to its logical conclusion, that could even mean metering & billing for private wells. The word socialist is only mentioned once in the comments following the article, but it's clearly what some people are thinking.
However, a similar thing recently blew up in NM, where a court recently ruled that the state's water laws were being violated by allowing homeowners to sink wells. Like other western states, NM's water law is the law of prior appropriation, meaning it belongs to whoever started using it first. When homeowners sink wells, they can be taking water already belonging to someone else. It wasn't government that sponsored the change, by the way, it was some of those prior appropriators. The state has appealed the ruling.
It's complicated and, since this is what I do now, I'm interested in the range of opinions about issues around water. People aren't shy about stating opinions at Terraforums, so I thought I'd ask. It's also relevant become environment often gets ignored in water wars and a few feet of drawdown can eliminate the homes of CPs and other wild things.
