News

23371 readers

3018 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil

Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.

2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.

Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.

Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.

5. Only recent news is allowed.

Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.

6. All posts must be news articles.

No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.

7. No duplicate posts.

If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.

8. Misinformation is prohibited.

Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.

9. No link shorteners.

The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.

10. Don't copy entire article in your post body

For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

247

‘Water is more valuable than oil’: the corporation cashing in on America’s drought (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 7 months ago by MicroWave to c/news

10 comments fedilink hide all child comments

In an unprecedented deal, a private company purchased land in a tiny Arizona town – and sold its water rights to a suburb 200 miles away. Local residents fear the agreement has ‘opened Pandora’s box’

One of the biggest battles over Colorado River water is being staged in one of the west’s smallest rural enclaves.

Tucked into the bends of the lower Colorado River, Cibola, Arizona, is a community of about 200 people. Maybe 300, if you count the weekenders who come to boat and hunt. Dusty shrublands run into sleepy residential streets, which run into neat fields of cotton and alfalfa.

Nearly a decade ago, Greenstone Resource Partners LLC, a private company backed by global investors, bought almost 500 acres of agricultural land here in Cibola. In a first-of-its-kind deal, the company recently sold the water rights tied to the land to the town of Queen Creek, a suburb of Phoenix, for a $14m gross profit. More than 2,000 acre-feet of water from the Colorado River that was once used to irrigate farmland is now flowing, through a canal system, to the taps of homes more than 200 miles away.

A Guardian investigation into the unprecedented water transfer, and how it took shape, reveals that Greenstone strategically purchased land and influence to advance the deal. The company was able to do so by exploiting the arcane water policies governing the Colorado River.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Harriet_Porber 3 points 7 months ago

lol unprecedented? The entire country of LA would not exist without the early-LA government buying up water rights in the eastern sierras to pipe to LA, and then telling the local farmers there they were shit outta luck the first time drought hit.

If anyone is interested in Western US water rights - Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner is a great book. I usually recommend at least the first quarter of it, as it gets pretty dry and repetitive in the second half. But the first couple chapters talk about the first expedition down the Colorado River and early water rights, which was super interesting. Second half of the book mostly goes over large water projects like dams and aquaducts.