Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumIn dry California, water fetching record prices
In dry California, water fetching record prices
Posted: Wednesday, July 2, 2014 1:32 am | Updated: 4:03 am, Wed Jul 2, 2014.
Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) Throughout California's desperately dry Central Valley, those with water to spare are cashing in.
As a third parched summer forces farmers to fallow fields and lay off workers, two water districts and a pair of landowners in the heart of the state's farmland are making millions of dollars by auctioning off their private caches.
Nearly 40 others also are seeking to sell their surplus water this year, according to state and federal records.
Economists say it's been decades since the water market has been this hot. In the last five years alone, the price has grown tenfold to as much as $2,200 an acre-foot enough to cover a football field with a foot of water.
Unlike the previous drought in 2009, the state has been hands-off, letting the market set the price even though severe shortages prompted a statewide drought emergency declaration this year.
More:
http://www.heraldstandard.com/united_states_ap/in-dry-california-water-fetching-record-prices/article_1cfb3c8b-7217-5024-88e5-478089ecabe0.html
littlemissmartypants
(22,853 posts)WWW 3 just a matter of time.
littlemissmartypants
(22,853 posts)Product Description
While draught and desertification are intensifying around the world, corporations are aggressively converting free-flowing water into bottled profits. The water wars of the twenty-first century may matchor even surpassthe oil wars of the twentieth. In Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution and Profit, Vandana Shiva, "the world's most prominent radical scientist" (the Guardian), shines a light on activists who are fighting corporate maneuvers to convert this life-sustaining resource into more gold for the elites.
In Water Wars, Shiva uses her remarkable knowledge of science and society tooutline the emergence of corporate culture and the historical erosion of communal water rights. Using the international water trade and industrial activities such as damming, mining, and aquafarming as her lens, Shiva exposes the destruction of the earth and the disenfranchisement of the world's poor as they are stripped of rights to a precious common good.
In her passionate, feminist style, Shiva celebrates the spiritual and traditional role water has played in communities throughout history, and warns that water privatization threatens cultures and livelihoods worldwide. Shiva calls for a movement to preserve water access for all, and offers a blueprint for global resistance based on examples of successful campaigns.
Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental leader and recipient of the 1993 Alternative Nobel Peace Prize (the Right Livelihood Award). She is author of several books, including Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply (South End Press, 2000); Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge (South End Press, 1997); and Staying Alive (St. Martin's Press, 1989). Shiva is a leader, along with Ralph Nader and Jeremy Rifkin, in the International Forum on Globalization. Before becoming an activist, Shiva was one of India's leading physicists.
About the Author
A world-renowned environmental leader and recipient of the 1993 Alternative Nobel Peace Prize (the Right Livelihood Award), Shiva has authored several bestselling books, most recently Earth Democracy. Activist and scientist, Shiva leads, with Ralph Nader and Jeremy Rifkin, the International Forum on Globalization. Before becoming an activist, Shiva was one of India's leading physicists.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/089608650X/ref=mw_dp_mdsc?dsc=1
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)all too eager to make a fast buck.
A most amazing place, busy devouring itself.