If you want fare, then have a few homeless move into your house and share what you don’t need but if you want legal then the courts are what our system supports. As far as water rights go, legal is the finality of how it works. Protection from the masses that routinely take, after building a legal case to do so, is a constant threat to agriculture. The cities always need more and eventually will take with compensation, so yes perfecting ones water rights is a must OR the courts may determine that negligence to be the grounds for the taking without compensation.

Interesting game of brinksmanship that doesn’t seem to yield any winners, but whatever.

Of course, in the end, you and the homeowners will win, because there are more of you, and as Ben Franklin noted “democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.”

So what is your exact portion? What is my exact portion?When recharge matches the draw you have sustainability. When the pumping level starts dropping you have overdraft. The Paso basin doesn’t recharge very fast even on wet years. I guarantee a residential well is drawing no where near what you vineyard well draws and that is what can’t be sustained. It seems to me that the chance of running out of water would be factored into a decision to plant a vineyard. That appears not to be happening. I am eager to see this play out. With no new sources of recharge and vineyard development running wild this is going to get interesting. I can truck in enough water to live on. You have a lot more to lose than I.

Your use is only sustainable because it is being “underwritten” by the fact that I have not been using my portion of our shared resource.

How can you consider your use “sustainable” when you have not factored in the potential for my use?

Well, my usage as a homeowner has been sustainable and based on the fact that your that the vineyard and wine business relies heavily on public image I suggest you rethink your practices if you plan on being around for the long haul. When the water is gone, game over. I wish you luck!

My right to my portion of the aquifer existed before I began using it. The fact that I only just now began to use my right in no way diminishes my right.

In fact, from a fairness standpoint, a case could be made that YOU need to stop pumping, as you have been using our shared resource for 10/20/30 years and it’s now my turn.

Racket, at what point in deciding to plant a vineyard did you say to yourself that the declining groundwater table was no big thing. What is your back up plan if you run out of water? You can’t dry land farm a vineyard that has been brought up on irrigation. I spent 14 years in vineyard management with some of the biggest companies in the state. I planted many of the vineyards around Paso in the late 1990s and by 2002 the water table had dropped significantly. Vineyards talk about being sustainable. I got news for you, they are not sustainable if they continue to pump while the basin is in overdraft. If my groundwater usage was sustainable for many years and you decide to plant a vineyard and dry my well up, I would say we have a problem. What is your remedy to me? I am not talking about regulation, I am talking about being a good neighbor!

You look over the fence at my water use (which might be newer than yours), you look at your declining water production, you want to regulate me.

I am one of the people that rely on the natural resource, too. You want to deny me the highest and best use of my land (which apparently is a vineyard). My case is that you do not have the right to make that denial.

(FWIW: I only have a hypothetical horse in this race.)

How did you get that my water use trumps yours?? Where did that come from? Explain to me how you have the right to dry up all of the wells around you? I really want to hear your reasoning. You apparently feel you have the right to do what you want so let’s hear your explanation! How do you justify depleting a natural resource that many people rely on?

Soooo, your water use trumps mine?

You just don’t get it. I don’t care what you do with your land and I don’t want any regulations! But you dry up my well because you are too stupid to realize there is a problem, you’re going to have one hell of a fight on your hands!

If you don’t want them to use their land, in order that you can continue to use yours in the manner you’ve become accustom, you need to buy them out. Chasing them out with regulations is bullshit.

So in your opinion, breaking new ground to plant permanent crops during a drought and declining ground water levels is a responsible farming practice because you own all of the water under your property? Overlying ground water rights are correlative which means you don’t have the right to dry up all of your neighbors wells just because you want to exercise your rights. Real farmers don’t dry up a resource just because they can.