After three years of historically dry and hot weather, the images of California’s drought have become familiar: empty fields, brown lawns, dry stream beds. But for every one of those scenes, there are other parts of the state where water has been flowing freely and the effects of drought are hard to see.
It’s all tied to California’s system of water rights — the complex hierarchy that governs who gets water during a drought and who doesn’t. After unprecedented cutbacks this year that left many farmers scrambling for water, some critics say the hierarchy is a historical relic that makes it harder for the state to deal with drought.
The system is largely invisible, buried in legal contracts, court decisions and stacks of century-old papers. To get a sense of what it all means, there is a place you can go to actually see water rights in action: east of Interstate 5, near Los Banos, in the Central Valley.
http://blogs.kqed.org/science/audio/how-californias-water-rights-make-it-tough-to-manage-drought/