Hardly a liberal thing. This problem has been around since the 1800's, when early settlers bought water rights to a certain percentage of the flow from major watersheds near their property. The purpose was to ensure that farmers always had enough water for irrigation, and to ensure that even if some jerk built a farm upstream of you, you still got the cut of the water that you were "entitled" to first. That's why it's illegal in some states to collect rainwater; you don't "own" the water falling off of your roof. The person who owns the water rights to your soil does.

 

This archaic system, put into place back when "liberal" meant that you spent too much money and "conservative" meant that your women wore too many clothes, is the primary reason that cities fight for water today. Efforts have been made to change it, but farmers continue to block them. Even though farmland occupies a fraction of the turf it once did and uses a fraction of the water, they cling dearly to those water rights. Why? Because a farmer who "owns" 10 million gallons of water and only uses 100,000 can lease the rights to the other 9,900,000 gallons to Los Angeles for tens of millions of dollars. It's gone from protecting agriculture to making a handful of farmers stinking rich at the expense of places like Mountain House, CA.

 

The logical solution? End the water rights system entirely and switch to a population-based system. Tracts of land with the highest population get priority, then right on down the line to the arid desert parcels that two people and a monkey live on. Farms do need to be taken care of with a high priority, of course, but strip those lucky few individuals who hold sizeable water rights on key watersheds of their ability to fix prices and hold entire cities hostage on a yearly basis. Liberal or conservative doesn't enter into this one at all.

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