Owens Lake [2] to the south of Mono Lake is gone. It was larger than Mono Lake. Lake bed salts blown by the wind are pretty toxic, and Los Angeles was required to use some water to reduce dust.
The largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi used to be Tulare Lake [3] in central California. It's gone and the southern San Joaquin Valley no longer drains to the ocean. Salts and other junk is slowly building up.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Audubon_Society_v._Su...
Let's put this in perspective, the Aral sea was larger than lake Michigan, now it's one tenth its original size and three times as salty as seawater.
Here's a relevant line from the Jethro Tull song, "Farm On The Freeway"
They forgot they told us what this old land was for.
Grow two tons the acre, boy, between the stones.
This was no Southfork, it was no Ponderosa.
But it was the place that I called home.
They say they gave me compensation...
That's not what I'm chasing. I was a rich man before yesterday.
And what do I want with a million dollars and a pickup truck?
So "compensation" isn't really that humane of a word.
With growing human populations we know we have to relocate resources, but we must make them as responsibly as we can, with as limited negative impact as we can afford.
Owens was begun in the '20s? Aral sea engineering in the 60s? That's 40 years of better understanding of the repercussions of badly planned engineering projects, yet it was pushed thru regardless.
What I mean by that is, don't diminish or dismiss what happened in Owens by saying that the people involved "were compensated".
FWIW, I would have preferred the phrase "The farmers received some compensation, as I understand it."