I do not mean to diminish what has happened around the Aral Sea.
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."
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.