If you liked Cadillac Desert you might enjoy reading A Kingdom from Dust, a long-form article in California Sunday magazine that details the Resnick family behind Pom pomegranate products and their lobbying for water rights in Kern county: https://story.californiasunday.com/resnick-a-kingdom-from-du...

Mark Arax, the author of that article has a longer book, A Dreamt Land, on the subject of California agriculture and water, (probably the article is an excerpt) that is a really good read too. A little more up-to-date than Cadillac Desert, and more focused on California and the Central Valley.

I find it funny that a farm in the valley has "water use rights" and will end up using millions of gallons of water per month and pay almost nothing for it meanwhile my sfm which uses about 15k gallons a month will cost $300 for the privilege and I'm allowed to keep going and water outside as much as I want however California regulations prevent me from installing a second shower head in my walk in shower wet room under the guise of not wasting water.

All this even though the place where I live is basically 97% recycled water so you're really just paying for the cost of treating the water.

Eh I generally don't understand why my property has to stay a dessert while 10 minutes from my house the farms take the water and sell it for themselves in the fruit.

15k gallons per month?!? >7k/mo where I live in Colorado would result in a 4-digit bill and a nasty gram to boot.

I just got the property 45 days ago and left the watering system alone for now. I think my last bill was 16k gallons but I need to check again. I'm in Hawaii packing my old apartment till Tuesday.

A lot of water rights are based upon “first use”, ignoring the native people that were already there. So if the farm was in existence first, it has the right to the water over people who came later. Much like homesteading.