The Indicator NPR hide caption
The Water Marketplace
The Indicator NPR hide caption
After seven years of drought in California that drained aquifers and brought many farmers to the brink, legislators in Sacramento crafted a bunch of rules governing water usage. Those rules, many of which kick in next year, cap how much water farmers and cities can use.
The regulations have caused a lot of anger and panic in the farming community. But also...a lot of innovation. Pilot programs have cropped up all over that state that create little marketplaces for water — where farmers and others can buy and sell it, like you'd sell oil or gas or wheat.
On today's Indicator: California's new water markets: how they came to be and how they're changing life for farmers and for water use in the West.
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