Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dammed and diverted the water flow of City Creek in 1847, the first of many irrigation projects in the Mountain West.
Seeing the success of Utah’s pioneers, the U.S. government formed the Bureau of Reclamation and began subsidized water projects all around the West at the turn of the century. These projects caused many environmental harms, and entire ecosystems have disappeared or changed.
Agricultural water use accounts for 80%-90% of water consumption in Western states. In addition to surface water, western farmers supplement with water from aquifers such as the Ogallala and Central Valley aquifers at an unsustainable rate. Hydrologists estimate that the Ogallala aquifer could be exhausted in this century and take as long as 6,000 years to replenish naturally.
Beyond the environmental concerns of these water projects and ongoing water use for agriculture, we must acknowledge that farming in the West is only made possible by socialism.
Socialism, simply put, is when the government owns and finances the means of production. Massive water projects, land grants and subsidies paid by the American taxpayers to a handful of farmers could not be confused as anything but socialism.
That may be a hard pill to swallow for the typically staunch GOP supporters that make up western farming communities, but facts are facts. Some envision socialists as lazy do-nothings, but desert farmers are some of the hardest working socialists we know.
The recently signed Bipartisan Infrastructure Law allocated $8.3 billion in funding for water projects in the West. These federally subsidized water projects continue to give cheap water to wealthy corporate farms to produce food at the expense of the environment and the American taxpayer.
Increasing our fruit and vegetable imports from Mexico and other South/Central American countries would be much cheaper. Climate scientists warn that our planet is warming and drying, and water from the winter snowpack may become less dependable in the coming decades. With western populations booming and water demands tightening, can we afford to continue to subsidize the fantasy of the desert farmer? Perhaps it is time to close this particular chapter of the American West.
James Hansen is the Utah Libertarian Party’s nominee for the U.S. Senate. His campaign website is Jimmy4Utah.com.