Utah bribing farmers to stop poisoning the city
The solution to Utah's water crisis is now "pay alfalfa farmers $300-600 million a year or they'll keep pumping the Great Salt Lake dry and poisoning it with arsenic runoff." This is extortion dressed up as environmental policy.
The math is insane. A billion dollars a year to convince farmers to stop farming. That's normal now. That's how we solve problems.
Utah should pay all alfalfa farmers ~$300-600M/yr (just 1-2% of the $30.8B budget) to stop farming. Would free up 1-1.5 million acre-feet of water a year—enough to deliver most or all of the extra inflow experts say the GSL needs to stabilize and reach healthy levels.
Source
x.com