Who’s Taking America’s Water? | Climate Town
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN points to it in Colorado River and water-use threads as an accessible explainer of why the Western water shortage keeps getting worse.
What it is
A Climate Town episode on who uses America's water, particularly Western water. It looks at agriculture such as alfalfa and animal feed, and at water-rights rules that discourage conservation.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2024 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Recommends estebank · 2024-08 · on “Why isn't Colorado's snowpack ending up in the Colorado River?”
If you don't mind the presentation style, [this video] is great presents an even direr situation: because water rights are "use it or lose it", we are actively encouraging water misuse, beyond just "it's cheap enough to misuse it".
Recommends davidklemke · 2025-06 · on “The Colorado River is running low. The picture looks even worse underground.”
Climate Town did a great video breaking down where a lot of this ends up, worth the watch if you want some more detailed background on the agreements in place that are leading to this happening: [this video]
Recommends pseudohadamard · 2026-07 · on “Lake Powell Water Critically Low; Wyoming Expects More Demand On Flaming Gorge”
For anyone interested in the background behind this clusterfuck, Climate Town has a good explainer: [this video] . It's not just drought, it's because many of the players involved are required to waste as much water as they can - the video has the details.
Cites katbyte · 2024-08 · on “Why isn't Colorado's snowpack ending up in the Colorado River?”
Residential water use is tiny compared to water used to grow things mostly cattle feed, Primarily alfalfa [this video] The reason for the water shortages is not more people it’s a complete and utter mismanagement of the watershed
Cites awongh · 2025-01 · on “TSMC begins producing 4-nanometer chips in Arizona”
Arizona and California have outdated water management laws that basically mean that big agriculture gets free water. Until recently Saudi Arabia was using these laws to grow alfalfa in the desert. In California, water intensive crops like almond trees get free water. [this video] [LINK]
Cites recursive · 2026-05 · on “Maryland citizens hit with $2B power grid upgrade for out-of-state AI”
Plenty of alfalfa and corn aren't going to food production. And much of those the remaining are not efficient. [this video]