Which side are you all gonna be on in 2120? Choose wisely.
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I pick Beanerschnitzels.
Companies are draining american land dry of water that never comes back. I'm hoping that this is an old issue that was solved earlier .... But I very much doubt it.
It's complicated, and lawsuit wins generally go to the person with the most money.
The majority of fresh water sources in the US are not "free"; they belong to landowners around the body of water, who are endowed with certain rights and are entitled to a certain amount of taking of that water. If a person upstream tries to divert the river onto their own property and open up an Arrowhead Bottling Company or a Lazy River Theme Park, the rights owners downriver can sue. Sometimes these lawsuits are HUGE and cross state lines, and states sometimes sue each other over the issue of water rights. This type of litigation can be multigenerational before the issue is settled.
If a piece of land is subdivided, the underlying water rights to that land are also subdivided. That makes it possible for a current-day landowner to have a 1/181,732nd percent right to a river or lake. It's going to take a lot of time and money to find the other 181,731 fractions of a percent owners of rights to that river or lake in order to organize and oppose the Corporate Baddies. This is time and money that Joe Schmoe from Idaho doesn't have, but the Corporate Baddies do have.
It's also possible to sell these rights without selling the underlying land. So if Grandpa didn't see the value of a 1/181,732nd percent interest in water rights and sold it for beer money because "Haw! Water's free! I'll just dig a well right next to the river LOL!" then you may have no water rights to a body of water that's literally on your property. And Corporate Baddie can slowly, surely, convince other people like Grandpa that their water rights are worth less than what Corporate Baddie is offering, and convince enough of them to sell their water rights until Corporate Baddie owns the biggest percent interest in that body of water. Then the Corporate Baddie gets to decide what happens to the water, because much like a publicly-owned company, whoever owns the most stock makes the rules.
The remaining rights holders can try to fight it, but it's very costly and time consuming legislation. Corporate Baddies have all the time in the world for legislation; if one Baddie lawyer dies, another one takes over for him. The private rights owner has no such protection; if he should die, there's no guarantee that his heir won't turn out to be a "LOL water is free!" ignoramus and sell out to Corporate Baddie's now very generous offer. Then one of the other water rights owners will have to start a brand-new lawsuit over water rights, and we're back at square one. The same is true of oil, gas, and mineral rights, except people usually don't think those are free and don't sell their rights for the cost of a hotdog and a beer; they're a little more difficult to convince. It's slimy but it's all legal.
