Yes.

They have built giant aqueducts and canals over all 3 states to purposely dump perfectly good, clean, fresh water into the oceans, all in a extremely expensive taxpayer funded effort to thwart and deny farmers access to that water.

Now on a serious note, you might be interested to know that rivers and the surrounding areas are a unique environment all on their own that supports a wide range of life that depends upon having good, clean fresh water to survive. When all the water is removed prior to its natural drainage, which tends to be the ocean, those unique environments that are crucial to life that depends on that water, dies.

The river in America that has been the most over and misused is the Colorado. And while only a small section is in only of one of these states, this lesson is a valid comparison when a precious resource is over-allocated.

This river basin is 246K sq miles and spans over 7 states and Mexico. Over 40M people use the water from this river for drinking, irrigation, industry, electrical generation and still some Flora and Fauna. Over 4M acres of farmland and livestock, 90% of it irrigated and that represents 15% of America’s agriculture and 13% of livestock production.

This river basin has been in the grips of a 20+ year drought right now and the long term forecast is that it will continue for much longer. The river currently cannot meet the legal requirements as mandated in the 1922 Colorado River Compact. So something has to give, as in the very near future the water will simply not be there for every user.

This compact has already been breached several times by the US and the recipient of the decreased water flows was Mexico, being at the tail end of this river system and being a much weaker position of the lesser country. Our federal taxpayers have graciously paid Mexico about $20B so that we could keep stealing the water we agreed to give them but welched on. So how do you think our brothers and sisters feel about paying for those 7 states greed over water?

But the worst part is the ecological disaster that we have unleashed along the whole lower stretch of this river from just below the Grand Canyon to where the river USED to empty into the Sea of Cortez. Yes, used to empty into the sea. Because only on very rare years now does the water flow from the high Rocky Mountains to its outlet for the entire year.

This sucking of water out of this system has turned what was once Mexico’s most productive farmland into a barren wasteland full of salt, nitrogen and phosphorus. And it didn’t just destroy the land, it’s destroying the ocean too. Because on those rare times that there is water in the system flushing out into the ocean, it’s carrying all the built-up agriculture pollution into the ocean and killing the life there as well.

While I could go on about this for quite a bit more, you might be starting to see why Oregon, Washington and California have decided to let some of their water flow out to the ocean, having watched what happened next door to them. Perhaps they do not want to have barren wastelands along their coasts where the rivers end their natural flows?