Wikipedia, Riparian Water Rights (Wikipedia article) from English common law, the rights of people who live next to a body of water

Cassidy Randall, Who Owns A River? The Question Is Tearing This Community Apart. Huffington Post, Jun 20, 2020.

Nick Estes, Bill Gates Is the Biggest Private Owner of Farmland in the United States. Why? The Guardian, Apr 5, 2021.  One suspects because of water rights.

Ross Brooks, World's First Urban Algae Canopy Produces the Oxygen Equivalent of Four Hectares of Woodland Every Day. Inhabit, Apr 28, 2015.

Patrick Ray, et.al., Confronting Climate Uncertainty in Water Resources Planning and Project Design: The Decision Tree Network. Open Knowledge book, Aug 25, 2015.

Justin Gillis, Flooding of Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has Already Begun. New York Times, Sep 3, 2016.

Robin Bravender, Trump Picks Top Climate Skeptic to Lead EPA Transition. Scientific American, Sep 26, 2016.

Charlie Campbell, China's Greening of the Vast Kubuqi Desert is a Model for Land Restoration Everywhere. Time, Jul 26, 2017.

Associated Press, Saudi Land Purchases in California and Arizona Fuel Debate Over Water Rights. Los Angeles Times, Mar 29, 2016.  See also Larry Bodine, Saudis Buy Huge Arizona Farmland After Sucking their own Aquifers Dry. Blog for Arizona, Dec 14, 2018.  See also Lauren Markham, Who Keeps Buying California’s Scarce Water? Saudi Arabia. The Guardian, Mar 25, 2019.  To grow alfalfa in Blythe, CA for cow feed in Saudi Arabia. Renee Wilde, 'American Soil' Is Increasingly Foreign Owned. NPR, May 27, 2019.  “Today nearly 30 million acres of U.S. farmland are held by foreign investors. That number has doubled in the past two decades, which is raising alarm bells in farming communities.”

John Nichols, How Donald Trump and Elaine Chao Sold Off Flood-Control Policy to the Highest Bidders. The Nation, Aug 28, 2017.  See also Ella Nilsen, Trump Rolled Back Federal Standards to Flood-Proof Infrastructure Projects a Few Weeks Before Harvey Hit. Vox, Aug 29, 2017.

Ana Campoy and David Yanofsky, Houston’s Flooding Shows What Happens When You Ignore Science and Let Developers Run Rampant. Quartz, Aug 29, 2017.  See also David Leonhardt, Harvey, the Storm That Humans Helped Cause. New York Times, Aug 29, 2017.  See also George Monbiot, Why Are the Crucial Questions About Hurricane Harvey Not Being Asked? The Guardian, Aug 29, 2017.

PBS News Hour, The Story of American Poverty, As Told By One Alabama County. PBS News Hour, Jul 7, 2018.  More than 18 million Americans live in “extreme poverty,” according to a report from the United Nations, which ranked poverty in the U.S. alongside some of the poorest areas in the world. The UN Special Rapporteur for Extreme Poverty paid a visit to the U.S. last year, drawing worldwide attention to his findings. This Alabama African American community lacks clean sewage water treatment because the State of Alabama has opposed extending public infrastructure there. This is a case study of how most Americans have benefited from massive public investment yet insist that American society is an “meritocracy of individual achievement,” and why “small government conservatism” is often a smokescreen for “prejudice and systemic racial injustice.”

Vanessa Romo, Massive Fatberg Found Blocking Sewer In British Seaside Town. NPR, Jan 8, 2019.

Mark Arax, The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California. Knopf | Amazon page, May 21, 2019.  A bestseller about how Californians have fought water wars since the Gold Rush

Jose A. Del Real, They Grow the Nation’s Food, but They Can’t Drink the Water. New York Times, May 21, 2019.  

“Water is a currency in California, and the low-income farmworkers who pick the Central Valley’s crops know it better than anyone. They labor in the region’s endless orchards, made possible by sophisticated irrigation systems, but at home their faucets spew toxic water tainted by arsenic and fertilizer chemicals.”

Sal Mercogliano, Using Seawater To Fight Fires in SoCal | Why No Water | Fireboats | Seawater Myths! What Is Going on With Shipping? Jan 12, 2025. The water supply and water pressure are controlled at certain points. Water is wasted if a house suddenly burns down because the occupant does not have time to turn off the water to the house itself. Water also needs to be moved by gravity — thus, water towers. Fire hydrants in CA are hooked up to reservoirs at higher elevations. San Francisco does have the option to pump salt water from the ocean if necessary — and salt is not necessarily corrosive to pumps as long as it can be cleaned afterwards, although wear rings, gaskets, and other items will need to be replacement. Coast Guard boats and Fire Dept boats pump seawater to fight fires. There is no evidence that the Romans salted the fields of the Carthaginians, incidentally. Salt disperses over time in most cases. In high wind situations, firefighters use a particular strategy to follow a fire and narrow it from the sides.

Katie Hawkinson, Musk’s DOGE ‘Whiz Kids’ Flew to California to Try and Release Water Themselves During LA Fires. UK Independent, Mar 7, 2025.

Eli Tan, Their Water Taps Ran Dry When Meta Built Next Door. New York Times, Jul 14, 2025. “In the race to develop artificial intelligence, tech giants are building data centers that guzzle up water. That has led to problems for people who live nearby.”

Peter Zeihan, The Revolution in Military Affairs: Water Wars. Zeihan on Geopolitics, Aug 14, 2025. Zeihan thinks it’s unlikely except in specific places related to river access. It’s easier to move people than water.

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Desalination Plants Struck As UAE Accuses Israel Of Disinformation. Breaking Points, Mar 9, 2026. The U.S./Israel coalition attacked a desalination plan in Iran, and Iran attacked one in UAE. An escalation of these targets would mean disaster for millions of people in the Gulf states.

Ritchie C. Shoemaker, Mold Warriors. Gateway Books | Amazon page, 2005.

Bulletproof Media, Moldy (DVD film)

National Geographic, Can the Blue Revolution Solve the World's Food Puzzle? National Geographic, date unknown.

Ritchie C. Shoemaker, Surviving Mold: Life in the Era of Dangerous Buildings. Otter Bay Books | Amazon page, 2010.

Alex Prud'homme, The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century. Scribner | Amazon page, 2011.

Phil Waggoner, I'm From West Virginia and I've Got Something to Say About the Chemical Spill. Huffington Post, Jan 14, 2014.  

Elizabeth Behrmann, Teslas in California Help Bring Dirty Rain to China. Bloomberg, Mar 14, 2014.  

Danyelle Solomon and Tracey Ross, Flint Isn’t the Only Place with Racism in the Water. Center for American Progress, Feb 9, 2016.  spotlights Cancer Alley in Louisiana alongside Flint, Michigan

Will Scott, Why North Carolinians Can’t Drink Their Well Water. Talk Poverty, Aug 19, 2016.  re: coal ash runoff

James Hamblin, The Looming Consequences of Breathing Mold. The Atlantic, Aug 30, 2017.

Oliver Milman, A Civil Rights Emergency: Justice, Clean Air and Water in the Age of Trump. The Guardian, Nov 20, 2017.

Tom Dart, A Trail of Toxicity: The US Military Bases Making People Sick. The Guardian, May 23, 2019.  re: perflourinated compounds, or per- and polyflouroalkyl substances, the runoff from grease, stain, and fire resistant chemicals; 98% of Americans have this in our blood; studies show they affect learning and behavior of infants and older children; lower a woman’s chance of getting pregnant; interfere with the body’s natural hormones; increase cholesterol levels; affect the immune system; and increase the risk of kidney and testicular cancer and thyroid problems. They are also in cosmetics: Lauren Zanolli, Pretty Hurts: Are Chemicals in Beauty Products Making Us Ill? The Guardian, May 23, 2019.

Aylin Woodward, Vintage EPA Photos Reveal What US Waterways Looked Like Before Pollution Was Regulated. Business Insider, Jul 2, 2019.

Coral Davenport, Trump Removes Pollution Controls on Streams and Wetlands. New York Times, Jan 22, 2020.  Impacting especially farmers’ use of pesticides.

Vox, How “Forever Chemicals” Polluted America’s Water. Vox, Aug 4, 2020.  PFAS made in the 1930s by DuPont; focus on the Cape Fear River in North Carolina. See also Sharon Lerner, The Battle for Decatur. The Intercept, Aug 23, 2020.  which is about PFAS pollution done by 3M.

Catherine Coleman Flowers, Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret. The New Press | Amazon page, Nov 2020.  which affects water and sewage systems, and more. See interview with Krystal Ball, Activist Reveals the Shocking Sanitation Crisis Crippling Rural America. Rising | The Hill, Dec 14, 2020.

CBS News, Prosecutors Detail Charges in Flint Water Investigation. CBS News, Jan 14, 2021.  Former Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and 8 other government officials face criminal charges.

Libby Leonard, Pearl Harbor Water Poisoning: US Military Families Say They Continue to Fall Ill.  The Guardian UK, Jul 2, 2022.  Symptoms include:  debilitating ocular migraines, vomiting with severe abdominal pain, chemical burns, and crippling back pain.

James LaPorta, Konstantin Toropin, and Patricia Kime, Poisoned Water: How a Navy Ship Dumped Fuel and Sickened Its Own Crew. Military.com, Jun 1, 2023. In 2016, the U.S.S. Boxer “intentionally and potentially illegally dumped diesel fuel into the ocean and immediately sucked the noxious liquid back aboard the ship and into its water supply.”

PBS News Hour, Study Estimates Nearly Half of U.S. Water Supply Contaminated with 'Forever Chemicals'.  PBS News Hour, Aug 16, 2023.  Kidney and testicular cancer in particular are linked to PFAS chemicals.  People who live in areas with known contamination of drinking water, and people who work with PFAS, are at elevated risk. “A recent government study estimates nearly half of America’s tap water could contain toxic "forever chemicals" known as PFAS. These chemicals have been used in many everyday items since the 1940s from nonstick cookware to cosmetics to rain jackets. Exposure to them can lead to serious health outcomes.” 

Julia Manchester, Nanoplastics From Bottled Water Found In our Bodies? The Hill, Feb 18, 2024. Plastics are found in placentas, organs, etc. in bottled water, cosmetic materials, clothing, etc.

Heather Cox Richardson, December 15, 2024. Letters from an American | Substack, Dec 16, 2024. On fossil fuel companies polluting water, then hiring lobbyists to stave off clean water regulations.

Marcel Honore, Honolulu Water Agency Sues US Navy Over Red Hill Fuel Spill Damage. Military Times, Jul 2, 2025.

“The Honolulu Board of Water Supply is taking the U.S. Navy to court for refusing to cover the local agency’s costs following the 2021 fuel spill at Red Hill, as the agency tries to protect the groundwater that Oʻahu’s nearly 1 million residents rely on from further contamination. The suit filed in federal court Tuesday puts the agency’s total costs at $1.2 billion to clean up remnants of the spill plus guard the island’s drinking water wells against additional contaminants spreading underground.”

Kate Aronoff, The EPA’s Lee Zeldin Is Unleashing a Chemical Nightmare. The New Republic, Jul 11, 2025. “Under Zeldin, the Environmental Protection Agency is ​t​orching regulations that protect us from ​a terrifying range of toxic substances. And that’s just the beginning.”

“Despite pledging in 2019 to tackle “forever chemicals” known as PFAS and PFOS, certain types of which have been linked to cancer, the EPA announced in May that it would delay enforcing limits on their presence in drinking water until 2031. Among the broader suite of regulations Zeldin’s EPA has promised to roll back is one that would require coal-fired power plant operators to upgrade wastewater treatment facilities, limiting their ability to freely discharge toxins like mercury, arsenic, selenium, lead, and bromide and to threaten local drinking water supplies.

The above are just a few of the ways that Zeldin and the rest of the Trump administration are putting the public’s health and well-being at risk.”

Robert Glennon, Unquenchable: America's Water Crisis and What To Do About It. Island Press | Amazon page, 2009.

The Story of Bottled Water. The Story of Stuff Project video, 2010.

Kate Galbraith, Tapped Out? California's Drought. Stanford Alumni Magazine, Jul/Aug 2014.

Adam Nagourney, Jack Healy, Nelson Schwartz, California Drought Tests Theory of Endless Growth. New York Times, Apr 4, 2015.

Mary Beth Griggs, MIT Invention Makes Ocean Water Drinkable with a Little Help from the Sun. Business Insider, Apr 23, 2015.

Maude Barlow, The California Drought Is Just the Beginning of Our National Water Emergency. The Nation, Jul 15, 2015.

Deena Shanker, Organic Farming Is Actually Worse for Climate Change Than Conventional Farming. Quartz, Jul 15, 2015.

Michael Klare, The Water Wars Are Coming: Civilization Will Never Survive Climate Calamity. Salon, Nov 5, 2015.

Mitch Smith, America’s Farmers, Reeling From Floods, Face a New Problem: No Water. New York Times, Jul 29, 2019.  “The breach of an irrigation canal left more than 100,000 acres of farmland in Nebraska and Wyoming without water at a critical point in the growing cycle”

New York Times, The Great American Lawn: How the Dream Was Manufactured.  New York Times, Aug 9, 2019.  

Netflix, Vox, Explained: The World’s Water Crisis. Netflix, Apr 17, 2020.  an 19 min video highlighting the coming crisis in the supply of fresh water

Natalie Kitroeff, ‘This is a War’: Cross-Border Fight Over Water Erupts in Mexico. New York Times, Oct 14, 2020. The wars over fresh water begin.  

“Boquilla, Mexico — The farmers armed themselves with sticks, rocks and homemade shields, ambushed hundreds of soldiers guarding a dam and seized control of one of the border region’s most important bodies of water. The Mexican government was sending water — their water — to Texas, leaving them next to nothing for their thirsty crops, the farmers said. So they took over the dam and have refused to allow any of the water to flow to the United States for more than a month.”

Kim Chipman, California Water Futures Begin Trading Amid Fear of Scarcity. Bloomberg, Dec 6, 2020.  

“Water joined gold, oil and other commodities traded on Wall Street, highlighting worries that the life-sustaining natural resource may become scarce across more of the world. Farmers, hedge funds and municipalities alike are now able to hedge against -- or bet on -- future water availability in California, the biggest U.S. agriculture market and world’s fifth-largest economy.”

Stephen Colbert, Uh-Oh, Water Is Now A Commodity - Stephen Colbert's Most Unfortunate Segment. The Late Show, Jan 26, 2021.

Vice News, The Town Trying to Pump Billions of Gallons of Water to Their Desert Community. Vice News, Mar 5, 2021.

“Washington County, Utah is one of the fastest growing regions in the country and to sustain that growth they want to build a pipeline to divert billions of gallons of water from the Colorado River. Conservationists say the project could be a disaster for the drought-stricken Southwest.”

Claire Felter and Kali Robinson, Water Stress: A Global Problem That’s Getting Worse. Council for Foreign Relations, Apr 22, 2021.  

“Water scarcity threatens the health and development of communities around the globe. Climate change is intensifying the problem, pushing governments to find more innovative, collaborative ways to address water stress.”

Second Thought, The Water Wars Are Coming. Second Thought, May 14, 2021.  12 minute video covering very important statistics and alarming trends.

William Bringham, Californians Scramble for Fresh Water as Taps, Wells Run Dry. PBS News Hour, Jul 20, 2021.

Vice News, 40 Million People Rely on the Colorado River, and Now It's Drying Up. Vice News, Aug 14, 2021.

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Walton Family Spends Millions to Privatize Water. Breaking Points, Oct 11, 2021.

Diana Marcum, A California Town Refused to Help Its Neighbors with Water. So the State Stepped In. Los Angeles Times | MSN, Oct 30, 2021.  Demonstrates the important of democratic but centralized governance compared with decentralized governance.

Ocean Robbins, Food and Water: What You Eat Matters for People & the Planet.  Food Revolution Network, Dec 29, 2021. 

“Water is an essential part of every form of life on Earth. But by 2025, two-thirds of the world's population may be facing freshwater shortages, and ecosystems around the world may suffer even more. So what can we do to save water so future generations can drink and grow food? A lot! And it can all start with the food on our plates.”

New York Times, Meet the People Getting Paid to Kill Our Planet.  New York Times Opinion, Feb 1, 2022. This 14 minute video is excellent. 

“Our focus is American agriculture, an industry that, while feeding the United States, is also damaging the environment — contaminating the air and water, exhausting the soil, destroying wildlife habitats and spurring climate change.  But despite these harms, the sector has largely been spared environmental regulation. This exception reflects, in part, the special place that farmers occupy in the American imagination. But the industry, particularly the big corporations that are increasingly dominating the sector, are also aided by one of the most effective lobbies on the planet.”

Real Life Lore, Why California is Running Out of Water. Real Life Lore, Jun 24, 2022. A 16 minute video giving important stats on water use in CA, and CA’s economic role in the U.S. Northern CA gets most of the rainfall and snowfall; Southern CA has most of the farmland and people. Discusses the policies and politics of water in CA.

John Oliver, Water. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Jun 27, 2022. Re: the water shortage in the U.S. west, “how it’s already impacting the people who live there, and what God has to say about it.”

KSL News, ‘Dust Lake City’ Disaster Looming as Utah Professor Fights to Save the Great Salt Lake.  KSL News, Aug 9, 2022.  Newly exposed dust and minerals -- including arsenic -- pose a threat to millions along the Wasatch Front.  

Symone, The Dire Water Crisis Developing Around the Colorado River Basin. Symone | MSNBC, Aug 23, 2022. 

“The Colorado River provides water to 40 million people. Debra Krol and Luke Runyon discuss the “mega-drought” and water crisis in the Colorado River Basin and what it means for residents of Arizona, Nevada and tribal lands.”

Deutsche Welle, Historic Drought Is Threatening Italy’s Water Supply.  Deutsche Welle News, Aug 24, 2022. 

“Scarce rain and successive heat waves across Europe have affected river discharges and water levels. In Northern Italy, there hasn't been significant rainfall for months, and snowfall this year was down 70%, resulting in less meltwater. That's led to a drying up of important rivers like the Po, which flows across the country's agricultural and industrial heartland.”

Ken Klippenstein and Daniel Boguslaw, Arizona Politicians Sell Out Residents To Saudi Company. Breaking Points & The Intercept, Nov 30, 2022. A former Saudi lobbyist who fought for a foreign company to use depleted Arizona water supplies now sits in a key position in Maricopa county as water disputes rage.

More Perfect Union, How This Billionaire Couple Stole California's Water Supply | The Class Room ft. SecondThought. More Perfect Union, Dec 20, 2022.

“While 40 million Californians suffer through unprecedented drought, one billionaire couple owns a massive share of the state's water system, largely seized in a series of secretive meetings two decades ago. That system was largely paid for by the very taxpayers whose water these billionaires hold hostage. The Resnicks are the biggest farmers in California–as of 2007 they owned four San Francisco’s worth of farmland. Nearly half of Americans buy at least one of their products: pistachios, POM pomegranate juice, mandarins, flowers, and more. It’s all under one massive umbrella: The Wonderful Company, a privately owned company worth at least 5 billion dollars. The majority owners, the Resnicks, are worth at least 8 billion. We dug into how Lynda and Stewart Resnick were able to seize control of what should be a shared public resource.”‪

Grace Livingstone, ‘It’s Not Drought - It’s Looting’: The Spanish Villages Where People Are Forced to Buy Back Their Own Drinking Water. The Guardian, Nov 23, 2024.

Nick Hilden, California Water Wars: A Century of Wrangling Over Los Angeles’s Water. Al Jazeera, Mar 7, 2025. “The battle for California’s water pitted ranchers against water barons and still echoes today.”

Dispatch, Farmed to Death: Inside America’s Global Agricultural Empire. DISPATCH Full HD Documentary, Apr 8, 2025.

“In the land of junk food, agriculture is controlled by two magic words: productivity and profitability. We investigate the excesses of American agribusiness. America’s two million farmers are formidable businessmen. XXL farms, feedlots and pesticides: anything goes when producing more and more. In the cattle feedlots in the Midwest, animals are herded by the thousands into pens without a single blade of grass, fattened up and drugged with growth hormones. These are industrial methods pushed to the extreme. Every year, the country’s farmers gather at the Farm Machinery Show in Kentucky, the apex of the US agriculture industry. There, one can find million-dollar tractors and a show that fans wouldn’t miss for the world: the tractor race is the most prestigious in the country. In California, we investigate the gigantic plantations where carrots, artichokes and strawberries are grown. With a desperate shortage of water, farmers water at breakneck speed, even if it means depriving the region’s inhabitants of access to drinking water. An investigation into the excesses of American agribusiness.”

More Perfect Union, This Is the First American City That Will Run Out of Water. More Perfect Union, Apr 24, 2026. In Corpus Christi, it is the people vs. big tech data centers.