In the film adaptation of The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss, the unscrupulous Aloysius O'Hare sells oxygen. The audience is shocked and dismayed by this wanton comodification of a fundamental natural resource. But the comodification of another life-sustaining resource is no fiction in the American West. This week on Sea Change Radio, we get a bit of a history lesson about water rights in the West from Varsha Venkatasubramanian, a graduate student and a contributor to The Editorial Board. We learn about the beginnings of Los Angeles and the critical role that water played in that city’s birth, why water rights differ east and west of the Mississippi, and how climate change is making water scarcer and scarcer for millions of Westerners.

Narrator  0:02  This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise.

Varsha Venkatasubramanian (VS) 0:21  We have been pumping and taking out so much water from aquifers. So much groundwater that we are reaching basically a point of no return where we won't have enough fresh water to keep the amazing city of Los Angeles green forever or we won't be able to keep Las Vegas the oasis that it is.

Narrator  0:41  In the film adaptation of The Lorax by Dr. Seuss, the unscrupulous Aloysius O'Hair sells oxygen. The audience is shocked and dismayed by this wanton commodification of a fundamental natural resource. But the commodification of another life sustaining resource is no fiction in the American West. This week on Sea Change Radio, we get a bit of a history lesson about water rights in the west from Varsha venkata Subramaniam, a graduate student and a contributor to the editorial board. We learn about the beginnings of Los Angeles and the critical role that water played in that city's birth. Why water rights differ east and west of the Mississippi and how climate change is making water scarcer and scarcer for millions of Westerners.

Alex Wise (AW)  1:50  I'm joined now on seachange radio by Varsha Venkatasubramanian, She is a graduate student at UC Berkeley, and the newest contributor to The Editorial Board, Varsha, welcome to Sea Change Radio.

Varsha Subramanian (VS) - Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Alex.

AW - So you wrote a piece for the editorial board, which is also available on alternet. entitled The water wars are coming to a state near you. In fact, they're already here. You study policy and the history of policy. Why don't you take us back to the turn of the century in Los Angeles, and then we can go through some of the more important policy decisions in terms of water, and then how that's going to affect moving forward as these regions in the West continue to desert a fire, if you will.

VS  2:41  Yeah, definitely. So imagine yourself in early 20th century, California, basically, there are not a lot of settlers lot, a lot of white citizens in California yet. They have been moving into California for most of the 19th century. But Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Francisco are not the big, big cities that they are today, that transformation takes place in the early 20th century. One thing to know about the American West is that water since the California Gold Rush, and even before that water in the American West has consistently been like the sacred commodity, right? It has been sacred and is always been pretty scarce, especially in the American West because of its arid climate in the early 20th century, when the populations of cities especially like Los Angeles, are shutting to grow, right, and they're starting to grow to you know, 100,000, and then eventually 200,000, these cities start needing more and more water.