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Dry Wells of the Paso Basin: A Tragedy of the Commons

Directed By
Sheila Gail O'Rourke, Boris Temujin Jocoy
Produced By
Boris Temujin Jocoy, Sheila Gail O'Rourke
Coming Soon
Cinema Verde
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Dry Wells of the Paso Basin: A Tragedy of the Commons
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TRAILER
Dry Wells of the Paso Basin: A Tragedy of the Commons
72
Minutes
Minute
Water
,
Agriculture
,
Activism
United States
2024

In the early 1990s, agricultural corporations and other investors began buying thousands of acres of cultivated and uncultivated land with water rights in the scenic wine country of San Luis Obispo County, California. They planted more vineyards and sank dozens of deep, powerful wells for irrigation that have over-drafted the already depleted Paso Robles Basin aquifer. Around 2010, the shallower wells of hundreds of country homes and small farms and ranches began failing. This documentary tells that story through the voices of three small landowners who lost their livelihoods and hopes for their futures when their wells went dry. The film then follows how they and their supporters organize social force to participate in local political processes to assert their water rights and their concerns for the environmental health of the Paso Basin.

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