Letters to the Editor: California can’t afford to repeat Iran’s water management mistakes

To the editor : Ian James’ and Sean Greene’s recent reporting on California’s disappearing groundwater is essential reading ( “Humanity is rapidly depleting water and much of the world is getting drier,” Sept. 3). It also echoes the trajectory we’ve witnessed in Iran, where the same “conquer the desert” mindset — deep wells, dams and aqueducts — pushed the country into what experts now call water bankruptcy .

Iran’s water management has a lot in common with California’s, but Iran refused to course-correct even as aquifers collapsed, rivers and wetlands dried up, and millions were displaced. Water became a political weapon in the hands of unaccountable elites, with devastating human consequences.

California is not Iran. It has the advantage of democratic institutions, a free pres