I'm not sure that I will change your mind but I wanted to clear up a couple misconceptions.

>As I stated, the way groundwater rights were before was brain dead.

On this we can agree

>It makes no sense to buy partial rights when the use limits are "unlimited", and buying full rights means that the farmer can't grow at all, but even if you tried to do that the farmer would tell you to go to hell because you're how much are you offering for the alternative, which is a theoretical effectively unlimited amount of water?

Groundwater rights are not unlimited in places where multiple people use the water. If you share an aquafer with others, rights are granted based on historic seniority and frozen at historic usage. If there is not enough water to support all of the users, water use is capped and the last new user loses their usage first. If a new user wants water, they can buy the rights to take X gallons/year from someone with the right. Historically, when cities grew or new farms moved in, they did just that.

Alternatively If you were the only user of an aquafer, you had the right to drain it dry. Like oil, gold, or other natural resources, you literally bought the rights to all of it with the land.

This was the precedent and is the law, so I think it is unfair to characterize the farmers as abusing the system, especially those that have been operating within their X gallons/year or priority rights. In some instances, it was even the state of California that originally sold them the right to X gallons/year in perpetuity.

Que 2014. The state mandated that all aquafers have neutral input and output by 2040 and this is where things get crazy. Instead of unwinding of usage based on priority of assigned groundwater rights per the law, commissions were set up to resolve the problem. The commissions don't have the legal power to take away the water rights, or the funds to eminent domain them, so the settled on selectively fining farmers for exercising their water rights as the least legally questionable path forward. These are the cases proceeding through the courts now. However, most small to moderate farms don't have funds for a decade of legal battle against the state.

>For anyone that wasn't overusing water previously, I would like to hope they aren't being fined a lot or at all. I suspect that those complaining about large fines are probably people that have been extreme water users in the past. If not, I'm happy to hear of someone making a case they don't deserve their fines that has had both sides weigh in.

The implementation is not to structured to curtail "overuse". "Fines" are a flat rate/gallon and set above 10x the possible revenue/gallon in some areas. This means there is no relief by scaling back. The point is to drive farms business out entirely. Many farmers offered to compromise by winding down their businesses, stop planting, and then fully pull up their farms and bring water usage to 0 by the 2040 deadline. This would keep them from losing their lives work, let them recoup costs, while meeting the state mandate. The state found this compromise unacceptable.

>They gambled that there wasn't going to be a revision of water rights that stopped their overuse, and they lost that gamble.

The farmers gambled that the rule of law would protect them and respect their groundwater rights, and in this respect, they were overconfident. I'm sure the largest users that are fighting will get paid out handsomely in settlement. However, the state probably saved billions by not buying the rights from the small farms and simply destroying their lives.

>They all knew what they were doing. It was one of the biggest stories in the state for multiple years.

They knew it was coming but had no possible exit strategy. Nut trees are profitable but have long lead times to return investment, especially smaller farms with lower profit margins. If your life savings and retirement are tied up in a non-fungible asset for 20 years, all you can do is hope.