California Is A Massive Water Shortage

California’s continuous drought not only affects California, but essentially impacts the entire food system. Could you imagine an entire state unable to contribute to the growing demands of a thriving economy? As California enters its fifth year of drought the consequences of an ever depleting natural resource, water, continues to negatively impact landscape plants, agricultural production, wildlife, and the economy. The lack of water in California has the potential to have a devastating effect on an ever thriving economy.

Due to the lack of rain in the past few years, and particularly in the last few months, California faces severe drought. This is the worst drought in more than one hundred years. The impact of California drought affects community, agriculture, organic ranchers, and dairy farmers. Because of these facts, the United States must rethink the way it uses water. Californians alone are asked to reduce their water usage by twenty percent to prevent water waste.

California is a place where everyone wants to travel to! Take a vacation to experience their perfect sunny weather, view their great green grass scenery, and to see the acre of their wine grapes. All of that slowly faded away, sadly for the last couple of years, California was in a drought, and have struggled to find a solution; until this year, California finally received enough rain and overflowed their dam. Due to California’s recent drought, it has affected their water resource. Not only did it affected the city, but made it especially difficult in the agriculture field. This includes all the fruits, vegetables, wine, animal, etc.

Fresno is a city located in central California, also known as San Joaquin Valley Famously knows for its grape field and green trees. Known for where the immigrants came to work, by picking grapes making little to know money. Every year I go back to visit my home town about twice a year, each time we get near the grape vine which is located between Fresno and Las Angeles. The first thing that is noticed by the eye is the magnificent greenery and farm lands that can’t be passed without notice of its beauty. Every tree was full and rich looking to the roots and all around the ground would look moist and fully watered, without a doubt these farm lands where being taken care of. Recently in the past three years of taking the long exhausting drive from the dry lands of Tucson to the green lands of Fresno hasn’t been the same. The green lands of central valley are not as green as they once were. The grounds look dry and not as moist as before.

The water shortages in California are causing hardships on the agricultural industry. There isn’t enough fresh water to support both the human population and the natural environment. One way to prevent water shortages would be to improve the irrigation systems the farmers use. Instead of using various types of irrigation systems that waterlog the soil, they should increase the use of a drip-irrigation system.

The groundwater of California is a serious policy matter in legislation. If there is drought, such as years like this, then management is necessary because it may encourage more pumping to supplant the water not gathered from other resources. Groundwater can account for as much as 35% of all the water used by California (cite). Unfortunately, there are not many laws established to regulate groundwater. The basins can replenish if they are pumped on a limited basis during normal or peak years. Luckily, proposals have been brought forth to help regulate ground water basins to insure their use is efficient and does not harm the environment.

To begin, California agriculture has lost over 1.84 billion dollars due to a drought. Not only is revenue lost, 10,000 jobs farmers and workers have been lost. The main issue California is facing is the lack of ground water. Wells are continuously being drilled deeper and heavy pumping gives little time for the water source to replenish. Therefore, if the drought continues California agriculture will lose much more money and unemployment will begin to rise.

California residents are beginning to feel the effects of the worst drought ever recorded in history. Wells are drying up, unexpected fires, and decreasing groundwater water levels are leaving Californians desperate in creating and putting in motion new water rationing projects for the whole state. The cause for the drought is just “Man made,” Carly Fiorina, former Hewlett-Packard executive stated . More and more lawns statewide are being ripped apart and replaced by fake grass to cut down water usage forcibly from the residents. Lakes that used to be overflowing with rich water are now nothing but a puddle of water waiting to dry up. This tragic drought will come to affect everyone, as California is one of the biggest nation’s producers of

With the current record-breaking drought in California, there are three factors that are said to be the reasons for causing the drought, which includes rising temperatures, shortage of water from the Colorado River, and depletion in groundwater (Macdonald, 2015). With rising temperatures over the years, the environmental changes that occur with this are an increase in evaporation, which is taking water from reservoirs and other sources where irrigation is coming from. With climate change with higher temperatures, this is taking away water that is needed to water the many crops that produce vegetation that is distributed all across the United States. The threatening of water supplies, especially here in the state of California is an issue that is very much real and is something that should not be ignored.

Livestock are dying from lack of water and extreme heat, and crops are dying from the same thing, too much heat for delicate plants to handle and not enough water. Over 95% of California’s $43-billion agricultural sector is experiencing a severe, extreme, or an exceptional drought. The California drought has been affecting not only California, but it has affected nearly the whole country. How you ask? California produces lots of the county’s fruits and vegetables that cannot grow in other states. California’s climate is greatly dependent therefore it can grow those

Despite the Earth's surface being covered in over 70% of water, California is in dire need of that natural resource. California has been in under this dry spell since December of 2012, and there are no signs that it will be ending anytime soon. However, this is not the first time California has seen a shortage of water. According to San Jose Mercury News (2014), California has seen several droughts that usually lasted between 10-20 years. By studying tree rings, researchers found that the longest drought in California's history lasted 240 years. Hopefully, this current drought will not be near as long. While it's proven that water does not vanish, California continues to be in a state of drought due to increases in population, high demands

California agriculture has been affected significantly. According to an article in the Reveal News “Why the California drought affects everyone”, the state may

“It is an enemy feared throughout the world. It attacks and depletes our supply of the element that, along with the air that we breathe, is necessary for the survival of all plant and animal life on our planet: water”(Dolan 10). Drought is becoming a major problem in the world, especially in California. Farmers are clamoring for water rights, water reservoirs are at all-time lows, and the low water levels are causing environmental issues such as increased forest fires. Drought in California, as well as around the world, can be devastating and affect many people and the environment.

California has used so much money for new plans and new routes to find water. They have created new plans to continue bringing water to the citizens and their land. Jessica Mendoza wrote that, the government had decided to go through with a plan where, “… new restrictions, along with a $1 billion budget for food supplies, sewage recycling, and environmental protection” (Mendoza 3). They will only being using that much money to give the citizens their needs in order for survival and keeping money in order but that still is a lot of money. A negative that had happened because of the drought was, “Last year, more than 99 percent of California’s $43 billion agricultural sector experience severe, extreme, or exceptional drought. That translated into costing the

The state of California is known as one of the largest agricultural producing states in the nation with the San Joaquin Valley being one of the world’s most productive agricultural regions.  As the region has a large expectancy for agricultural production, California relies a great deal on water, which can be problematic as water is not always readily available as seen by long years of draught. (Faunt, Sneed and Bradt 2015)