Central Valley Drought

California is entering its fourth year of a record-breaking drought. The combination of dryness and record warmnth have acted to produce the most severe drought conditions experienced in Califronia. The states drought affected Central Valley which is considered the richest food-producing region in the world, much of America's fresh fruits, nuts and vegetables are grown there. Due to the lack of water in California, there has been many argumentative decisions on water conservation such as fining people for overuse of water, bringing glaciers from the Arctic to California and building major water pipelines, but these ideas require much time and money which the governemnt isn't willing to risk.

No Californian is impervious to the California drought. The Bay Area, Sierra Mountains, and the Central Valley have all reported record drought conditions. Even with this obvious evidence that has been brought forth for about four years now, farmers have been continuously taking local citizen’s water for their own orchards. The California legislature needs to come to the decision that caps need to be put on large water users so the preexisting residents may receive water.

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.

Ever since the early nineteenth century until today, the California water crisis has been an issue that is yet to be resolved. As one of the largest states with a population of over thirty million (Class Discussion); water consumption is in high demand. "From the very beginning, California was a state with tremendous agricultural potential"(Chan, S., and Olin, S. Pg 136). A similarity from both the California of the early 1800 's and today is that water is an expensive and important resource being sourced primarily from the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The difference between then and now is that previously we had an abundant water supply but we did not know how to utilize it effectively to meet demand. Contrast that situation to today, and the demand for water remains, however the supply is no longer available to meet the needs of Californians. In this paper, we will discuss the legislative decision 's to bring California’s water supply to its people, the fight for conservation, and discuss the drought as it is today.

California is going on a four-year drought, having many devastating implications that are being felt by everyone in the state. The population hit the hardest has been the farmers of California. California, being economically driven by its agricultural production, is losing hundreds of thousands of jobs every year due to the lack of water. Farmers’ use 80% of water the state produces, directly influencing their production (Mieszkowski, 2014). The country heavily relies on California for much of its produce such as tomatoes, nuts, avocados, strawberries, broccoli, grapes and various others (Cooley et al. 2015). In 2014, harvested acreage was 6.9 million acres, the lowest it has been for the past 15 years. Farmers are now being forced to use significantly less land then before, but also ditch old irrigation techniques and implement new techniques to better conserve water; maximizing production as much as possible in order to combat the drought.

The one state that has experienced severe drought affects has been Nevada. Even though most of Nevada has experienced drought affects, Western Nevada has experienced the worst affects of the drought. In the following graph provided by the U.S. Drought Monitor, researched and made by Rippey (2015), it shows the severe and extreme levels of the drought:

“Drought can best be thought of as a condition of water shortage for a particular user in a particular location” (DWR). Although droughts seem to come unexpectedly they actually form over a long period of time with most of their effects being felt by those dependent on annual rainfall. The Department of Water Resources explains that water reservoirs and groundwater basins are buffers for drought impacts and the drought will not be considered over until these storages have been fully replenished. In the past, California’s “significant multi-year droughts have been ended by an above-average water year where statewide precipitation was in the range of 150 percent average.” (DWR) Recently, California has experienced several consecutive years where rainfall and snowfall were well below average. This problem is important because the lack of precipitation means the state is compelled to

The city of Fresno has a new water infrastructure program which brings opportunity to transport mountain water down here, so that our groundwater supply can rest, recharge, and be restored. Furthermore, the City of Fresno Water Conservation Program has been encouraging activities that lower water demand in the community to help Fresno meet the many challenges of water supply management. Another measure is that the State Water Resources Control Board has issued a new statewide water conservation policy that executes a minimum level of restrictions and stronger fines. Fresno has also moved to the Stage 2 water shortage contingency plan approved by City Council which regulates water use; it declares to limit summer outdoor irrigation to two days per week, to not water every Monday, Thursday, or Friday during summer, to limit winter outdoor irrigation to one day per week, and not to water every Monday to Friday during winter (as cited in City of Fresno Website,

The California drought as of March 2015 has increased severely and has affected not just the residents of California, but also the farmers as well. My claim is to find a reliable way to save water and have the residents of California informed about the situation and the wastefulness of water being replenished. In this paper I want to address the issue of how much water we are constantly wasting even though we are in an exceptionally severe drought. I believe that the water shortage not only affects the residents but also takes a toll in the agricultural areas as well. I want to argue the point that everyone who wastes water is held responsible and what we could do

In 2014, Governor Brown issued an affirmation declaring a California drought state of emergency actively calling “all Californians to conserve water in every way possible (“Governor Brown Declares Drought State of Emergency”).” In addition, California state water officials said that “California rivers and reservoirs are below their record lows”. This problem not only pertains to the past but carries as an ongoing issue in California. California remains the top state in water consumption, taking up 11% of the United State’s water supply (Koroma). As a consequence, an estimated population of 24,838,128 people are inhabiting drought-stricken areas. Educating users on water consumption, taxing agricultural products which consume high levels of

For many months now, most of California has been suffering through a drought. Policy makers and residents of California have been strategizing for a plan to stop the drought. The biggest lesson that Californians can learn from this is by looking into the past, specifically in Australia, where The Millennium Drought occurred from 1997 to 2009. During the Millennium Drought in Australia, the economy and the environment were hit the hardest. While small and large scale farmers were only affected in a limited fashion, it was mid-sized farming operations that were most impacted. Regardless of the struggles of the drought, Australia used a series of strategies that helped them to reform water usage and help the country recover as a whole. Some of

California has suffered several droughts throughout the decades and is the reason why government has implemented policies and developed water management. The first drought recorded was in 1924, due to the severe drought and economic losses to the farming industry the irrigation system and large reservoirs were created to support agriculture and cities (Lund). The second drought recorded lasted six years from 1928 to 1934, at the time the construction of the Central Valley Project became the standard design of water system until 1976 (Lund). Water conservation was implemented when a devastating two year drought from 1976 to 1977 occurred (Lund). Water conservation reduced water usage by 40 percent in the major cities in California and permanent water conservation plans became established for cities(Lund). The drought from 1988 to 1992 lasted four years and raised the concern of managing water(Lund). The drought from 2007 to 2009 caused Southern California to reduced the consumption of water from the rivers and Delta water supply(Lund ). This drought also affected the agricultural industry with the loss of approximately 21,000 job (Lund). In 2009, legislature passed a 20 percent water conservation target in the cities(Lund). The droughts that California has endured are the reason why government has taken action in implementing different methods of water distribution, conservation, and water management.

California has been in a drought for about five years. Every year we seem to lose more and more water and it's becoming a big issue to California. Residents spend gallons of water in a day and instead of wasting more water they should be saving it. One of the main issue is that residents waste so much water on their lawn. They’ll water their lawn for hours or just water one specific area of the grass for a long time. Many water their lawn when their grass is already dead or don’t even have grass, so basically watering dirt. Another issue is that many will water their lawn and then turn on their sprinklers or have sprinklers on while it's raining. Many don’t care about wasting water, but soon it's going to be a big issue and we won’t have enough water to even water our lawn. People also waste a bunch of water when they turn on the shower. They wait about 10 to 15 minutes sometimes before they actually get in and then spend about 30 mins in the shower. Many residents will also leave their faucets running and won’t fully turn them off. Residents will throw away their water when it's still half way full, when they can just pour that water into a bush, instead of throwing that water in the trash. Another big cause of

in Johnson). Technically, farmers use 80 percent of water while cities use 20 percent (Johnson). However, as Governor Jerry Brown claimed California to reduce water using by 25 percent, he did not indicate agriculture (Johnson). Yet, Robert Glennon stated that “For California to solve its water crisis must also come from farmers.” Definitely, with a huge water consuming, restricting agriculture will conserve water more significant water than households’ water saving. Glennon points out that “By my calculations, even a four percent reduction in water consumption could increase by 50 percent the water available for municipal and industrial uses.” Thus, to solve drought, California should not restrict personal water use, but regulate agriculture instead.

Water scarcity affects every continent on earth. According to the World Health Organization “by 2025 half of the world will be living in water stressed areas”. Water Stressed areas are have less water supply than the demand. now a water stressed area; in 205 Californians cut water usage by 25% in efforts to lower demand. Most water was being used by farmers, these cuts significantly hurt the agricultural field. In addition the drought costed the state six million dollars as well as leading to several wildfires that burned 306,000 acres in 2016 .