Essay On California Water Crisis

In the article,”The Wrong Way to Think about California Water,” by Michael Hiltzik, Hiltzik explains how people think the scarce water in California is being used, and explains how the water is actually being used. He begins by saying bottled water is something the press is complaining about, but not much water is being bottled compared to the amount used for agriculture. He then explains how people think that we use too much water on nuts specifically almonds. Hiltzik says that although a lot of water is used for agriculture, nuts like almonds are actually water efficient compared to other crops. The author’s final points are that we should be complaining about the water used on lawns and that we need to create

In the movie the last call at the oasis, Jessica Yu speaks on a lot about the depletion of Central Valley’s low Water supply. Yu talked about Central Valley California diminishing water supply that grow 25 percent of the food Americans eat today, much of the nations fruit, nuts and produce come from. She also went into dept about the reliance on "recycled" or "new" water that is, treated sewage water. All the community talked about

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.

California has always had a warm climate, yet its supply of water has rarely been affected. In 2014 California’s water shortage issue truly began. Due to low amounts of snow in the winter in recent years, California has tried to equal out these shortages by drilling water from underground aquifers. Yet, underground aquifers recharge much slower than surface water sources. California has already made significant drawbacks to attempt to limit the amount of water they use, so these aquifers can recharge. But still resources continue going down and the Central Valley Aquifer’s water level is rapidly declining. Luckily, on April 7, 2017 the drought stage of emergency in California was ended. Yet the issue isn’t truly resolved. Glen MacDonald

The drought has a strong impact on the Californian economy as well, a whopping 2.74 billion dollars down that drain and twenty thousand jobs lost. Agriculture the major business hit by the drought. Agriculture uses eighty percent of California’s water, although it has a high water usage California agriculture is very important for the national economy (Ross). Half a million acers of farmland has been dried up due to the drought which means less money in agriculture. The almond industry uses ten percent of California’s water, taking one gallon of water to grow just one almond (Holthaus). Many people think that almonds are wasting water since it takes so much resources to cultivate. On the other hand California produces more than eighty percent

Currently California is facing a water shortage. The issue has been addressed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in February. He called for all state agencies to find the way to help in the statewide water shortage. This is California’s third consecutive year of drought and last spring and summer was the worst of the season because it had the lowest amount of water recorded and California’s reservoirs were at their lowest point as well which did not help in the water shortage. Many agencies have been acquired to find possible solutions to the water shortage, the Department of Water Resources has been directed to find solutions to the problem as well as asking people to conserve water.

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.

Central Valley California is approximately stretched over 450 square miles of prime, fertile, farming land; with Almonds being a major crop. Due to this California ranks as a top farm state by annual value of agricultural products. This draws a lot of revenue to the state however, it requires about 10 percent of the state’s water reserves.

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.

“California’s water future is increasingly uncertain,” says Heather Cooley, in her article California Needs Better Water Management and Pricing Policies (Source A). Agriculture uses 80 percent of California’s constrained water supply and proves to be the primary source of California’s drought. There has been no permanent and largely successful conservation effort to save water. However, with a reformed water management and conservation system, California’s largest industry, agriculture, can thrive while saving water at the same time.

The low of water affect the most important supply of agriculture in the U.S. California agriculture produce more than 90% of food to the United States. The drought causes a massive economic problem from two directions. Katie Fehrenbacher from The Guardian states that agriculture industry has lost $1.5bn and more than 17,000 seasonal job. That statistic shows that the drought causes the agriculture a huge loss of money and farmers do not have jobs anymore. As a result the prices of food will rise and the cost of water will decrease. Since 2011 when the draught begun no one take a position or talk about it as a real problem they did not start to think about a real solutions to solve the problem until now. The mandatory cut of using water is a temporary solution the water will not last for more than one year. Reduce agriculture will hit the economy of the state and cause many problems because the lack of jobs. The number of Crimes will rise in the areas that suffer mostly from draught; people cannot find food or water. Farmers digging for water underground which increase the consumption of the underground water by 40%. Also, as far they go underground the amount of salt in water increase,

Over the past 4 years the water crisis has been rearing its mean head not only across the globe, but here in our home country, in the state of California. The citizens in California have moved having a normal lawn of grass into the luxury category. Not only have lakes and rivers dried up, but reservoirs that provide water for the entire state have dropped to hazardous levels. In Calaveras County, home of the state’s fourth largest reservoir, levels of water have dropped to only 20% capacity.

California is experiencing its worst drought in history. Throughout the state you can see lakes, rivers and streams drying up and leaving farmers and communities without water. Although it seems that science and global weather patterns caused this severe drought, however irresponsible usage of water paired with state laws on water rights and population growth have all played a role in prolonging this drought that is going into its eighth year. California’s central valley is the world leader in Agriculture, however the valley is also the perfect area for a drought to occur due to climate change. California is in a state of emergency, with the help of reduced water usage along with the state and federal government need to aid in lessening

California Almonds are crunchy, delicious, and healthy and currently are becoming one of the world’s favorite snacks. Almonds are currently consumed about 1000% more than they did a decade ago by people from around the world and became the most exported crop in the nation’s top agriculture state (While California FightsDrought, Almonds Using More Water Than Residents, 3). In addition, almonds are tremendously profitable, generating approximately $11 billion to the state’s economy in 2014 alone (Philpott, T., & Lurie J., 3). However, the huge success of almonds results a water crisis in California. The issue of drought in California has continued to worsen since 2011 and one of