Rain Water Reveal Analysis

Each year, at least 7.8 trillion gallons of water are drawn up from the Ogalla Aquifer to irrigate the crops planted on the High Plains. These cros are the main food sourrce for our entire country. Tragically, irrigation is depleting the aquifer faster than it can replenish itself, and that is the problem. In fact, only the tiniest fraction of the water is ever replaced in the Ogallala Aquifer. If the water were ever fully depleted, the aquifer would need 6,000 years to refill naturally (Zwingle 83). The only way the Ogalla can be replenished is by water seeping down through the layers of soil until it reaches the aquifer. This water comes from the small amount of precipitation in the region, as well as from streams, reservoirs, canals, and irrigation (McGuire and Sharpe).

Moving on, there are some issues with the legislation that has been passed in order to conserve the water, especially concerning the Clean Water Act. People are having opposition with the rules of the Clean Water Act. Small business owners feel that this act is restricting the way that they tend to their property. For example, several farmers use pesticides, herbicides, and other fertilizers to keep harmful insects and other animals off of their crops, so they can grow properly. These pesticides eventually end up in our local rivers, lakes, and oceans which are making humans and animals very ill. However, they make money by the crops they sell, and to them, the Clean Water Act has a very negative economic impact on them (Landers). Although

Yet, humans have limited control on natural events, so this only reinforces the importance of managing water wisely. Recently California’s government has begun to focus more on sustaining and restoring the water supply. Dale Kasler (2016) articulates in his article some of the steps they have decided to make to solve this serious issue. The government has made the following investments: “$415 million for watershed restoration and other environmental aid for Lake Tahoe; up to $335 million for two proposed reservoirs in California, including the Sites reservoir north of Sacramento; $880 million for flood-control projects on the American and Sacramento rivers in Sacramento; and $780 million for flood-control projects in West Sacramento” (para. 10). This could be the first step to restoring the water to California. But these

Envision yourself, about to complete a straightforward, everyday thing such as washing the dishes, suddenly to your surprise there is no water coming out of the faucet. Well for the civilians of East Porterville this is their reality. California has always had very lenient and ineffective groundwater regulations. Today, this has become a major issue, especially with California's severe drought. The regulation of the aquifer is a necessity because cleanliness is a basic human right and by not regulating the groundwater and leaving civilians with no working water, that right is taken away. The right to bathe, wash your hands, and have a working toilet is simply no more. Furthermore there are scientific statements, proving that excessively pumping groundwater will lower the water levels, which will likely lead to the land level sinking as well.

My opinion is that California should not regulate groundwater because of farmers and financially. A Farmer would need more water for their crops, animals , accordingly themselves. That is a large amount of water , I do not think that is fair because what would happen if the farmers ran out of water ;they would have to use other residents water. Farmers would have to buy less pickups,employing less people, moreover buying less tractors.In source 1 it says that “the Farmers feel very disconnected with the

So it’s not unlike having several straws in a glass, and everyone drinking at the same time, and no one really watching the level.” (Source 3). The farmers are always drilling the groundwater and the citizens get stuck with whatever is left. The farmers are more worried about the economy and their crops. It really isn’t fair if the farmers acquire almost all the water and the people don’t. We need water for almost everything. We can’t just be wearing dirty clothes or be smelling very repetitive everyday. If we also don’t take showers, we can receive illnesses and become really

California has just come out of it’s 5th year of drought. In the last 5 years California has had record high temperatures and record low rain and snow. Even though they say the drought is over our groundwater levels are still down because of overpumping. Overpumping has been happening for 50 to 70 years. To me that is a really long time to overuse our water. Groundwater pumping is taking water from the ground. Most of the people using groundwater are farmers so their crops can grow in dry conditions (drought). Groundwater pumping is taking away from future water reserves which is the water we have to use during a drought. If we keep pumping groundwater out of the ground and don’t put it back in to replace it then it is a very bad use of a very valuable resource. California is lucky that state lawmakers are now beginning to try and regulate how groundwater is monitored and managed. The point of doing this is to try to find a better way to use our valuable resource.Fresh water is one of the basic needs of all living things.California needs to limit the amount of groundwater used by recycling wastewater and

For instance, the Valley became one of the largest producing agriculture region since it was able to pump water directly from the ground. The state was using large amounts of ground and surface water to meet the demands for water. Now, the Valley is suffering from the lack of water. Residents from the Valley are living without water because their wells have gone dry. In order for them to have water once again they would have to wait for a period of months or up to year for a professional to go out and dig deeper into the ground. Still, we might run out of that option of digging deeper into the ground if the aquifer is not being replaced of all of its water that has been

Over the course of the past century, much has changed in America. From the rise of factory production bringing people out of the countryside and into the cities, to two World Wars that continued the massive factory production that funded and armed the war effort, to the rise of suburbia and the massive developments that often destroyed or forever altered vast tracks of land where they would sit. In Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, he addresses the politics of water and environmentalism in the West. “Thanks to irrigation, thanks to the Bureau [of Reclamation]... states such as California, Arizona, and Idaho became populous and wealthy; millions settled in regions where nature, left alone, would have

Simply stated, knowledge can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you use it. Arguably, the inherent purpose and power of knowledge lies in the ability to use that knowledge to make good changes to things around you. The “Individuals and Societies” module explored the implications of knowledge and how we should use knowledge to make changes with respect to our water crisis. In Josh Viers lecture entitled “California Water Wars,” he presented the fact that California, more specifically, is facing a water crisis. Viers states that one reason for this water crisis is the phenomenon of the Sierra Nevada facing monumental shifts in climate change. He posits that the Nevada is shifting from a snow-dominated to rain dominated flow regime, that there is now an earlier timing of snowmelt, and that there are now longer dry seasons (Viers). The purpose of this lecture was two-fold, to inform us about our current and past actions and to warn us that changes need to be made to prevent the exacerbation of our water crisis. Viers urged us to look at the data and see that our actions

The state of Florida is very dependent on groundwater, primarily for public and agricultural supply. Indeed, the largest source of drinking water in Florida is groundwater from the state’s massive aquifer system; approximately ninety percent of the state’s drinking water is extracted from groundwater sources (Marella, 2004). According to Marella (2004), “Between 1970 and 2000, total freshwater withdrawals increased for public supply by 176 percent and for agricultural self-supplied by 87 percent” (p. 1). As discussed previously, a growing population correlates with an increase in the demand for groundwater resources. Groundwater is currently being pumped out of Florida’s aquifers faster than the state’s abundant rainfall can refill them (Barnett, 2007, p.2).

If California regulates aquifer, farmers are going to be looking at buying less pickups, employing less people, and buying less tractors (Source 1). “We are tied to the groundwater 100 percent," a farmer said, "so ultimately it will have an effect on consumer prices. There's just no getting around that" (Source 1). “The crippling drought is expected to cost the state $2.2 billion in 2014 and put more than 17,000 farm workers out of a job, according to a July study partly funded by the state’s department of food and agriculture” (Source 2). If aquifer is regulated, the economy is going to crash, prices of food will go up, if prices of food go up, prices of everything will go up, farmers will go out of business, people who work for farmers will lose their jobs, people who sell farmers equipment won’t sell enough hardware and make less money, and the government will lose billions of dollars. Also, ⅓ of the world is fed by farmers in California and if aquifer is regulated, ⅓ of the world will not have enough food and there might be a possibility of hunger. Californians aren’t realizing this. "City folks just don't understand that they're biting the hand that feeds them” (Source 1). We need groundwater for the sake of our

In addition to the high pressure cell surrounding the west coast, farmers are pumping water from aquafers, also known as wells, which are not sustainable at all. When a person pumps water from an underground aquafer, the water is gone after being used and that water will not be able to be used for nearly 5,000 more years. Jamie Farao, an animal science instructor at Merced College, spoke to his agriculture, environment, and society class about his experiences living through this drought in Gustine, CA. “Some parts of Gustine have been experiencing subsidence at up to nearly 15 inches. All these farmers and ranchers keep digging deeper wells and that is the number one reason behind this subsidence” (Farao). Subsidence is the slow sinking or caving in of land over time. Gustine is generally known in California for having a very high water table, in some places you could reach water after digging nearly 3 feet. Fast forward to 2015, some of the most fertile agricultural ground in the world is now going to be left farrow until the water crisis is figured out by state legislature.

“Scientists are already sounding alarm bells about pumping too much groundwater. State water managers estimate that water tables in some parts of the Valley have dropped 100 feet below historical lows. As the water levels sink, the land can sink, too — in some places by about a foot per year. Groundwater pumping could also put more stress on the San Andreas Fault” (Source 3). After reading this quote it lets us understand that slowly we are affecting the state. In fact, California is a tremendous state of agriculture. Therefore, if we establish everything together, we are slowly affecting furthermore sinking California due to how much the state uses aquifers. As we all know if there is disturbance among the San Andreas Fault, consequently it can lead to a significant earthquake. “We are a one-way trajectory towards depletion. Toward running out of groundwater in the Central Valley,” warns Jay Famiglietti, a hydrologist at UC Irvine. He points out that California is the only western state that doesn’t really monitor or supervising how much groundwater farmers and residents are using”(Source 3). This is another immense reason why we need to administer the aquifers because eventually at the pace we are going by not monitoring the aquifers, we could eventually use all the

When referring to Arizona’s water Kris Mayes, chairwoman of the state’s utility regulatory panel once said, “How do you say just how valuable water is in an arid state like Arizona?” she said. “It’s like the credit-card commercial-it’s priceless” (McKinnon). She was right, because in a dry state like Arizona, water is pretty important. To say water is ‘pretty important’ for the world is an understatement. We use water to function. And when we think of water we think of saving it. Keep the faucets from dripping or turn off the water while brushing your teeth. There are numerous tips for water conservation, but people don’t often think of the damage that is already done. Damages like ‘dead zones’. Dead zones in the ocean have been around for