The Drought Problem In California

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.

”Just over 95 percent of the state now faces severe drought conditions and nearly 60 per cent is in exceptional drought” (Source2). A lot of people are dependent on water. If we run out of water we won’t be able to do stuff like take showers, wash dishes, and sometimes go to the restroom. We could not take care of people that are sick and need water. Also cleaning your clothes would be a problem.

Imagine having to go outside every time one needs to use the restroom. There has been a drought going on in California for the past four years. There is a feud for water between farmers, citizens, and the drillers who get drain the water. The drought is a damaging issue that is affecting the lives of many. Therefore, California’s government should pass laws to manage how aquifers are to be properly used.

Right now there is a drought in California and it is due to the water usage. Bach in the gold rush due to miners mining for gold, the rivers became polluted and freshwater became limited. After the earthquake in San Francisco that cause a big fire, San Francisco was in dire need of water so they made a plan to built a dam in Hetch Hetchy. Many people argue as to whether to build the dam and in the end the dam was built and that has shape California’s water system hugely. The use of water in California now has not been in the best interest of the state because The amount of water use for agriculture is disportional, laws are making us use more water than needed and the Indians and environment are being harm.

What that says about California’s ground water as a whole is that it is depleting. Ground water has always been an alternative source of water in times of drought, however the continuous use of ground water is having a negative impact on the California landscape. For instance, an article posted on Thinkprogress.org, discussing the, issues of ground water and drilling concluded that, “Deep drilling is beginning to mar the California landscape, lowering water tables and causing the ground to sink” (Geiling).

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

Another one of the many problems that the severe water drought caused was it has a big impact on farmers, families,business, and many other people in the Sacramento area. In “Addressing California’s Droughts” it states that the harsh drought has been hurting a lot of Sacramento families, farmers, and small business that don’t do so well because of the drought which affects their business majorly (Addressing California’s Droughts).The CBS News explain that the State Department of Water Resources Director Mark Cowin says “there simply is not enough water in the system to meet the needs of the farmers” (Facing Drought,California Will Not Allow Water To The Farmers, Cities). It is also said that without the water on the surface the farmers have to pump water from underground aquifers (Facing Drought,California Will Not Allow Water To The Farmers,Cities). This happens to alter the farmers and their business because without the water for their crops they end up not having any business because they don’t have any crops grown to

In the article “Richard Goode: California drought crisis is everyone’s fault,” Richard Goode (2015), states that California does not have enough water to provide and everyone is responsible for it. California’s water problem has been an ongoing situation for years. Hydrologists have predicted and advised us about the water deficit in California, but everyone chose to ignore it. California has been pumping its water straight from the aquifer for years and now it is becoming dry. An enormous amount of water is being pumped each year which causes the water table to go low. When the water table is low, wells go dry and people are left without water. Richard Goode mentions, that California will be in a drought until we are able to receive the same amount of groundwater that we withdraw. However, we might be too late.

“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” (Source2). There should be laws to manage groundwater because I don’t want to take a shower once a week and I don’t want to have to pay to drink good clean water because water should be free to drink.

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,

Slowly overtime, to prevent any more bizarre events in the future, California shouldn’t take drought lightly. As of the recent drought, Government Brown taken action, have produced a restriction by 25% of decrease of water usage back in 2015, luckily in 9 months California was able to save 1.5 million acres-feet of water(Sanders). But farmers aren’t the only people with large lands, this also applies graveyards, golf courses, and more. Agriculture plays a big part of needing the water and if they can help cut down the portion of water used, so should the people in the city. So far, California haven’t prevented the drought from happening, but definitely not repeating the same mistakes from previous.

There is a town out of water because of the farmers using too much water for their crops.There is no doubt that California is a big farming country evenly as important since California is in a big drought, without doubt farmers use a lot of water.If they use all the water the city won't have water.Private wells have gone dry before in California, Again not on a scale such as that in East Porterville this summer.-

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

One of the biggest consumers of groundwater in our state are farmers. During a drought the farmers have to use wells to water their crops. The water from these wells use garoundwater from Aquifers. Water in Aquifers provide 60% of California's groundwater in drought years. Because California has been in a drought for the last 5 years, farmers have used and over used groundwater from wells. Over-pumping can compress soil and rocks making them compact

These past years california has been in a drought because of farmers and people wasting a lot of water.A lot of farmers are making wells to get water out of them but they are wasting too much water a day so our streets and grounds are sinking.I think that farmers should only use water like three times a week because if they use the water every day we will run out of water soon and we will be in a bigger drought.