Gov Newsom Declares Drought Emergency In 41 Counties; 65K Residents In Central Valley Could Run Dry
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On May 10, after two dry winters in a row, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared the second drought emergency in less than a month. The declaration now covers 41 counties, from the Oregon border to the southern Central Valley, which produces more than 250 crops, worth $17 billion a year, and accounts for roughly three-quarters of the state’s irrigated land. Exceptionally warm temperatures in April and early May distinguished “this critically dry year” from all others on California record, the governor’s office said. High temperatures accelerated snowmelt in watersheds that feed California’s major reservoirs, while the bone-dry ground sucked up meltwater that normally rejuvenates rivers and streams.
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Millions of Central Valley residents get their drinking water from wells fed by the same underground aquifers that supply the region’s farms. Aquifers in the Tulare Basin, where Chavez and her family live, have sunk to precariously low levels. That’s because farmers extracted water with little oversight from the early 1900s through 2014, when the state passed a sustainable groundwater management law. By then, however, they had pumped, on average, hundreds of billions of gallons a year more than could be replaced by rainfall and other sources.
As a result, more than 2,000 wells went dry in the San Joaquin Valley during the historic drought that lingered from 2012 to 2016. But as many as 65,000 people in the region could lose their access to drinking water because their wells are too shallow to reach the dropping groundwater levels, according to a 2020 report from London’s Center for Regional Change.
The valley is one of the poorest regions in the country, “poorer than Appalachia,” London said. And many of those at-risk wells serve mostly people of color, living in unincorporated communities that lie beyond city limits and lack access to essential municipal services, including adequate sewers and safe drinking water.
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/17052021/california-drought-farming-agrculture-climate-change/