MONSON,
Tulare County – People don’t easily forget the moment the water
dies.
For
Maria Jimenez, 54, it happened just over two months ago. A former
poultry house worker, Jimenez was hand-washing dishes in the
sun-baked bungalow she shares with her farmworker husband, Ramon
Jimenez, 47, her daughter, Monica Mendoza, and two young grandkids,
Richard and Caleb.
Citrus
grower Andrew Brown,39, worries that his well to his home seen in the
background will go dry on Mon., April 27, 2015 in Orange Cove, Calif.
Last summer, the well supplying one of Brown's orchards - and his
house - abruptly stopped pumping as his wife and kids were using the
shower, doing laundry and watering the lawn. He abruptly ordered that
the yard go dry and imposed "draconian" household
conservation rules. The well sputtered back to life, as Andrew also
paid peak rates for emergency surface water for his 100 acres of
citrus. He anxiously drilled four test wells - at depths of 115 feet,
130, 140 and 150. All came up dry.
The
faucet made an ugly gurgling sound. The flow thinned and turned a
putrid yellow. Bits of sediment spat out into the sink, like earthy
bursts of coagulated blood.
Maria
Jimenez ran outside to an old well that had long supplied water to
five houses in Monson, an oasis of trailers and stucco dwellings, 41
homes in all, set amid prickly cactus and bushy shade trees. The
farm-patch town borders vast fields of oranges, mandarins and table
grapes, all fed in part by the same shrinking groundwater supply.
Opening
the well’s electrical breaker box, Jimenez pounded on a circuit
switch, trying to revive a pulse. But the well only hissed out a gust
of air, followed by some hiccuping gasps. Then it was quiet, and
deathly dry.
“There
was no water,” Jimenez said. “That’s when I got sad, and very
scared.”
In
this corner of the scorched Tulare Lake Basin, where lives and
livelihoods depend on water that comes from the ground, a human
crisis is accelerating amid California’s unrelenting drought. In
northern Tulare County, drinking-water wells are running dry in
Monson and other farmworker communities, unincorporated specks on the
map called Cutler, Orosi, East Orosi, Sultana, Yettem and Seville.
Scores
of people who rely on groundwater for drinking, cooking and bathing
are anxiously turning to jugged water supplied by the government,
makeshift residential tanks and human ingenuity to sustain their
existence.
As
Gov. Jerry Brown calls for 25 percent cutbacks in urban water use
statewide and urges Californians to rip out their lawns, the
challenges in this sensitive basin are particularly poignant. The
pain is shared broadly as the state’s prolonged drought desiccates
a verdant agricultural landscape, long supplied with water from both
groundwater aquifers and the vast network of government pipelines
that move water from north to south in California.
In
the southern Fresno County town of Orange Cove, also near Monson,
farmers are bulldozing lush groves of orange trees in the heart of
California’s $2.4 billion citrus industry. For two years straight,
the federal government has cut off water delivered through its
massive Central Valley Project, which includes the 152-mile
Friant-Kern Canal through Fresno, Tulare and Kern counties. Last
month, the Orange Cove Irrigation District, the major provider for
the eastern San Joaquin Valley’s citrus belt, severely curtailed
deliveries.
Farmers,
who typically require 2.5 acre-feet of water to produce an acre of
oranges, were used to getting more than half that from federal
supplies, reducing their need to pump well water. This year, the
water district’s distribution of leftover federal reserves amounted
to an average of 0.012 acre-feet. Growers seeking additional supplies
were charged up to $1,500 per acre-foot – an amount that cost $90 a
few years ago.
Within
days of the district’s announcement, farmers began bulldozing
healthy orange groves. Last year, 10,000 acres of citrus were leveled
in response to water shortages in the three-county region.
Agriculture officials say a total of 20,000 acres of orange groves
could be toppled by summer, more than 10 percent of the total in the
San Joaquin Valley.
In
Orange Cove, Carlos Gutierrez had worked his way up from field worker
to farm-labor contractor to a citrus producer growing on his own 117
acres. With his wells depleted and the price of imported water at a
premium, he hired bulldozer crews to uproot 45 acres of trees that
could have produced more than 300,000 oranges this year.
Afterward,
he wandered forlornly beneath a splintering stack of citrus packing
boxes.
“These
were 60-year-old trees,” Gutierrez said. “They produced some of
the best fall navels. I watched them all go down. To have to push
them out because there is no water is a sad thing to see.”
Race
for groundwater
For
more than a century, this eastern San Joaquin Valley region has
tapped its groundwater, the precious liquid that shimmers between
sand and clay layers above the hard rock base of the Sierra Nevada.
That supply helped build a mammoth agricultural economy that, in
turn, helps California produce 85 percent of America’s citrus.
In
Orange Cove, where hot summers and foggy winters have provided an
ideal climate for navel and Valencia oranges, the groundwater table
has dropped to its lowest point since 1953. That was two years after
the Friant-Kern Canal opened in 1951, a government project intended
to supplement the groundwater pumping and avoid draining the Tulare
Lake Basin.
These
days, farmers and residents once again are racing to extract whatever
they can from the ground, risking the future to subsist in the
present.
“All
of this is interconnected,” said Ryan Jensen, an organizer for
Community Water Center, a Visalia advocacy group working to help
low-income residents get clean water. “You’re dealing with
communities of farmworkers whose livelihoods come from the farms.
Groundwater aquifers don’t respect property lines. People are
competing for scarce resources, whether for agricultural or public
consumption.”
California,
in 2014, became the last Western state to regulate groundwater
pumping, approving steps to improve local oversight over property
owners who historically have been allowed to extract any water
beneath their land. But that hasn’t slowed a fever of new drilling.
Growers,
water districts and residents in Tulare County last year bored 1,900
new wells – more than three times the yearly average – as old
wells ran dry, said Chris Kapheim, general manager of the regional
Alta Irrigation District in Dinuba.
Six
thousand more wells are expected to be drilled in the region this
year, Kapheim said.
“The
water tables are dropping, and people are chasing the last drop,”
he said.
In
Monson, ever since Maria Jimenez saw the last filthy drop spit into
her sink, life has changed.
Maria’s
husband, Ramon, hauls home five-gallon buckets of well water from the
farm fields where he works. He climbs onto their roof and pours the
water into a sawed-off metal barrel. It connects to a garden hose
that flows to their shower head, complete with a shutoff valve he
installed.
Meanwhile,
the California Office of Emergency Services, State Water Resources
Control Board, Tulare County and nonprofit community groups are
working to bring tons of bottled drinking water to residents in
Monson and replenish household supplies. They’re setting up outdoor
porta-potties to replace toilets that have no water to flush.
For
houses with wells still pumping, the local irrigation district has
helped install water purifiers, because some wells are contaminated
with nitrates or an agricultural fumigant banned in 1977. In dusty
yards that once brimmed with flowers, the latest landscaping features
are black plastic tanks storing emergency water.
Jimenez
lugs heavy jugs into her kitchen. She uses disposable dishes as much
as possible and draws on sparse water to wash the rest. She warms
water in a large pot for the grandchildren’s baths. On a nearby
wall, portraits of angels look over her. They are paired with images
of the Virgin of Guadalupe and, from her native Mexican state of
Jalisco, Nuestra SeƱora de San Juan de los Lagos – known as Our
Lady of the Lakes.
These
days, Jimenez says, “We pray to Our Father. And we pray for
favors.”
A
volatile basin
For
generations, in one of the hottest, driest regions of California, the
Tulare Lake Basin has served up a glistening bounty of favors.
In
Orange Cove, orange growers Andrew and Justin Brown grew up hearing
hallelujahs to the groundwater: fable-like stories of Sierra snowmelt
rolling down the mountains to nourish subterranean water flows. The
legend was passed down in a family lineage of citrus producers that
includes dad David Brown, grandfather Robert Brown and two
great-grandfathers, Elmer Brown and William Barnhill.
“We
heard that back at the turn of the century there were artesian wells
here, and you could poke ’em with a stick and water would come up,”
said Andrew, 39.
More
than 80 percent of California’s agricultural groundwater is pumped
from aquifers in three hydrologic regions: the Sacramento River, the
San Joaquin River and Tulare Lake Basin.
Tulare
Lake was once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi,
supplied by runoff from rivers including the South Fork Kings,
Kaweah, Tule and Kern. It went dry by 1899 as water was diverted from
the rivers.
Now
the shallow Tulare Lake Basin is the most volatile of California’s
major aquifers. Across the San Joaquin Valley, agricultural wells
commonly reach deeper than 1,000 feet. In the Tulare basin,
particularly on its eastern edge along the Sierra, wells can hit
bedrock as shallow as 50 to 120 feet.
The
basin dramatically drains out or replenishes depending on climate
patterns. It also spans a region that today includes 4 million people
and the urban centers of Fresno, Visalia and Bakersfield. It supplies
rural towns, where tens of thousands of residents still rely on wells
for drinking water.
Over
good years and bad, the aquifer has been steadily shrinking amid
increasing agricultural and human needs – and, now, sustained
drought.
“In
general, the groundwater resources have been overtapped,” said
Claudia Faunt, a supervising hydrologist for the U.S. Geological
Survey who studies Central Valley groundwater resources. “The
amount of water in storage has been declining for decades. There is
not much coming in from rain and from mountain leakage. We’re
pumping more water out of the system than we’re putting in on
average. And that’s been true for 50 years.”
Last
year, even as farmers near Orange Cove began drilling new wells, many
made harsh economic decisions to cut down orchards.
First,
they targeted the vulnerable trees. Those were the ones that produced
tiny oranges or were so weakened from diminished water that they
barely held onto their fruit after the first sweet-smelling blossoms
of spring sprinkled down from branches.
Now,
with well water even more scarce, farmers are toppling “good
productive citrus,” said Joel Nelson, president of California
Citrus Mutual, a trade association representing 2,200 member growers.
Last
summer, the well supplying one of Andrew Brown’s orchards – and
his house – abruptly stopped pumping as the family was doing
laundry and watering the lawn. He ordered that the yard go dry and
imposed strict household conservation rules.
The
well sputtered back to life, as Andrew also paid peak rates for
emergency surface water for his 100 acres of citrus. He drilled four
test wells – at depths of 115 feet, 130, 140 and 150. All came up
dry.
Last
month, Justin Brown, faced with underperforming wells on a
neighboring property, bulldozed a 10-acre orchard his grandfather
Robert Brown and great-grandfather William Barnhill jointly planted
in 1956.
“I
had a physical last week,” Justin said. “My doctor told me my
blood pressure is too high. I’m only 35. It’s very stressful. I
don’t think anyone knows what is left in the ground. There is a
gigantic unknown.”
Smaller
oranges, less pay
At
the Cecelia packing house in Orange Cove, where fruit-filled conveyer
belts carry the economic life of a community, there are measurable
impacts.
Cecelia’s
president, David Roth, said that the plant this year will pack 80
million cartons of navels, Valencias and mandarins for supermarkets
and export. He said that’s down from 92 million cartons in
non-drought years – “the good ol’ days.”
Much
of the fruit the plant is getting is smaller than normal. Roth said
they’re losing $250,000 because many of the oranges are too puny
for produce sections and he is diverting more fruit to the less
profitable juice market.
Roth
is trying to maintain working hours for his 65 employees, who earn
$27,000 to $45,000 a year harvesting and packing fruit. But employees
such as Laura Gonzales, who gets paid by the number of orange boxes
she speed packs from the conveyer, is seeing her earnings plummet.
A
14-year employee, Gonzales can fill 700 citrus boxes a day, her hands
feverishly grabbing and packing the tumbling fruit. But smaller
oranges take longer to gather. They fill fewer boxes. In past years,
Gonzales has earned as much as $680 a week working 35 hours.
Recently, she has been earning $280 a week in 30 hours.
$2.4
billion annual earnings for California’s citrus industry
“When
your work suddenly changes, your bills don’t go down,” said
Gonzales, a mother of two who lives in nearby Orosi. “We’re still
paying our bills, just no longer all at once.”
Last
month, Roth ordered the bulldozing of 50 acres of citrus groves
managed by Cecelia, with potentially more cutting to come. In 2014,
the company took down orchards in 110 of its 2,000 acres. Many of the
fields will be replanted, with seedlings requiring little water –
but will take five to seven years to bear fruit.
The
fallen orchards dry in the blazing sun, waiting to be ground up as
biomass for a co-generation plant. Roth, who has spent his 63 years
in this corner of the Valley, can’t stand the sight. “It’s like
watching a dog suffer and die,” he said.
End
of Eden
Back
when his residential well in Monson could churn out a steady, clear
stream of water, Ignacio Avila turned the grounds around his
weathered white-plank home into a place of beauty – his personal
Eden.
Avila,
53, a veteran laborer in the nearby orange orchards, planted a
mystical garden of red roses, yellow sunflowers, multicolored chili
peppers, red radishes and stalks of sugar cane. He kept a manicured
lawn in harmony with 10 goats, dozens of chickens and pigeons and a
quarter horse named La Tormenta. He used to ride the horse to the
corner market, tie him up and savor a soda or a beer.
That
was before his well water became murky gray from nitrates and unsafe
for human or animal consumption. Now, in his residential dust bowl,
his garden and lawn are gone. He has sold off his goats and horse.
“This
place was so beautiful, like a park, just green, green, green,”
Avila said. “Now it’s a desert.”
6,000 new
wells expected to be drilled in the region this year
Avila’s
family is one of the lucky ones. His well still pumps out a trickle –
enough for showers and to run an old washing machine. He uses
leftover water from the wash to irrigate some cactus plants he
preserved. He grills the cactus for his favorite napoles, which he
serves with skirt steak.
Now
the family’s drinking supply, including the water for his wife
Constanza’s signature pozole stew, is delivered by a Sparkletts
truck. Funded by the state, it drops off 18 boxes of six one-gallon
water jugs twice a month.
Similar
emergency efforts abound in the stricken valley. In East Porterville,
where the first widespread human impacts of the drought emerged last
summer, trucks brought in potable water and portable showers. Bottled
water is being delivered to residents in East Orosi, where
groundwater is contaminated.
Tulare
County and local water officials are working to secure $4.8 million
from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a state cleanup fund to
drill new drinking-water wells in the community of Sultana and extend
a $1 million freshwater pipeline to Monson.
Though
severely stressed, the Tulare Lake Basin aquifer isn’t in imminent
danger of permanent failure. Water officials say its underground clay
and sand layers have not started compressing to cement, meaning that
the basin could recover if the drought eases.
But
on the land above, there is worry over the diminishing groundwater –
and envy over who can get to what’s left.
When
the water gave out in Maria Jimenez’s kitchen, and in the homes of
four other farm-labor families, landlord Servando Quintanilla
scrambled for solutions.
Quintanilla,
a broad-shouldered 75-year-old with a thick gray mustache, straw hat
and hands calloused from decades of field work, rents houses for $425
to $575 a month to farmworker families. He called a driller and got a
$25,000 estimate for a new well. He checked into whether he could use
his properties as collateral for a loan, while awaiting word on
officials’ plan to build a drinking-water pipeline to the
community.
“So
do I drill, or do I wait?” Quintanilla asked in bewilderment.
When
Jimenez came by recently to pay her family’s rent, Quintanilla
refused the money, even when she insisted. “I said, ‘Maria, I’m
not going to take anything until I fix everything,’” he said.
“I
identify with these people,” he explained. “I have worked in the
fields as they have. There is no question for me. I am not charging
anybody rent for houses without water. How could I?”
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article21185496.html#storylink=cpy
is a good article might help stop the water crisis in California, in my search I found an article as good or a little better about the drought in California and how it could stop the scourge, but also about world water war and H2O Dynamo https://www.patriotdirect.org/californias-drought-problem-a-problem-that-was-waiting-to-happen/
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