supply Mexico through the Colorado River. None of it gets to Mexico anymore, but Central California (the bread basket) and sprawling Los Angeles are nothing but desert. The amount of water that they use is astounding. All the lawns and golf courses...some have ventured to suggest that the chasm between Northern and Southern California could lead to two states. Having lived in both for long periods of time, they are like different states.

Millions of people who have a lot of money in their lawns are very opposed...NIMBY.

Who knows.

The Midwest is getting hit hard, too.

As a resident of Michigan I can tell you that our Great Lake levels are back to normal after years of seriously low levels.

My understanding is as your... the GLs are doing OK compared to the 00's

in the Upper Peninsula and it was scary how much the level went down ,at one point their dock was completely on dry land,even the Mighty Superior had a visible loss of water.

a steer will take 5-15 gal. p
lactating dairy cows can take up to 20 gal. per day...

This depends somewhat on both how much they are fed and the weather.

water because in the real rural there aren't any water lines. Just the well, the creeks and ponds. But that's where the water table comes in. Wells can go dry, you have more cost to drill.

Pray for rain!

own a citrus and avocado farm in southern California. It's a small one, just 15 acres, but it has been their livelihood since the late 1960s. Irrigation is always required, since not enough rainfall occurs, even in a normal year, to support orchards in that area. The water for that irrigation comes from wells that tap a large, very ancient aquifer. Even now, in this drought, the water is available.

The City of Los Angeles is working very hard to gain access to that aquifer, and will probably succeed, given its clout compared to that of the agricultural landowners in the area. If they do succeed, they will suck the water out of it so fast that it will make heads spin for all other users of that water. Farming will end in less than a decade in the area.

As my father said the other day in one of our daily phone conversations, "I guess we won't live long enough to see this area turn into a desert, but it's just too damned bad. No more local citrus and avocados. It will all come from Mexico, I guess."

This is a reality that is going to have an enormous impact on all of agricultural California. L.A. will get its water. It's been doing that for a very long time. But where will its food come from? That's a secondary issue, I guess.

my parent's farm. There's a co-op water company that supplies the water they use for irrigation. The cost of that water goes up every year. That water company pays for every gallon of water pumped out of that aquifer, and that cost rises every year as well. The state owns that water, and charges users to use it. It's very expensive.

At this time, their farm breaks even every year. So far. It hasn't produced any real net income for several years. My parents are retired, and have retirement savings that they're living on, but the farm still must be farmed, or it will simply be an orchard full of dead orange and avocado trees. They want to die on that farm. It was their dream. They could sell it, of course, but don't want to. They want to live there until the end of their lives. When they die, the farm will be sold, since none of their children want to become citrus and avocado farmers.

If the water goes away, it will take some time for the infrastructure to be developed to take it and deliver it to Los Angeles. Odds are that my parents will be gone before then. The area will cease to be a food producing area. It is that simple. It will change into yet another suburb of greater Los Angeles, and the agricultural nature of that area will be gone. Too bad, really.

In the end, that result is inevitable, really. It's too bad.

for farmers not close to retirement age with family depending on the farm,it's like the dust bowl all over again.

citrus and avocados each year. It's not a good business any longer, due to increasing costs. So, many of the old citrus ranches have been converted into other types of farming. Mostly row crops. Trouble is that those row crops require even more irrigation than the citrus that has been grown there for 100 years. So, that change won't continue, if the drought continues.

The town my parents live in is just a 40 minute drive from the San Fernando Valley, and development is already underway. It's population is three times it was when I grew up there, and it's becoming an L.A. commuter suburb. The housing developments are creeping up Hwy 126 steadily toward this little farming town, and developments are being built in it, as well. Big L.A. style developments. If it weren't for the agricultural zoning and preserves, it would already have become a residential suburb in toto. Once agriculture is no longer economically feasible, the conversion will happen fast. The four-lane road heading to I-5 is already in place, and can become an 8-lane freeway very quickly, if the suburbanization occurs, which it will.

Once my parents are gone, I will probably never visit my old home town again. My two siblings still live there, but they'll leave shortly after my parents are no longer alive. I live in Minnesota now, in a major city. That suits me just fine. I moved away from my home town when I turned 18. It wasn't where I wanted to live. Soon, it won't be a place most of its long-time residents want to live. Oh, well, I guess. This water thing and the drought will just accelerate the inevitable.

suburbs that suck up water. Sooner or later,the Western dry states are going to have to stop expansion by limiting new housing.I see that day coming.

Over the years, I've watched the citrus and avocado farmers adopt measures to cut water use and make the water they use as effective as possible. When I was a youngster, irrigation was done by running water down ditches and furrows between orchard rows. Very inefficient and wasteful of water. Today, those orchards use precise sprinkler irrigation, excellent moisture measurements and even surfactants to make the water absorb quicker into the soil. Irrigations are closely controlled and water use is down dramatically from the old days. Installing those systems is very expensive, but is offset somewhat by higher water prices and reduced labor requirements.

In the old days, an irrigation required at least two workers to start and monitor it. Keeping the ditches running often required a lot of time and labor. Today, one person essentially opens a valve. That's it. The orchard has to be checked to make sure all sprinklers are working, but that takes just one guy with a bucket of sprinkler heads a couple of hours to walk the rows. I know, because I used to work irrigations back in the early 1960s. A lot of work, and before the irrigations all of the furrows and ditches had to be checked and repaired, if needed. Weed control was done by spring-toothing the orchard, and a completely new ditch and furrow system had to be created each time.

No more. Now, non-cultivation is practiced by everyone, and weed control is done with a tool that is towed behind the tractor that cuts off the weeds just below the surface. You can do the entire 15 acres in half a day, all sitting on top of a tractor. My 90-year-old dad is still doing that.

Build out that 15 acres on typical residential lots and the total use of water will go way up. Orchard farming the way it is done today uses less water than homes on the same acreage. So, there would be a net increase in the amount of water being used.

but you can notice the ex-urban sprawl, well, sprawling more and more, each time through...

not for the better.

and pump what they need from a drying hole that used to be an underground ocean.
but what do you expect from an industry that has been handed over to multinational BIG Ag by
incompetent descendants.

we are facing food security repercussions that are undreamed of.

I remember how stores were dark, the electricity was randomly turned off in entire communities during "peak hours" and we were force fed this garbage about how we had to conserve electricity when it fact there was no shortage it was just Enron manipulating the market

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis

State and Feds Drained Northern California Reservoirs

The Bureau of Reclamation and Department of Water Resources systematically drained northern California reservoirs last summer, resulting in low flows and endangering salmon and steelhead in the Sacramento, Feather and American rivers, while filling water banks and Southern California reservoirs.

Last summer, high water releases down the Sacramento, Feather and American rivers left Shasta, Oroville and Folsom reservoirs at dangerously low levels. Shasta is at 36 percent of capacity and 54 percent of average; Oroville, 36 percent of capacity and 54 percent of average; and Folsom, 17 percent of capacity and 34 percent of average.
http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2014/02/02/state-and-feds-drained-northern-california-reservoirs/

The reservoir down the road hasn't been full for years.

Any reason you think it is?

you dont know when or if to ever trust them again.
*dont forget to pay your cable bill!

Redding is slated for a 36% cut.

We're the first big city on the river, we've had 89% of our normal rainfall, and we cut 17% last year. So why 36%? Who decided that?

water conservation program already is.

San Diego sprawl, including the nuclear plant right on the beach on the Fault...grotesque. There are now 6 lanes going each way, last time I was there. Then the LA to Indio Sprawl and Central Valley agricultural Bread Basket.

It's been going on for years, but no one wanted to tackle it...way unpopular. I wish Brown good luck if he can even pull off California staying where it is now. But they keep building houses and people keep buying them and new lawns and swimming pools and all the golf courses...it's massive.

and how to drill offshore in protected sanctuaries.
another aqueduct and all will be well. except for those dry ones, forcing a dustbowl migration we WILL see
in the next few years.
that rude sipping noise of a straw in an empty glass?
that's LA. they totally deserve whats coming.
aint no desalinization that will fix their little red wagon.
the actual math will do them all in, and nature will chuckle all the while.

The California Water Plan (1957) - Bulletin No. 3 was a plan to harness all the wild Rivers of California (including the Klamath and Smith) in a system of Reservoirs and tunnels and power plants. Dams built under this plan included Shasta, Trinity, Oroville, Keswick, Lewiston, Whiskeytown, etc. Governor Ed Brown was a political supporter of the Plan and Governor during most of the construction that did occur.

The argument then as now was the North versus the monied special interests of the South.

Back in the 1980s there was a plan to raise Shasta Dam and relocate the Shasta Lake communities and Interstate 5. Importing Columbia River water via a pipeline along the interstate 5 corridor has also been mentioned but is at least politically infeasible between the two Sates.

IMHO

Too many people live and too much industry and agriculture occur that are dependent on imported water.

Ground water has also been "mined" extensively.

Soils have been farmed and "salted", subsided, or eroded (by wind in the Delta area).


A good read about water in the West is Reisner's Cadillac Desert.

http://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-Revised/dp/0140178244/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1429561787&sr=1-3-fkmr2&keywords=Reiser+California+water

>>The State Water Project is Born

The Burns-Porter Act, formally known as the California Water Resources Development Bond Act, was placed on the November 1960 ballot. Also known as Proposition One, its chances for passage were unpredictable. Heated and continuous negotiations were still ongoing, with MWD withholding its endorsement until days before the election. The San Francisco Chronicle strongly opposed the proposition. California’s North-South regional rivalry was a strong factor in the election.

picture of political cartoon that appeared in the San Francisco ChronicleThe San Francisco Chronicle was among the Project's strongest opponents and urged its readers to vote down the bond issue.

On November 8, the Burns-Porter Act was narrowly approved by the slim margin of 173,944 votes from about 5.8 million ballots counted. Only one northern county supported the proposition--Butte County, site of Oroville Dam. But one fact was certain, construction was soon to begin on what is now the nation's largest state-built water and power development and distribution system, which would forever change the face and future of a once virgin land.

Construction Begins

picture of 1956 floods1956 was a devastating flood year.

Construction on the Oroville site actually began even before the passage of the Burns-Porter Act. A $25 million emergency appropriation was passed in 1957 after a record late 1955-early 1956 flood, which devastated Northern and Central California. Statewide, 64 deaths were recorded, most in Sutter County and Yuba City, and more than $200 million of property damage.

picture of Governor Ed Brown at groungbreaking ceremonyGovernor Edmond Brown at Oroville groundbreaking ceremony.

http://www.water.ca.gov/swp/history.cfm

*Crickets*