PHOTO/WWW.TECHNOGYPSIE.COM/PHOTOGRAPHY
MERCED, CA — Governor Jerry Brown has declared a state of emergency in the rich agricultural state of California, which is enduring the fourth year of an historic drought. He demands a 20% reduction in water use, while exempting farmers who consume 80% of the state’s water. The Governor is most responsive to corporate interests, including billionaire farmers growing almonds for export to China and oil company executives who use millions of gallons of water drilling for oil in the midst of a drought.
To make matters worse, the water thirsty crops, almonds, pistachios, alfalfa, and cotton, are planted and grown in the desert Westside of the Valley. In the last two years, record planting of almonds on the west side has pumped more water than Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco combined use in a year.
Residents of East Porterville, an impoverished community of farmworker families, go without water to shower, cook, and clean. Dependent on groundwater, their wells have gone dry as agricultural interests with deeper wells shift to intensive pumping of groundwater.
To make matters worse, some unscrupulous landowners have been selling or diverting groundwater out of the county. They take advantage of the fact that, historically, there have been no state regulations on groundwater use in California. A recently enacted law is weak and does not go fully into effect until 2040.
During drought years, allocations of surface waters from rivers are significantly reduced or eliminated to protect fishing, prevent environmental damage to the Delta and to protect agriculture in the Delta, which normally drains the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers.
Not surprisingly, the drought has exacerbated long-standing tensions about water use in the state. It has pitted environmentalists, fishermen, Delta farmers, Valley farmers, and city dwellers, north and south, against each other. As usual, it is the poor who suffer disproportionately. Farm workers and other rural poor are used as pawns in a propaganda war to convince the public that private interests can manage the scarce resource of water best, when it is the moneyed interests who are exacerbating the problem.
A total of 17 Central Valley communities like East Porterville had to have bottled water trucked in during the recent drought years. It is anticipated that this summer will be worse. It does not seem to matter that many of them live adjacent to the Kern Water Bank, the world’s largest reservoir of water in the world, subsidized by tax dollars and run for a profit. Meanwhile, water rates go up in the San Francisco Bay Area and are projected to increase even more in Southern California.
We are all in this together. The water crisis in California highlights the need to make water a human right and not something to be sold to the highest bidder. In the process we protect the environment for future generations.
Can we have sources for the statistics about farm vs the major cities on water use? And why not halt the watering of golf courses, an unessential water use that caters to the rich and the companies that serve them.
I don’t understand the Governor’s silence in helping all communities resolve the water shortage until we get through this drought. He has to address the large corporations that are draining our water supply.
STOP…………Walmart and Nestles from bottling their water in our state!!
Water is a human right. We need solid leadership, armed with integrity, courage, and a commitment to the people of California… not to the multinational corporations’ sociopathic greed. We need fair regulations to protect our water for all. Please lead the way, and make a name for yourself and California in history, and for the gratitude of generations to come.
Everyone deserves access to clean water. But like education and justice, water is now become a commodity for those who can pay.
************Water is a Human Right.************
I have a problem with the usage of water by Export Agriculture. This usage is not sustainable and needs to be reduced.
And the Oil industry continues fouling / ruining everything it touches. This industry has never paid the cost of doing business.
It is time to rethink about how we use limited natural resources and not give breaks to Agriculture and the Oil Industry.
If the crop in question, ie: almonds, is feeding our country and prohibited from sending goods overseas, let them use water. We need to take care of home before anything else. Bottled water companies need to be banned from bottling California water…many states have plenty to share. Why should our communities suffer to fill anothers’ coffers. Protect California and and its people.
TOUGHER WATER REGULATIONS ON CORPORATIONS!!