In East Porterville, about 34 miles south of Visalia, the only way for some residents to flush their toilet is to drive to the local fire station and hand-pump water into a bucket and return home. More than 500 wells in Tulare County have dried up. The county is considered the dairy and citrus heart of California’s vast agricultural belt.
The drought has forced some farmers to pay exorbitant prices for irrigation, while others have culled herds, axed fruit trees and fallowed fields. Migrant workers have packed up and moved on.
“I saw all those people who couldn’t take a shower; kids, pregnant women,” said Donna Johnson, 72, whose well went dry in June. It was about 100 degrees earlier this week, but she’s making door-to-door deliveries of water donated by charities. She told Reuters that no one should have to “feel grimy” all day. “You worry about sending your kids to school because they’re going to be dirty,” she said.
Andrew Lockman, manager at the Tulare County Office of Emergency Services, said it could be years before the groundwater management plan ordered by Gov. Jerry Brown yields results.
During wet years, Lockman explained, farmers can purchase water for irrigation from massive state and federal water projects, fed by snowmelt from the nearby Sierra Nevada Mountains. Residents have usually tapped the shallow groundwater. That’s all gone. Now they must purchase only a fraction of the water they need and are turning to expensive suppliers or digging deep underground to tap shrinking reserves of irrigation water with no guarantee that it is drinkable. Lockman added that larger farms have spent up to $1 million to drill 2,000 feet into the Central Valley’s ancient acquifer.
On Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said that California’s drought will likely persist or even intensify in large parts of the state.
“Complete drought recovery in California this winter is highly unlikely,” said Mike Halpert, acting director of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. “While we’re predicting at least a 2 to 3 percent chance that precipitation will be near normal or above normal throughout the state, with such widespread, extreme deficits in rainfall the recovery will be slow.”
There had been hope for heavy rain this winter, but NOAA has reversed those projections. If we do have an El Nino (a storm from South America), it is expected to be weak with very little rain. Even the state’s pumpkin growers are facing problems. Next to Illinois, California is the nation’s second-largest pumpkin producer.
“The impact is very severe on us, and if we don’t get rain this winter we won’t be able to grow anything,” said Wayne Martin of Fresno who grows pumpkins on his 60-acre property. “It’s very bad here with the little water we have.”
While growers struggle, the tourism industry is safe, but visitors will now have to ask for a glass of water at restaurants. Ryan Becker, director of communications at Visit California, said the drought has not affected the state’s tourism industry. “It’s been one of those low-level crisis that’s always here,” Becker said. “We’re definitely praying for rain.”
Restaurants in Cambria, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa and in San Simeon are only providing water upon request. The famous Neptune Pool at Hearst Castle is dry, partly because of the drought and mostly because the state does not have the money fix a leak. Nearby McWay Falls and Pfeiffer Falls, both in Big Sur, are not as robust as in past years, while the color of the once-lush landscape is now a uniform shade of brown.
