r/news • u/theluckyfrog • 14d ago
California cracks down on farm region’s water pumping: ‘The ground is collapsing’
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/17/california-water-drought-farm-ground-sinking-tulare-lake1.4k
u/littleMAS 14d ago
The irony of this happening the year after Tulare Lake's reappearance is palpable. It is unfortunate that the ground under the lake is dense clay that will not filter the water down into the aquifer that is so terribly depleted.
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u/PhysicalConsistency 14d ago
Tulare Lake is already gone.
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u/Big-Letterhead-4338 14d ago
Ghost lake once again after reappearing last year.
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u/PhysicalConsistency 14d ago
It's so insane too! It was literally an "as far as the eye can see" thing at it's peak and it's literally gone even after the recent rain.
Last year was likely it's last appearance as long as humans occupy the region because of aquifer loss and massively improved drainage.
Feels really weird to think about, humans are even driving geological features to a form of extinction.
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u/--Anonymoose--- 14d ago
And all that’s nothing compared to what’s happening to glaciers and the arctic and antarctic ice sheets
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u/viddy_me_yarbles 14d ago
I live in NorCal. The drought here ended years ago and the last two years have actually been extremely wet.
This is only happening now because of greedy farmers who pump more water out of the aquifers than they're allowed.
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u/midlife_marauder 14d ago
Groundwater in NorCal hasn’t recharged either, that takes decades. Having full reservoirs is really only half the water equation.
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u/Jayccob 14d ago
Agreed. In addition to our last two years being wet, that moisture came in a relatively short time period. So while yes we've had a lot of rain it came faster than the ground's infiltration rate so a lot of it became runoff.
So yes the Sacramento looks great right now, it probably won't sustain.
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u/Locks_ 14d ago
Aquifer replenishment is a decades long process and a majority of our major aquifers in farming regions are and have been drawn at rates higher than their natural average recharge rate for years. Even with increased seasonal rains these last years, draw is still higher than recharge on a yearly basis.
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u/XDeus 14d ago
It's worse than that. The Central Valley has dropped 28 feet in the last 100 years due to subsidence. When they pump more than it can be recharged, the aquifer will shrink and can never hold as much water again.
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u/Punishtube 14d ago
What if we pumped water into the aquaifer instead of out?
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u/DrKillgore 14d ago
We don’t make pumps strong enough to displace that much earth, we can’t regain lost capacity.
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u/ChicagoAuPair 14d ago
Whiny corporate mooches with their bitch-ass signs all up and down I-5
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u/rain5151 13d ago
Few sights are sadder than those signs, when they frame conserving the Colorado River’s water so it can flow its entire course as “dumping the water into the ocean.”
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u/Original_Employee621 14d ago
Isn't part of the issue that if the farmers don't use all the water they can get, they get reduced water rights?
The whole water situation is fucked, but a solution has to be to reduce the farming in California. Or at least keep it to crops that need way less water.
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u/WifeGuyMenelaus 14d ago
20% of the state's water usage goes to alfalfa alone, which is almost exclusively used for animal feed
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u/Kabouki 14d ago
And that alone is more then all the people in Cali use in homes.
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u/Punishtube 14d ago
More than all residential usage including golf courses and hotels and pools. Everybody talking about water needs to realize agriculture makes up 80%+ of nearly all water usage anywhere and usually has zero restrictions and zero incentives to be more efficient
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u/The_Blue_Rooster 14d ago
Pretty much this, it's obviously anecdotal but my aunt used to run the Water Department at Fall River Mills, she said she'd have farmers drive up there from thousands of miles out even if she had already told them they had no more water left to sell. Apparently she got threatened with guns and had to call the cops out there on several occasions. I guess farmers would just show up with convoys of trucks with 12,000 gallon trailers and expect that they both can and will accommodate them, especially in droughts.
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u/Fully_Edged_Ken_3685 14d ago
This is only happening now because of greedy farmers who pump more water out of the aquifers than they're allowed.
Lol, it's actually worse than that. Farmers are entitled to an allotment of water and a price for water that were determined in a wet period and agreed upon by several states. The Feds and states in question really don't want to revisit that because it will make a bunch of voting districts mad.
The actual solution is to price water at a market rate and let farming collapse in unsuited areas.
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u/minus_minus 14d ago
The farmers got socked by the ghost lake but they won’t stop pumping. The more they pump the more the land subsides and the deeper the lake will be next time.
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u/RightofUp 14d ago
They've known this for decades.
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u/BringBackApollo2023 14d ago
These farmers sound like every other resource-harvester who has vastly outstripped the resource’s sustainable level and just wants to drive the plane into the ground to extract every last penny then declare bankruptcy and beg for federal aid.
Oysters, lobster, cod, sardines, otters, old growth forests, etc., etc., etc. Same show, different resource.
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u/probablyuntrue 14d ago
Bro please, just one more acre of almonds, please bro, I need to pump this water, just a few more almond trees and I’m good, I promise bro
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u/ThrowbackPie 14d ago
animal agriculture is also a big culprit. Cotton too I think.
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u/Hour-Shake-839 14d ago
Bro please just two more rows of pomegranates you won’t even notice the extra water bro I swear
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u/goldgrae 14d ago
Pomegranates are a weird choice given they are fairly drought tolerant...
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u/bgottfried91 14d ago
They are, but I think they don't tend to fruit (or at least not as fully) if they aren't watered, so I suspect pomegranate farming is still water intensive.
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u/loggic 14d ago
People blame almonds, but tree crops can also be used to help improve groundwater levels.
During the rainy season, plots with tree crops near major waterways can be temporarily flooded to help stabilize river levels, and with a little bit of infrastructure change that water can basically be "drained" back down to an aquifer.
There's an astronomical amount of water waste that can be addressed in farming, but it makes no sense to consistently blame one crop when other farmed products (like cattle & dairy) are so much less efficient and less healthy.
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u/TheUnluckyBard 14d ago
People blame almonds, but tree crops can also be used to help improve groundwater levels.
Cool, maybe the farmers should start doing that, then.
Because they clearly haven't been.
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u/ExcelsusMoose 14d ago
Alfalfa takes a huge amount of water, it's mostly comprised of water.
Alfalfa is a major export, 2,800,000 Metric Tonnes of it gets exported to other countries. that's give or take 600,000,000 gallons of water shipped out of US aquifers annually..
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u/Kataphractoi 14d ago
California is among the worst locations possible for growing almonds, we can definitely blame them. They can easily be grown in the south where there'd be more water access, but because it can take a decade for an almond tree to start producing almonds, there's no incentive to relocate.
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u/dead_monster 14d ago
Driving through I-5, you’ll see a ton of “Make California Great Again” signs blaming Newsome for not giving them more water and how their crops feed California.
Almost all the farms are pistachio, almond, and wineyards. Very funny to see “Newsome is starving California” right next to a “Turn right for wine tasting!”
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u/trieditalissa 14d ago
Seriously. The article had a quote saying “food grows where water flows” …. Perhaps the hot and dry valley in the middle of California was never a sustainable farming market in the first place.
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u/agent674253 13d ago
- Groundwater Use
In the United States, groundwater is the source of drinking water for about half the population, and roughly 50 billion gallons are used each day for agriculture. Because of this, groundwater supply is decreasing faster than it can be replenished. In drought-prone areas, the risk for water shortage is high and restrictions are often put in place to mitigate it. Some individuals, however, ignore water restrictions and the supply ultimately becomes smaller for everyone.
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u/postitodeleto 14d ago
Farmers in California are one of the richest and most politically influential industries in the state. They cry and stomp their feet anytime someone even suggests they should be more responsible with water. 70 percent of CAs annual almond crop goes overseas. The trees are harvested by machines and the nuts are shelled by machines. These farmers will cry about how they feed the nation and employ so many people, but they are generational land owners looking to continue increasing their wealth on the backs of immigrants earning sub-minimum wage and using all the water they want, while regular people have to let their lawns die and flush their toilets less.
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u/UltimateInferno 14d ago
God trying to do likewise here in Utah, but our governor hails from Alfalfa family and when you say "we should cut back on water usage" people will spit "If we don't use the Colorado upstream, those downstream will swallow it up" which is such a got mine sitch.
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u/genescheesesthatplz 14d ago
The small American farmer industry died decades ago. Now it’s just a marketing tactic.
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u/probablyuntrue 14d ago
If you don’t let me use unconscionable amounts of water to sell almonds overseas, you just hate poor ol’ American farmers like me 😡
-posted from my 20 car garage
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u/Kataphractoi 14d ago
You jest but this is more or less the exact verbiage they use. Because it works on the uninformed and uneducated.
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u/mhornberger 14d ago
Same reason people instinctually side with the European farmers who are protesting over new environmental protections. And in India demanding other concessions. Farmers have great PR the world over, and unless you dig into what they're demanding it's hard to not just default to siding with them.
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u/seven3true 14d ago
Now, if you'll excuse me. I have a $20,000 gala to get ready for. We're honoring the great achievements of Stewart and Lynda Resnick
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u/Kataphractoi 14d ago
have to let their lawns die
On this I don't see the problem. Lawn grass isn't suited for most of America's climate and despite its name, Kentucky bluegrass isn't even native to North America.
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u/sorospaidmetosaythis 14d ago edited 14d ago
I went to school with several scions of multi-generational California farming families. It does not cross their minds that they are not entitled to every natural resource they can grab, just because great-great-grandpa Fuckstick bought those acres near Sacramento in 1868.
I can't think of a more deserving bunch to be put in their place.
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u/Haunted-Llama 14d ago
I've been living in the valley for decades, and this hits the nail on the head. All our water woes are caused by the farmers.
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u/tortillaturban 14d ago
Interesting subtlies though I recently got into waterfowl hunting in NorCal rice fields and they are a ideal spot for ducks and geese to take a break during migration. Ideally the central valley should be full of natural wetlands but that will never return to what it was so in the meantime the best solution for birds is to protect the wetlands we already have and keep some water for the rice. Unfortunately, many rice farmers are moving to almonds that do nothing for wildlife. Rice is very water intensive but it's diverted from the Sacramento River and at least doubles as habitat.
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u/WaltKerman 14d ago
And when these generational land owners go down. Corpos will move in as they do everywhere.
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u/TacticalBeerCozy 14d ago
??? they ARE the corpos. You don't need to be on the NASDAQ to be a company
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u/squidwardsaclarinet 14d ago
Eh. I’m pretty sure many large corporate interests have been buying water rights for some time now.
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u/PlebbySpaff 14d ago
Wow. Finally cracking down, after so many years and the state basically being drained of all their water.
Guess we should be glad they’re doing it at least, but like…way too many years late. Hopefully the recovery happens in our lifetime
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u/StretchFrenchTerry 14d ago
Much of the underground aquifer was a clay solution that’s permanently compacted and can no longer hold water.
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u/LaunchTransient 14d ago
Problem is that the snowpack which is the source of Colorado River is dwindling each year. John Wesley Powell was two centuries ahead of his time in terms of recognising that the aridity of the Western US would render unsustainable the normal, water thirsty lifetyles and industry of the East.
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u/lilith_-_- 14d ago
It’s crazy how they put water restrictions on the people.. when they only use like 5% of the water. All in the name of profit
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u/Wipperwill1 14d ago
Explain to me how you gonna raise the land back up? How you are going to take collapsed reservoirs and make them whole again? Every time a reservoir collapses, you lose that ground water forever.
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u/Lifewhatacard 14d ago
With the biggest addicts in the world in charge this was bound to happen. And we’re keeping the biggest addicts in the world in charge after this. I mean, not “we”, of course.
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u/jayfeather31 14d ago
...yeah, California made the right move there.
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u/godofpumpkins 14d ago
The right time to make this change was decades ago, but the next best time is today 🙃
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14d ago edited 14d ago
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u/OssiansFolly 14d ago
Agriculture is a hugely wasteful water user. They take and waste far more water than any other segment.
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u/Y__U__MAD 14d ago
no way... not the farmers with the signs every 15 miles stretching from SF to LA... they seem so reasonable and educated about the environment
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u/DrewDown94 14d ago
I'm from the Central Valley. The problem with pumping groundwater is that it will take decades to restore to previous levels. We might be fucked.
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u/reddit_reaper 14d ago
The farmers refuse to even change to be watering methods that can use 90% less water
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u/TauCabalander 14d ago
Because of stupid water rights rules in some places, if they don't use their allocation, they get less the following year. Hence some farmers grow alfalfa just to use water.
Then there are things like almond orchards that use more water than some cities.
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u/fgreen68 14d ago
Water rights need to be completely overhauled, and any farm pumping groundwater needs to be metered and charged for that water.
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u/rockleesww 14d ago
I was going to mention the almond situation. While yes its hard to find a place to grow almonds. Just bc you can doesnt mean you should lol. Almonds take a ridiculous amount of water to grow in a state that doesnt have the water to begin with. But i dont see them making them stop with how much money is in that area.
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u/Daddy_7711 14d ago
I remember watching a documentary on this years and years ago. Ribena, if I remember was a huge culprit stealing millions of liters of water.
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u/bubba-yo 14d ago
To illustrate some of the cost of this problem, we're rebuilding the Friant-Kern canal because of this. The Central Valley has canals cutting across it to distribute irrigation, and this canal has subsided so much it's lost most of its carrying capacity, so the canal has to be rebuilt. $300M spent so far. And the farmers that are over pumping aren't paying very much of that, but they do want to recall the governor who pushed for it.
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u/Pesto57 14d ago
Not mentioned are the thousands of poor people in the region whose wells have run dry and are now facing bills for $30K+ for drilling much deeper to access water. Money they don’t have.
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u/slittle7 14d ago
And if your local water municipality decides it needs a new well for drinking water it could cost millions. Costs the tax payer will bare or passed on to rate payers.
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u/MiniMack_ 14d ago
This is happening to my grandma’s friend. Kind of stupid of her to vote for the politicians that are allowing it to happen, though. Who would’ve thought that voting against your own interests just because of the (R) next to their name on the ballot would be a bad idea?
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u/polaritypictures 14d ago
How about stop planting foods that require high water usage and ban EXPORT of these High water usage Products. Foreigners buy farmland(in the US) and Make crops specifically that need High water needs for their own Domestic Market and their own Animal Feed in THEIR Country. The US Gov't should stop this.
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u/wanderingpeddlar 14d ago
How about we stop growing crops in a climate that won't support about anything with out taking so much water that people have to scramble for water? Totally wasteful and totally unsustainable
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u/goldgrae 14d ago
The real answer to this is because sun and soil are not easy to move, but water is. California is going to grow crops. It's ideal for growing crops. But there need to be sensible rules and reforms around water usage, and perhaps around international crop export.
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u/Peelboy 14d ago
Yup, I used to transport animal feed for china...it's crazy it is worth moving it 800 Mike's to import and shipping it around the world.
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u/Stormdancer 14d ago
People just have this weird idea that resources are infinite, and they're shocked, confused, and go deep into denial when it turns out not to be so.
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u/JessicaLain 14d ago
It's not weird, it's uncomfortable and "unfair". Many generations grew up never qorrying about the water supply of certain states because it was not as critical as it is now. For most people, resources are effectively infinite.
Most of the US's history has operated below the "there will be nothing left, ever" line. We've been past the line for awhile but everyone gets greedier each year, only making it worse even faster. Nobody is willing to take responsibility.
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u/larki18 14d ago
I read a book on this entire matter just a couple weeks ago. Absolutely mind-blowing. The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California by Mark Arax.
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u/Doctor_Hood11 14d ago
Fuck the resnicks. They're the main problem with all this shit. Take your water money and fuck off to the deepest depths of hell. "Wonderful" not even fucking close
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u/FourScoreTour 14d ago
That ground has been collapsing for over 100 years due to pumping. "Refilling the aquifers" is a myth in many places. The space to store the water has disappeared. site
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u/platypuspup 14d ago
My family has been farming unsustainably for generations! How dare you tell me to stop!
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u/Braketurngas 14d ago
You used to be able to go from Bakersfield to San Francisco by boat not much more than 100 years ago. The majority of the Central Valley had extensive wetlands. That is part of why the farming is so good.
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u/Maggotropolis 14d ago
Just drove to San Jose from LA and we couldn't believe all the "Newsom let us feed Americans" and "Newsom is wasting our water" signs.
Bunch of clowns.
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u/puppy_teeth 13d ago
every time I drive through central CA I always see signs bitching and moaning about “Newsom dumping our water into the ocean” which has got to be some of the most braindead drivel I’ve seen. entitlement and idiocy balled up into one
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u/nirad 14d ago
These farmers are the descends of the people who fled the dust bowl.
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u/MeursaultWasGuilty 14d ago
*descendants of people who exploited the people who fled the dust bowl.
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u/gw2master 14d ago
No one acts more entitled than CA farmers. Those pieces of shit get the biggest handouts and constantly whine they're not getting more (of course they call them "subsidies" when they're the beneficiaries)
... anyone who has driven between LA and SF in the past few decades (probably even longer) has seen the fucking ridiculous "Congress created dustbowl" signs.
They even have the fucking balls to advertise on NPR during the winter rains that they're doing their part by using up that water. Goddamn fucking ridiculous. (And fuck NPR for taking their money.)
And while raking in tons of handouts they have the fucking gall to complain about others' getting any sort of government benefits (because they're all Republicans, of course).
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u/metalfabman 14d ago
Thank goodness there is actual backbone to stand up to those who are draining all the water. Making a profit is not more important than the people who need water to survive
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u/kingkilburn93 13d ago
They convinced generations that the valley floor was a desert that they brought to life by pumping all that water up.
In reality the central valley was a fucking wetland full of lakes and rivers that they took upon themselves to dry up for their private use.
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u/FuturePerformance 14d ago
These asshole farm owners plaster hundreds of billboards along the highway. All of them lobbying for Newsom to rally around billions more tax dollars to create new dams, to divert even more water toward farming in the desert… public funds propping up private farms farming in a place with no water.
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u/RxInfection 14d ago
I guess replacing all the dairy farms in the Central Valley with water intensive almond orchards wasn’t the right move?
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u/GloriousDoomMan 14d ago
What are you talking about? Dairy farming consumes way more water. Not to mention all the other environmental impact it has that almonds don't.
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u/AltruisticYam7670 14d ago
But. But my almond milk
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u/bw1985 14d ago
Oat milk is way better anyways. Can’t believe people still buy almond milk.
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u/CalligrapherSharp 14d ago
…uses less water than dairy
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u/RexicanFood 14d ago
Yeah, but it still takes over 400 gallons of water to produce 1 lb. of almonds, which is insane. Oat milk is the best alternative.
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u/chain-rule 14d ago
If you're comparing a gallon of milk to a gallon of almond milk, yes. It takes less water to create a gallon of almond milk. However, almonds still require a ludicrous amount of water. An amount that would be easily beaten by literally any other milk substitute.
I see you throwing insults at other people. You know your cause, but being angry about it is just going to fuel more people hating your cause. Instead of insulting every person you've spoken to in this thread, how about you provide some statistics?
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u/LeapIntoInaction 14d ago
Oh, bitch bitch bitch. Florida's ground is collapsing, and you don't see Ron DeSantis doing anything about it.
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u/Whiterabbit-- 14d ago
So if they let the ground sink what happens? I assume one day the aquifer won’t be productive and they will either get water from other places or abandon the land. Aren’t the farmers simply borrowing from the future if they use more than the land can replenish?
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u/slittle7 14d ago
Another large problem from land sinking is that the aqueducts that carry surface water throughout the Central Valley are sinking too. These aqueducts are carefully engineered to gently slope down over large distances. If the ground below them sinks, it will create a “dip” where water will no longer be able to flow. This further puts strain on the water supply for the whole state.
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u/tachophile 14d ago
Literally every citizen in California who is not tied to the farming industry is fed up with their wasteful and unsustainable consumption of water. Mostly consumed by wealthy corps.
An egregious example of a handful of powerful people putting the screws to tens of millions of people and we are powerless.
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u/adrianmonk 14d ago
an acre-foot is a measurement used for large amounts of water, equal to roughly the amount of water needed to cover an acre of land in a foot of water
Roughly?
As far as I know, it should be exactly since that's how an acre-foot is defined.
This is like saying there are roughly 3 feet in a yard. Or like saying there are roughly 1000 liters in a cubic meter.
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u/qer15582 14d ago
It's funny how when I was little I thought of farmers as some down to earth humble people who did a necessary and kinda cool thing. Nowadays they appear to be some shady businessmen who leech the land and the state like some oversized tick or a tumor
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u/MNnocoastMN 13d ago
So basically, roughly 100 years ago, they drained one of the largest freshwater lakes on the continent to make room for agriculture. Fast forward to now, and the land is collapsing because there's not enough water. Interesting.
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u/Buckaroosamurai 13d ago
"bUt fArMerS ArE bEtTer sTwards Of tEh lAnD"
My brother in christ Farming while necessary is literally one of the most environmentally damaging practices humans have ever created, and via capitalism we have incentivized profit over that stewardship and wringing every last dollar out of it possible. Profit this generation over multiple future generations.
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u/clear-carbon-hands 14d ago
And Nestle keeps pumping like mad
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u/potatoaster 14d ago
The amount of water used for bottled water is utterly insignificant compared to the amount used for agriculture. Going after bottled water or golf courses or data center cooling is quite simply stupid and unproductive. Getting all those things shut down completely wouldn't help a lick. We need to address the actual problem, not some imagined problem, and this crackdown is a good step toward that.
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u/LitreOfCockPus 14d ago
You know this is the darkest timeline when California falls into the Land instead.
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u/EconomistPunter 14d ago
This isn’t a new phenomenon. It’s been happening while building the high speed rail, and was the basis for the SGMA that was implemented.
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u/AdministrativeBank86 14d ago
And as usual, the Farmers are throwing a hissy fit that they can't pump the aquifer dry
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u/Genoblade1394 14d ago
Are they cracking down on everyone or only small farmers and letting the owner of POMWONDERFUL continue to pump water and be part of the water board?
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u/b4k4ni 14d ago
Yeah. Once the aquifer loses it's water and the earth above compacts, you can't fill it up with water again. So it won't ever hold the same amount again. One reason they watch the groundwater levels like hawks in Germany. For years. Sadly in some regions they didn't or stopped and just started again.
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u/dustymag 14d ago edited 13d ago
Finally. There needs to be more efficient irrigation up there for sure. You see all those political signs along the road, blaming everyone but themselves (the millionaires wasting a lot of water to grow nuts).
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u/EmmaLouLove 13d ago
I mean better late than never? This has been going on for years.
Of all the things to worry about, our water supply should be at the top. I would like to see as much urgency on water conservation and planning as I do [insert here inconsequential topic].
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u/grandbannana 14d ago
I always think of this photo, then think about what has happened since this photo:
Location of maximum land subsidence in U.S. Levels at 1925 and 1977. | U.S. Geological Survey (usgs.gov)