Where I live in California’s Central Valley, farmers are rapidly depleting the fossil water in the ground water basins due to reduced deliveries from the irrigation system based on dammed rivers. The problem is that this leads to land subsistence among other nightmares. That means the land is sinking. There is a solution to this. You can put back the water that you have been taking out via something called recharge. Santa Clara County saw its water table drop 175 feet by 1965, but the local government took matters into its own hands formulated strict regulations on pumping followed by an extensive recharge program. The end result is that the water table is now at the same level as it was before it started shrinking.
Experts say that the crazy well drilling frenzy has the potential for disaster. And it will effect the rest of the country too, since 1/2 of the produce in the US comes from California.
One problem with water drilling is that it sets off an arms race. For instance, if Farmer Brown next to you starts pumping out his groundwater, guess what happens to the groundwater under Farmer Jones’ farm? It starts sinking too! Now in order to get at his water Farmer Jones must drill even deeper than Farmer Brown drilled. See how insane that is?
This is fossil water that was put in the ground a very long time ago. You can’t keep drawing on it forever. It is like living off a fixed amount of savings without earning any money. Unless you have a ton of money in the bank, sooner or later, you are going to drain your account.
The crazy amounts of water sucked out of the ground for fracking adds to the problems.
Farmers like to blame water-hungry cities for the problem, but that is just another Farmer Lie.
The farmers around lie all the time about anything and everything. If a farmer’s mouth is open, he is probably lying. I used to have a positive opinion of farmers until I started living around a lot of them. I am not sure if this particular breed is especially retrograde, but these are some of the most disgusting human beings around here. I will give you some more examples of what sick monsters these farmers are in upcoming posts. For one thing, these farmers are highly reactionary, whereas in other regions such as Iowa, South Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Vermont, the farmers tend to be progressive people.
The truth is that agriculture uses the overwhelming majority of water in California – over 80%. Municipal use is very low.
Much of the drilling has been done by big financial firms which are now getting into farming. In other words, the big offenders here are Wall Street Banksters, not little Ma and Pa Kettle and their family farm down the road.
California has some of the stupidest and most insane (in other words, rightwing) water laws in the country. Basically it is the Wild West out here, no rules as far as water goes. Pump whatever you want and the Hell with everyone else. Even neighboring states like Arizona (much more rightwing than California) regulated groundwater drilling much more than California has.
But some farm groups are finally wising up to the need for some sort of regulation on groundwater pumping. They realize what few resource extraction capitalists realize – once you deplete the resource you are extracting, you are now making zero dollars off of your grazing, logging, fishing, trapping, mining or farming enterprise. They cut off their arm to save their hand. It makes no sense.
What do these few farmers realize? They have figured out that, duh, once you pump out all the groundwater (which we are right on track to do), guess how much groundwater will be left to grow those precious crops of yours? Zero gallons. Guess how much money every farmer is now making? Zero dollars. Stewardship is not simply the moral thing to do, it actually makes sense economically.
The contemptible farmers have always resisted any sensible regulations (you know, like the kind just about every other Western state has) on the ground of the usual rightwing “property rights” mantra.
