We all know about California's
four year drought and the problems it is causing for farmers and city dwellers alike. We've also heard about some of the extreme remedies being taken to try to maintain semblance of a status quo. One of the measures farmers are taking is pumping water from aquifers to replace rain and melting snowpack. The pumping is becoming so intense that the ground is sinking in areas where there is extreme pumping.
Reveal News has investigated the story:
Last summer, scientists recorded the worst sinking in at least 50 years. This summer, all-time records are expected across the state as thousands of miles of land in the Central Valley and elsewhere sink. But the extent of the problem and how much it will cost taxpayers to fix are part of the mystery of the state’s unfolding drought. No agency is tracking the sinking statewide, little public money has been put toward studying it and California allows agriculture businesses to keep crucial parts of their operations secret.
The cause is known: People are pulling unsustainable amounts of water out of underground aquifers, primarily for food production. With the water sucked out to irrigate crops, a practice that has accelerated during the drought, tens of thousands of square miles are deflating like a leaky air mattress, inch by inch
Groundwater now supplies about 60 percent of the state’s water, with the vast majority of that going to agriculture. Tens of thousands of groundwater pumps run day and night, sucking up about 5 percent of the state’s total electricity, according to a Reveal analysis of the increased pumping resulting from the historic drought. That’s an increase of 40 percent over normal years – or enough electricity to power every home in San Francisco for three years. The sinking is starting to destroy bridges, crack irrigation canals and twist highways across the state, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
In image above Joseph Poland of the U.S. Geological Survey used a utility pole to document where a farmer would have been standing in 1925, 1955 and where Poland was then standing in 1977 after land in the San Joaquin Valley had sunk nearly 30 feet. Credit: U.S. Geological Survey
my bold
The wall of a canal (left) cracks as the earth around it sinks. The top of a well (right) is pushed up and out of the ground as the ground around it sinks.
Bridges are sinking and canals are cracking. I've written about remedies to California's water crisis
here. The culprit is agriculture and California needs to reconsider it's crop mix. 47% of
California's water goes to livestock and dairy production, with 15% of that amount going just to
raise alfalfa for livestock feed much of which is exported.