Some of America's biggest vegetable growers fought for water. Then the water ran out

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For years, powerful farmers in California's Central Valley fought for more water from the state's rivers. Now some are changing course, because there's no more water to be found.

— the sprawling network of waterways that empties into the San Francisco Bay.

In 2012, after Woolf was appointed to a vacant seat on the Westlands board, she tried unsuccessfully to get Westlands to sit down with other groups, including environmentalists, to explore possible compromises. She ended up butting heads with Tom Birmingham, partly over policies and partly over Birmingham's personal style."He's an authoritarian, even a dictator," Woolf says with a laugh."It's his show." Birmingham declined to be interviewed for this story.

Westlands farmers had stayed in business by pumping enormous amounts of groundwater from shrinking aquifers. But a new California law, the"I think this farming community is really struggling at this point," says, whose family grows vegetables and almonds near Five Points."There are a lot of people who are kind of looking at the walls, wondering what they are going to do."

What's worse, the water comes in bursts. In 2017, when rain drenched California, Westlands actually turned away potential water deliveries because no growers wanted it. Other years, the district gets no water at all, except for what it can buy on the open market at exorbitant prices. Such drastic fluctuations in water availability have been especially tough on growers with almond trees that require water every year just to stay alive.

 

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Dan there needs to be discussions about the fact the vast majority, 80% of Colorado river water goes to farming, mostly desert farms. “Pools and lawns”, except Tucson uses the same amount of water as it did in the 1980s with double the population now. ColoradoRiver

Our nations fishermen spent decades robbing Peter to pay Paul and now they're fucked. Apparently, same story with our farmers.

We will welcome your company or industry to South Arkansas. Plenty of water.

Better start building water filtration stations quickly to filter water from the ocean.

This is why you need a desalination plant Cali. Ijs

Because the leftist want silverfish to thrive, whilst billions of dollars in potential economic output in the valley dies. These people hate humanity. It has nothing to do with the environment, or anything else.

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