Free Republic

Amid a megadrought plaguing the American West, more rural communities are losing access to groundwater as heavy pumping depletes underground aquifers that aren’t being replenished by rain and snow.

Update, 7:15 p.m. Thursday: The situation surrounding the damaged spillway at Oroville Dam has escalated into a crisis, with state water managers hoping they can dump enough water down the badly compromised structure to prevent the state’s second-largest reservoir from pouring over an emergency release point that has never been used before. Flow rates down the collapsing spillway were increased late Thursday morning to 35,000 cubic feet per second. The result was a spectacle of churning mud and water and the further damage to the concrete structure. [snip] Officials at the media briefing repeated further reassurances that the integrity of...

FOLSOM LAKE (CBS13) — A Northern California reservoir ran dry overnight, killing thousands of fish and leaving residents looking for answers. While a $3.5 million drought safety net at Folsom Lake finishes, a lake in another part of the state is left high and dry. Thousands of fish lay dead in what used to be Mountain Meadows reservoir also known as Walker Lake, a popular fishing hole just west of Susanville. “Everywhere that you see that’s wet, there was water,” said resident Eddie Bauer. RELATED: California Drought Has More Insects Swarming Toward Homes Residents say people were fishing on the...

The air in the San Joaquin Valley this late-June is, of course, hot and dry, but also dustier and more full of particulates than usual. This year a strange flu reached epidemic proportions. I say strange, because after the initial viral symptoms subsided, one’s cough still lingered for weeks and even months. Antibiotics did not seem to faze it. Allergy clinics were full. Almost every valley resident notices that when orchards and vineyards are less watered, when row cropland lies fallow, when lawns die and blow away, when highway landscaping dries up, nature takes over and the air becomes even...

The plain truth is: no commerce, no food, no freedom Civilization-gutting law has been on the books for decades. Over the last 10 to 20 years they have been molded into enforceable regulation that eviscerates gains made in Western living standards. This is the product of legislation that was purportedly enacted with some benevolent intent, but ambiguous language left the door open to divert the purpose for other results. In the case of environmental legislation, such as the Environmental Protection Act (1970), Endangered Species Act (1973), Clean Air Act (1970), Clean Water Act (1972) and now the Highway Beautification Act...

Leftist statists that run California refuse to prepare for drought conditions, and environmentalists block all efforts to create more reservoirs If Barack Obama can bypass his legislature, and seize executive control like a dictator at the national level, California Governor Jerry Brown has determined he can do the same at the state level. The liberal left blames Pat Brown, the California governor that was Jerry Brown’s father, for the water crisis California faces by determining it was Pat Brown’s decision to bring water to Southern California which encouraged millions upon millions to come to Southern California, which in turn created...

Environment - Not Farmers Using 80% of California's Water ? Does the California Citrus Mutual have a point? In a Press Release - they also claim "The only sector that has been "exempt" from water reductions is, in fact, the largest user of water - the environment. " " For a second consecutive year farmers in the Central Valley will receive a zero percent allocation of surface water from the Central Valley Project. Citrus growers in the Friant Service Area are among the most severely impacted. " "As growers grapple with another year of no water, more and more acreage...

Almonds alone use about 10 percent of California’s total water supply each year. That’s nuts. But almonds are also the state’s most lucrative exported agricultural product, with California producing 80 percent of the world’s supply. Alfalfa hay requires even more water, about 15 percent of the state’s supply. About 70 percent of alfalfa grown in California is used in dairies, and a good portion of the rest is exported to land-poor Asian countries like Japan. Yep, that’s right: In the middle of a drought, farmers are shipping fresh hay across the Pacific Ocean. The water that’s locked up in exported...

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — Without a lot more rain and snow, many California farmers caught in the state's drought can expect to receive no irrigation water this year from a vast system of rivers, canals and reservoirs interlacing the state, federal officials announced Friday. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released its first outlook of the year, saying that the agency will continue to monitor rain and snow fall, but the grim levels so far prove that the state is in the throes of one of its driest periods in recorded history. Farmers who rely on the federally run Central Valley...