Porta-potties are delivered the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2014 at Eagle’s Nest Resort in Porterville, Calif., because the well went dry.

Porta-potties are popping up outside homes. Drinking water is being trucked in from faraway places. Girl Scouts are setting up collection points for residents to donate bottled water.

This is the reality of life in East Porterville – a central California town where the wells are beginning to run dry. Gripped by a severe drought, water sources for residents aren’t replenishing, and that spells big problems for the future.

In the Central Valley town of roughly 7,000 residents, some 290 families say their wells are already out of water. The town mostly consists of poor, Hispanic residents – people who simply can’t afford another setback. Elsewhere in Tulare County, many other homes are suffering dry wells, too, and the problem has expanded sporadically all over the Central Valley, though the data isn’t quite as precise […]