Farmland near Corcoran in the southern San Joaquin Valley sank 13 inches in just eight months last year. To the north, near El Nido, the land surface dropped about 10 inches.
Along a major canal near Los Banos, the ground has sunk so much that the concrete sides cracked. Nearby, a bridge over another canal had dropped so low it had to be demolished and replaced with a higher structure.
Groundwater over-pumping is causing some parts of the San Joaquin Valley to sink faster than ever, according to a NASA report released Wednesday.
The survey dramatically documents the rising toll the prolonged drought is taking on the Central Valley, where some federal irrigation deliveries have been cut to zero, domestic wells have run dry and growers are drawing down portions of the valley’s vast aquifer to historic low
To keep their fields green, they have drilled new and deeper wells and ramped up withdrawals, worsening the valley’s historic problem of land subsidence and depleting their water savings account for future droughts.
The sinking is so subtle that it is imperceptible on the ground, save […]
Wells > 1000 feet deep are going dry. It took thousands, maybe millions of years to accumulate that water. The southern part of the central valley gets about 6″ of rain in a normal year- that’s a desert. But they insist on growing water-intensive crops and the California aqueducts are not covered- the Roman aqueducts were. If we have a major El Nino most of that water will run off rather than being harvested.
It seems as if the regulations to stop the problem should be immediate, not in two decades. They better get serious and do something now. Changes in the agricultural consumption need to be reconsidered based on the facts which have already shown how desperate the changes are needed NOW. It is time for action, not procrastination.