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Water Bill Debt Has Hit Valley Families Hard. Help Could Be Coming for Some – But Not All

/in , /by /The Fresno Beeby Danielle Bergstrom

More than 140 water districts in the central San Joaquin Valley have yet to apply for state water debt relief, leaving thousands of customers susceptible to water shutoffs after the state’s moratorium expires on Dec. 31. The deadline to apply is Monday at 5 p.m. California residents who fell behind on paying their water bills during the pandemic are protected from having their water shut off through the end of the year.

 

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Opinion: Drought Has Big Impacts on California Agriculture

/in , , /by /CalMattersby Dan Walters

As California experiences a second year of drought, with no end in sight, the effects on California’s largest-in-the-nation agricultural industry are profound and perhaps permanent.

State and federal water agencies have cut deliveries to some farmers to zero while others, thanks to water rights dating back more than a century, still have access to water.

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Four San Joaquin Valley Groundwater Plans Deemed Inadequate

/in , , /by /CalMatterby Rachel Becker

State officials warn some of the state’s most powerful and largest agricultural districts that their plans fail to address how over-pumping could harm local communities’ drinking water supplies.

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Opinion: Will California Step Up on Water?

/in , , /by /Bakersfield.comby Jason Giannelli

California is experiencing a devastating water crisis, by some accounts the worst in the last 1,200 years. Drought is hammering the two primary water delivery systems on which millions of Californians rely — the Colorado River and the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Most of the state — and especially the south San Joaquin Valley and Kern County — is suffering badly. Extensive planning, and solid investments funded by large coffers, have enabled large portions of Southern California to get through 2021 without rationing. But the experience here in the Central Valley is far different. Thousands of acres fallowed. Jobs lost and hours cut. Multiple cities with water restrictions. Wells running dry. These disparate outcomes are highlighting the current inequalities in drought preparedness and a broken system. There is also the sobering reality that Southern Californians may too be thirsty again soon.

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Family Farms Struggling as California Drought Worsens: ‘We Haven’t Faced Anything Like This’

/in , , /by /The Fresno Beeby Nadia Lopez

Amid this year’s severe drought, Hmong farmer June Moua had to leave a portion of her 10-acre plot of land in eastern Fresno County dry and fallow. Large sections of the rows of crops she did plant, including bunches of water-intensive greens, have wilted and shriveled into crunchy bits of brown foliage. Her kale and bok choy are casualties of the central San Joaquin Valley’s dwindling water supply. Declining groundwater levels have made it harder for her to pump water from her well into her fields.

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Opinion: Water Markets Can Help Bring California’s Groundwater Into Balance

/in , , /by /CalMattersby Andrew Ayres and Ellen Hanak

The San Joaquin Valley town of Corcoran is sinking. It’s fallen as much as 11.5 feet in some places, damaging drinking wells, changing the town’s flood zones and undermining critical infrastructure. The story is so dramatic that the New York Times covered it recently. The culprit here, though, is no ordinary villain – it’s the overpumping of groundwater.

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Water Transfers Helped Farmers Survive This Year. Now, All Eyes Are on the Coming Water Year

/in , , /by /SJV Waterby Jesse Vad

Water transfers, trades and sales doubled this year as drought left San Joaquin Valley farmers scrambling for supplies.

“This has been kind of an exceptional year for transfers,” said Sam Boland-Brien, program manager at the State Water Resources Control Board’s Division of Water Rights. Boland-Brien said he’s seen about twice the amount of transfers this year compared to an average water year.

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California Drought Takes Toll on World’s Top Almond Producer

/in , , /by /AP Newsby Terence Chea

As temperatures recently reached triple digits, farmer Joe Del Bosque inspected the almonds in his parched orchard in California’s agriculture-rich San Joaquin Valley, where a deepening drought threatens one of the state’s most profitable crops.

Del Bosque doesn’t have enough water to properly irrigate his almond orchards, so he’s practicing “deficit irrigation” — providing less water than the trees need. He left a third of his farmland unplanted to save water for the nuts. And he may pull out 100 of his 600 acres (243 hectares) of almond trees after the late summer harvest — years earlier than planned.

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California Water District Pays Millions Over ‘Unauthorized Diversion’ From Federal Canals

/in , /by /The Sacramento Beeby Dale Kasler

An obscure farm-irrigation agency in the San Joaquin Valley, the Panoche Water District has been struggling with a monumental scandal the past three years, with top officials under criminal indictment for embezzling public funds and illegally dumping toxic waste.

It turns out the district has also been allegedly taking water from the federal government.

Earlier this year Panoche agreed to pay the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation nearly $7.5 million to compensate for “unauthorized diversion of water” from two federal canals, according to a settlement agreement obtained by The Bee.

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Report: Groundwater Overhaul Could Threaten Drinking Water Of More Than A Million Valley Residents

/in , /by /KVPRby Kerry Klein

As drought settles over the San Joaquin Valley, a new report warns of other circumstances that could result in entire communities losing drinking water. More than a million Valley residents could lose their public water in coming decades under the sweeping groundwater legislation known as the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), according to the paper published earlier this month by the non-profit Pacific Institute. Signed into law in 2014, SGMA aims over the next two decades to reduce California’s groundwater deficit by balancing water pumped out of the ground with the amount replenished.

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