All this week, KCBS Radio is taking a look at California’s emerging drought crisis. Part One looked at how the dry conditions are affecting one region of the Bay Area. In Part Two, Matt Bigler reports on how the severe lack of water is impacting the state’s agriculture industry and the people who rely on it.
In the past year, California's Central Valley has suffered from a COVID-19 crisis and now faces a drought crisis.
Misty Vasques could be the poster child for this double disaster: last October she got sick with COVID-19 along with 15 other members of her family in Visalia.
“I had issues with my lungs for quite some time, and about two and a half months afterwards I noticed I was losing a lot of hair.”
Then in December, just as Misty was recovering, she lost her water when the 112-foot well that is her home’s only source of water went dry.
“My husband said when it rains it pours, and I said that’s absolutely right.”
She says the lack of water has made simple tasks much more difficult.
“Trying to fill up toilets with water jugs, trying to sponge bath or find a relative that will let us come shower,” are among the biggest difficulties, she said.
In recent years, hundreds of residential and farm wells in the Central Valley have dried up due to drought and decades of over-pumping groundwater.
Tricia Stever Blattler is the Executive Director of the Tulare County Farm Bureau and says that California’s $50 billion agriculture industry all depends on water.
“Many people will think California is mostly known for Silicon Valley or Hollywood entertainment – California is really an agricultural state,” she said.
But with supply severely limited because of the drought, fruit and nut growers will have only enough to keep trees alive.
“This year’s drought might mean that the next year’s crop - or next two years’ crop - is stressed or smaller or less fertile.”
That could mean higher prices at the grocery store.
The lack of water isn’t just hurting growers. Cattle have less feed because of the lack of rainfall, and rancher John Guthrie says they are also in survival mode.
“You just have to survive with the feed that you have this year in order to make it through to the next season, which, hopefully we'll have a better one.”
Farmers had pleaded with Gov. Gavin Newsom to declare a drought emergency in the Central Valley, which he now has, in order to loosen environmental restrictions and freeing up more reservoir water.
Meanwhile Misty Vasquez and her family are surviving; like many Central Valley residents with dry wells, she qualified for a 2,000-gallon water tank.
“They come out once a week, fill us up, and we’re able to have water for the house.”
But she says the tank is just another in a series of short-term solutions to the Valley’s ongoing water problems.
“Ag and farming is like the lifeblood of this area. And we need water, and we need the governor and everyone else to get on board and figure out a way to get us water.”
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