California crippling drought deepens
August 1, 2014
California drought deepens with areas of exceptional drought going from 36 percent of the state last week to 58 percent of the state this week.
The same week that California began handing at fines for wasting water, the state deemed more areas as having extreme drought meaning a shortage of water in reservoirs and widespread crop losses. Locally, farmers are cutting back their avocado trees and in the Central Valley some farmers are bulldozing citrus orchards.
“Increasingly, drought indicators point to the fact that conditions are not appreciably better in northern California than in central and southern sections of the state,” according to the U.S. Department of agriculture website. “In addition, mounting evidence from reservoir levels, river gauges, ground water observations, and socio-economic impacts warrant a further expansion of exceptional drought into northern California.”
The drought report, released Thursday by the National Drought Mitigation Center, warned that bone-dry conditions have now spread farther into Northern California. Overall, the state is “short more than one year’s worth of reservoir water, or 11.6 million acre-feet, for this time of year,” the report said.
The comments below represent the opinion of the writer and do not represent the views or policies of CalCoastNews.com. Please address the Policies, events and arguments, not the person. Constructive debate is good; mockery, taunting, and name calling is not. Comment Guidelines