California Drought Research Paper

On March 27, 2014, Wade Graham of the San Francisco Chronicle reported “The Water Revolution California needs.” California is having a severe drought. Wade Graham tells his readers that California is in a serious water crisis. The state of California needs to make strict changes to how water is being distributed amongst farmers and residents. Before all of California’s ecological system is destroyed. Wade Graham believes that water should be priced higher; that way people aren’t wasting water. Water is a limited resource that should never be wasted, and is probably California’s most valuable resource. Unfortunately, many people waste water; instead of conserve water especially when we live in the state of California where we are subject to

After more than five years of drought in California, we are just now beginning to see an above-average precipitation,and this is leaving many to ask, "is the drought over?" This last drought was one of the worsts droughts California has experienced in history and it left many panicked and trying to come up with solutions. “Governor Jerry Brown even made one of the first cutback to farmers ' water rights since 1977, and ordered cities and towns to cut water use by as much as 36 percent ” (Zamora,et al..) Overall California has 39 million residents and on top of that California also grows an unbelievable amount of

Californians are being heavily fined for using a certain amount of water a month, which impacts the daily lives of everyone. Water is a natural resource that is crucial to everyone’s survival. Whether if it’s being used for cooking, showering, gardening, washing your car or just simply drinking purposes; water is a necessity for everyone. Though the bill has not yet been passed by congress and officially has not become a law, the issue still remains on the table. The drought in California has taken a massive toll on agriculture, the environment and infrastructure. The drought is on its route to damage California’s climate change. In the past three consecutive years the average rain fall has drastically decreased, and the winter temperatures have increased. Since majority of California’s water comes from the Western Rocky Mountains, the water supply there is dropping resulting in more strict laws and regulations on how much water can be consumed by the average

Have you thought about the importance of water recently? Water provides many things to people, from green lawns to nutritious food. An event that may have spurred these thoughts is the drought in California. They are struggling because there is simply not enough water in California to go around for all of its uses. Measures have been taken to conserve water, but cutbacks have been made on everything, even the giant industry of California agriculture. More water should be devoted to agricultural uses instead of residential uses in California for the following reasons:

Many different government campaigns have been created to educate the resident of California about the seriousness of this drought. The Save Our Water Campaign is a government campaign to reach out to residents in order to teach them how to conserve water. This campaign also try’s to convince people to forget about their green laws and focus on clean water (Save, 2015). Incentive programs have also been created for different counties in California. These incentive programs range from up to a 50 dollar reward for replacing a regular toilet for a high efficiency toilet all the way to replacing your entire grass or water dependent lawn to something that doesn’t need water for as much as 10 thousand dollars (Rebates, 2015). California’s Governor Jerry Brown has also mandated water cuts by 25 percent. Setting restrictions on residential water usage and giving out fines or penalties to residents who disobey. Another executive order given by Governor Jerry Brown is that the Department of Water Resources has to replace 50 million square feet of grass with fake grass, dirt, or pavement. There have also been rewards given to people who replace their grass lawns with other types of landscape (California,

What if you had no water to bathe, wash dishes, or even drink? This is the future we face here in California if the state doesn’t act to conserve our water and ensure that it is wasted as little as possible. California is in its 3rd year of a debilitating drought, and many citizens, especially farmers are dangerously tapping more into an nonrenewable resource: groundwater. In light of the severity of current and future problems that have or will result from the depletion of the fast-emptying subterranean reserves of water, California’s Legislature has introduced a new bill designed to limit and control the use of groundwater, a decision that all other western states have already made. I believe that this new bill is necessary to prevent California

Due to the lack of rain in the past few years, and particularly in the last few months, California faces severe drought. This is the worst drought in more than one hundred years. The impact of California drought affects community, agriculture, organic ranchers, and dairy farmers. Because of these facts, the United States must rethink the way it uses water. Californians alone are asked to reduce their water usage by twenty percent to prevent water waste.

The low of water affect the most important supply of agriculture in the U.S. California agriculture produce more than 90% of food to the United States. The drought causes a massive economic problem from two directions. Katie Fehrenbacher from The Guardian states that agriculture industry has lost $1.5bn and more than 17,000 seasonal job. That statistic shows that the drought causes the agriculture a huge loss of money and farmers do not have jobs anymore. As a result the prices of food will rise and the cost of water will decrease. Since 2011 when the draught begun no one take a position or talk about it as a real problem they did not start to think about a real solutions to solve the problem until now. The mandatory cut of using water is a temporary solution the water will not last for more than one year. Reduce agriculture will hit the economy of the state and cause many problems because the lack of jobs. The number of Crimes will rise in the areas that suffer mostly from draught; people cannot find food or water. Farmers digging for water underground which increase the consumption of the underground water by 40%. Also, as far they go underground the amount of salt in water increase,

Californians have been struggling with trying to conserve our water for over three years. Twenty-Thirteen was our driest year in many populated areas in California, and it doesn't seem to be changing any time soon, unless we all act now. In twenty-thirteen, Los Angeles and Sacramento, went down on record as the driest two cities in California. A drought is when area of land scarcely drop rain. Droughts are caused from climate changes and lack of precipitation, resulting in a shortage of water. Water is vital for all living things and is the essential component of all life. This ongoing drought has drastically affected the state of California. The long-term change in climate is truly affecting California. Our water reservations are lower than

California can meet their water needs by using this precious resource much more efficiently than they are presently doing. California has been raising sustainable awareness by adding bulb-lit freeway signs every 10 miles along California Interstate 5 that say “Serious drought, help save water”, they have also printed placards that are posted in sparsely blooming almond and cherry groves, asparagus fields, and mile upon mile of empty dry cracked or tilled earth that warn people to use less water. As California continues to grow, this puts more pressure on their limited water supplies. California needs to figure out a way to manage their groundwater basins to secure the future of agriculture life.

California's future will be heavily impacted by this drought if things don’t change. Everything from its economy, to the people, to the physical land itself, is being threatened. According to American Farmland Trust, one eighth of the nation’s agricultural production comes from California: a third of the nation’s vegetables, and almost two thirds of the nation’s fruits and nuts. Agriculture is an enormous industry and is occasionally the only industry in certain parts of the state that is going through a severe drought. It’s impossible to grow crops without water, and it’s impossible to make money from crops that never grew, so in many areas the economy would collapse without sufficient water. American Farmland Trust

In recent years, California’s water shortage has been an issue and in 2014 an alarming driest historical year has impacted the state in different ways. Because of the lack of rainfall and snow, California’s reservoirs are running insignificant water basins below their capacity. While water shortages are experienced slowly and throughout a length of time, the harshest impacts are noticeable in areas that produce California’s food where wells are used as resource for water in agriculture, and residential areas. Though, most agree the drought is an issue some do not agree. To understand the circumstances, this paper will look at the drought’s impacts on California’s economy for agricultural, famers, and consumers. Also, this written work will examine the environmental consequences of surface water obtainability, and the areas that have encounter the most devastating affects. For most, this paper will examine the allocations of the governor’s drought declaration, and the strategies used by residents to conserver water.

“California’s water future is increasingly uncertain,” says Heather Cooley, in her article California Needs Better Water Management and Pricing Policies (Source A). Agriculture uses 80 percent of California’s constrained water supply and proves to be the primary source of California’s drought. There has been no permanent and largely successful conservation effort to save water. However, with a reformed water management and conservation system, California’s largest industry, agriculture, can thrive while saving water at the same time.

When addressing the California drought Governor Brown said, “I’ve declared this a state of emergency and I’m calling all Californians to conserve water in every way possible.” This really put into perspective how severe the drought had become. As of now the drought has been labeled as the worst drought in our history. Being forced into a State Of Emergency means the government has required citizens to change their behavior/lifestyle from what it was in order to cope with an issue at hand. The government has also been forced to follow therewith emergency plans as the drought seems to not be getting better. The drought has been caused by one main factor. That factor being climate change. And climate change has resulted in the mountain snowpack

An issue of this magnitude is clear to see by many. Although, there are people who choose to believe that humans do not have an impact on the environment’s drastic changes, there are people who do choose to see our actions have led to this situation. Adam Sobel of CNN believes that the population of California has played some sort of a role in the drought they are experiencing. Sobel states that the human-induced climate change has increased the risk that a drought will occur, and it also forces the public to become aware of how we treat the environment. He points out that this is the first time in the state’s history that there has been a mandatory statewide restriction of water use. The system set in place for water consumption in the driest areas of the country does not make sense, and the restriction of water is the biggest acknowledgement of the issue. Sobel makes it clear that our contribution to climate change is not based on one single event attribution, but on statistics of large sets of weather events. This argument is important, because it reinforces the idea that we should be motivated to discover and implement better ways to control our water consumption, as well as prevent catastrophic flooding in areas that have a great chance of extreme weather events.