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As wells continue to fail, with 996 already reported, many residents of East Porterville depend almost exclusively on bottled water for getting by.
Contrary to popular belief, small towns and farms are not always as self-reliant as some think they are. In fact, many times it’s the lack of infrastructure and investment that triggers the problems in the first place, while larger cities with more resources and more people to provide for fare better:
Porterville was developed with a municipal water system hooked to a deep, industrial-grade well. Residents of Porterville depend on groundwater as much as their neighbors to the east, but because the larger city has infrastructure to pump from a deep aqueduct, taps in Porterville haven’t gone dry.FerFAL
The lack of public infrastructure in East Porterville is part of what makes the “disaster” so difficult to mitigate: to get federal cash, a disaster must impact public infrastructure. In East Porterville, it’s largely impoverished farm workers bearing the brunt of the drought.
“This is a kind of the-poor-get-poorer situation,” said Lockman. “It really is just like after a hurricane, and you still have a roof over your head but you can’t flush the toilet, you don’t have water.”
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/20/east-porterville-california-drought-bottled-water-showers-toilets
Fernando “FerFAL” Aguirre is the author of “The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse” and “Bugging Out and Relocating: When Staying is not an Option”.
4 comments:
The agricultural industry in California was never sustainable. It might not be thought so 70 years ago, a whole lifetime, but aquifers are not infinite, especially in a desert under unrelenting farming.
It doesn't help that farmers who use 80-85% of the water only pay about 10% the cost of the water. Water was so cheap they were growing rice for christ sake! If the free market were allowed to work they would pay the fair price and conserve.
For what it's worth agriculture uses 40% of the water. 50% of the water is used by the environmentalist and most of that is simply flushed down the river tosave the snail darter or something similar. If you want to fix a problem you have to define it honestly. California's problem as it relates to water is the radical environmentalists.
Agricultural water is still essentially free out West.
And in California that cheap water is used to grow water-thirsty luxury crops like almonds.
Sooner rather than later a federal lawsuit by residential customers will end the old 'allotment' method of distributing water out West.
And those farmers that can grow crops using drip-irrigation will be the winners.
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