The Importance Of Water In California

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Picture a pickup truck barreling down a dusty road, it soon makes it’s way into a neighborhood. The driver parks at the end of a road where families begin to come towards the truck, having stayed in the shadows seeing as there are no clouds in the sky that provide relief from the sun. Kids line up with their parents as those who were in the truck start passing out packs of water bottles. This scene doesn’t take place in a desert in some impoverished third world country. In reality, you would be able to travel a couple of miles and find yourself where those who live in these communities find work in; lush farms filled with fields of flowering trees and growing vines full of produce located in the Central Valley of California, the Fruit and Vegetable …show more content…
You have your deserts, your temperate and mediterranean climates, and your snow covered mountains. As such, it makes sense that water is not equally distributed due to the ranging climate zones. 75% of rainfall in California happens above Sacramento, while the same percentage of 75% accounts for the total demand south of Sacramento(. This is because there is more population south of our capital. In addition there is nutrient rich soil located in the Central Valley which has high agricultural productivity but no constant source of water to grow plants. To get around this problem the state has multiple efforts that redirect water from where it falls and is stored to where it can be put to use. Two major ones mentioned earlier are the State Water Project and Central Valley Project. It is through this infrastructure that California has grown. Water in California has always been an important factor in the growth of population and industry, and with the growth of need, and through the years it has become more and more complicated. One first example of water history is the Californian rivers that allowed miners to find gold and inspire the wave of people to move to California. This is a perfect case of the complications that water allocation and management tends to have. Although this water helped bring wealth and people to California, the mining of gold and other minerals often had negative effects on water supply such as contaminating water supplies with toxic chemicals. Water has not only been complicated in pollutant sources, but also in ownership. The California State Water Project and Central Valley Project both receive water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. As outlined in Chapter 8, “Defining and Contesting Environmental Justice: Socio-natures and the Politics of Scale in the Delta” of the book Spaces of
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