All dried up: California's record-breaking drought shows that Americans can no longer take water for granted What do we need to do to keep it flowing?

• Author: Smith, Patricia
• Position: ENVIRONMENT

Like most Americans, you probably don't give much thought to all the water you use. You drink it, you wash with it, you go swimming in it. And it's always there when you need it.

But in parts of California, the water has vanished. Residents can't take a shower, flush a toilet, rinse the dishes, or even sip a glass of water without reaching for a bottle or a bucket.

"You don't think of water as a privilege until you don't have it anymore," says Yolanda Serrato, whose home in East Porterville, about 150 miles north of Los Angeles, has been without tap water since her well dried up more than a year ago.

California is in its fourth year of extreme, record-breaking drought, and it's wreaking havoc on the state. Lakes and rivers have disappeared, thousands of acres of crops have withered, and suburban yards have gone brown--all because there isn't enough water to feed them.

The drought is affecting nine Western states, but California has been hardest hit (see map). That's because weather conditions in the Pacific Ocean for the past few years have prevented major storms--both rain and snow--from reaching California. The result is that the most populous state in the nation is now facing a crisis.

In April, Governor Jerry Brown imposed, for the first time ever, mandatory cutbacks in water use. Overall, residents and businesses will have to reduce their water usage by 25 percent.

"This is the new normal," Brown said, "and we'll have to learn to cope with it."

A drought is a period of unusually dry weather that causes water shortages. Periodic dry spells are nothing new for California or other parts of the nation. Three things have made this one much worse.

First, climate change has caused higher temperatures that have made the effects of the drought more severe. Normally, much of California's water comes from snow in the mountains, which melts gradually in the summer to feed streams and reservoirs. But higher temperatures mean most of the precipitation--and there hasn't been much--has fallen as rain that evaporates or runs off into the ocean.

Second, the demand for water has never been greater: California's population has more than doubled in the past 50 years to almost 39 million.

And third, the state's agriculture industry is using increasing amounts of water. California is one of the nation's breadbaskets: Its 78,000 farms provide 25 percent of the food Americans eat, including about half of our fruits and vegetables.

Acres Unplanted

Feeding 318 million Americans requires massive amounts of water (see chart, right). Since the state's rivers, lakes, and reservoirs are too low to supply the water that crops need, farmers are drilling wells--so many that scientists are worried about the supply of groundwater running out.

Farmers have also cut back on production, leaving hundreds of thousands of acres unplanted. If the drought goes on, we'll all feel its effects. For example, if the supply of grapes and strawberries declines and fewer make it to your supermarket, the price is likely to rise.

The underlying problem is that much of the region is essentially a desert: California has redirected massive amounts of water--largely from the Colorado River*--to supply the needs of its people, farms, factories, and lawns.

What does that mean for California's future? The state has always been a land of hopes and dreams, starting with prospectors seeking fortunes during the 1840s Gold Rush, later to those drawn by the glamour of Hollywood, and most recently by millennials in search of high-tech jobs in Silicon Valley. But California is now confronting fundamental questions about limits to its growth.

"Mother Nature didn't intend for 40 million people to live here," says Kevin Starr, a historian at the University of Southern California. "This is literally a culture that since the 1880s has progressively invented, invented, and reinvented itself. At what point does this invention begin to hit limits?" Across the state, people are feeling the effects of rising water prices and the mandatory cutbacks--although not equally, some complain.

In Compton, a working-class city in Southern California, Lillian Barrera has stopped watering her lawn and started serving her family dinner on paper plates so she doesn't need water to clean up.

"I try to save water," says Barrera, who works as a housekeeper in Beverly Hills and is frustrated by what she sees there. "In Beverly Hills, they have a big garden and run laundry all the time."

Statewide...