California's drought denial

For decades, California has been living up an image of beautiful sunshine, Hollywood glamor, fast-sprouting developments, and fruitful farmlands.

All the while, in 50 years California’s population has doubled to 38.8 million, and so has its thirst for water. Despite their desert climate, cities like Los Angeles and San Diego have flaunted the lifestyle of an oasis. Now that nature-defying illusion is bursting as the state enters its fourth consecutive year of drought—with no end in sight.

On April 1, Gov. Jerry Brown mandated a statewide restriction on urban water use, the first in California’s history. “People should realize we are in a new era,” Brown declared, standing on a patch of dry grass in the Sierra Nevada, which should have been covered in 5 to 6 feet of snow—water-storing snowpack that is crucial for California’s dry summer months.

Brown’s unprecedented water ration forces the state’s 400 local water supply agencies to slash use by 25 percent compared to 2013 levels. Local water providers must decide how to enforce the executive order on residents and businesses—by raising rates or mandating cutbacks.

But a recent drive around Los Angeles reflects a city still living a green dream. On university campuses, fountains continue to burble. The 24-hour spas in Koreatown still fill large hot plunge pools and allow high-pressure showerheads. Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, the resting place of many celebrities, still waters over 200 acres of fresh-mowed grass, ponds, brooks, and gardens. Houses, condos, and churches in affluent neighborhoods boast emerald lawns and blooming flowers.

Among rows of manicured lawns in Santa Monica, a Spanish-style house stands out with its upturned lawn and knee-high piles of earth. Michael Mathers, a semiretired music professor, spent two hours under the hot sun raking out the grass from his front yard. He plans to replace it with mulch and desert plants. Resting on his rake with dirt clinging onto his arm hair, Mathers worried about the next generation: “I don’t think many neighbors are concerned about the long-term consequence of this drought. It’s unfortunate that people tend not to think about such things unless it’s directly affecting them. By then, it’s too late.”

Meanwhile, California’s farmers have been feeling the drought for years. The roads entering the sprawling agricultural fields of Central Valley, which yields a third of America’s produce, are dotted with apocalyptic signs:

“No water, no food, no jobs.”

“Pray for rain.”

“Jack and Jill went up the hill, and came down with no water.”

Brown’s executive order does not include farms, an omission that angered critics who cite statistics that agriculture uses 80 percent of California’s developed water supply. But farmers and some water experts argue that agriculture is already suffering crippling cutbacks in their water allocations.

Almond and pistachio farmer Brad Gleason, for example, hasn’t received a drop of his promised water allocation for two years. He had to borrow $600,000 from the bank to drill wells for groundwater, a supply that’s also depleted.

Unemployment among farmworkers is rising, and so is anxiety as farmers watch yet another neighbor fallow once-prospering fields—altogether 400,000 idle acres and $2 billion lost in 2014—and wonder when their time will come.

“The drought has been harrowing,” said Dawn Birch, a fruit and vegetable farmer for 27 years in Three Rivers, named after the three Kaweah River tributaries that have since dried up. Her husband moved to California from New York in 1989 to own an organic farm. Today, he’s taking on other jobs to make ends meet.

To conserve water, the Birches have abandoned 100 apple trees and turned to less thirsty vegetables such as potatoes, baby arugula, stinging nettles, and mustard. They’ve jettisoned overhead sprinklers for drip irrigation and deepened their holding pond, which Birch says grants them six more weeks of water—“but after it runs out, then what?”

It’s a grim future, and she’s just one farmer trying to survive: “You might cut back on water, but your neighbor might not. It boils down to: Who’s going to give up their family legacy farm first?”