Circle Of Blue | By Brett Walton | GPE – July 07, 2017:
Some wells gurgle and hiss before they die. Others expire with a puff of sand. Either way, the result is the same: no more running water.
Report From Summer 2015: The rate of drinking well failures is rising again in California, as the state’s drought emergency begins a hot, unpleasant summer. Thousands of residents, most of whom live in the Central Valley, the nation’s agricultural powerhouse, live without working faucets and showers. For the most unfortunate, wells dried up more than 18 months ago.
“It’s devastating and depressing,” Jenny Rempel, communications coordinator for the Community Water Center, a drinking water nonprofit working in the Central Valley, told Circle of Blue.
In the last three weeks, residents of Tulare County reported 105 well failures, with each week’s total higher than the last. Tulare, a farm county the size of Connecticut, is the center of the state’s drinking water crisis. California officials counted 1,908 dry wells in the state as of June 18 that affected 9,540 people. Seven out of 10 dry wells are in Tulare County. Nearly four out of 10 are in a single town: East Porterville.
County officials expect the number to increase in the coming months. Groundwater basins, already depleted from voracious pumping during the four-year drought, are low. They absorbed little water during the historically dry winter, when the Sierra Nevada snowpack was the smallest ever measured. Summer also begins the irrigation season, and farm demand will lower water tables even further.
“As it gets hotter and summer is in full effect, we expect to see more wells going dry,” Melissa Withnell, Tulare County spokeswoman, told Circle of Blue.
To read full article – please click here.
