As many as 2 million rural Californians rely on household wells for their water, says NPR. “Some of those people are among the hardest hit by the state’s severe drought, as wells across the state’s Central Valley farm belt start to go dry.” There are state and federal grants to help small towns drill deeper wells but almost no public money is available for private property owners whose wells are failing. Farm counties have issued a record number of permits to growers who want to drill wells to keep their crops watered. The headline on the story is, “As their wells go dry, California residents blame thirsty farms.”
The Guardian says sports fields also are drying up as water restrictions grow tighter in its latest story with the Food & Environment Reporting Network. It says, “School and college sports are one of the latest casualties of a relentless drought that has left 95% of the state suffering severe to exceptional drought conditions. State and federal water-delivery systems have drastically cut supplies to agriculture, which typically consumes 80% of California’s water supply. That’s spurred food growers in the Central Valley into an unregulated frenzy of drilling private wells to tap into groundwater aquifers, even as some small communities are running out of drinking water.