"He still doesn't want to believe that the ground is out of water"

[phantom power]

During a week when the temperature reached 106, Johnson drove her purple PT Cruiser past "Beware of dog" signs and up side roads that looked long-deserted. She found mobile homes hidden behind other buildings. She said to her newfound neighbors, "Hi. Do you have water?"

Again and again, the answer was no.

When Johnson's well ran dry in June, she and her husband, Howard, had no idea they were part of something bigger.

"I'd heard 'California drought!' on the news," she said. "But I guess I was just oblivious to how bad it had gotten."

At the local gas station where everyone stops for a cold soda, Johnson tuned in to the conversations.

"It was all, 'So-and-so's well ran dry,'" she said.

No public agency was keeping track. Until this week, California was the only Western state that didn't regulate groundwater, including an estimated 600,000 private, domestic wells mostly in more rural regions such as the Central Valley. Groundwater levels here have plunged by 60 feet or more in some spots, and tens of thousands of wells are in danger.

http://www.latimes.com/local/great-reads/la-me-c1-east-porterville-20140918-story.html#page=1

[GliderGuider]

1. This isn't your grandfather's Dust Bowl...

Getting whacked upside the head with a clue-by-four can hurt.

[msongs]

2. so they sucked up all the water and now they are suddenly concerned. hmmm nt

[NYC_SKP]

4. We WILL start to meter and charge for water, and then a bunch of people will gripe.

Mark my words.

Metering is coming, and soon, and then as with SmartMeters for electric utilities, we'll hear the outrage from all sides of the political spectrum.

I think 50 millions is a good number.

[procon]

3. agribusiness wastes huge quantities of water

Around this California desert here, out of town growers come in for one season, lease massive tracks of land to farm using flood irrigation methods because it requires minimal expenses for labor and equipment. They use portable diesel powered water pumps mounted on trailers that are driven from field to field where they hook up to an existing well casing and start pumping until a gigantic 640 acre section is covered with about 6 inches of water. This is repeated every 3 or 4 days, and of course the water always escapes the makeshift perimeter berms to flood roads or just run off into the desert to grow a spectacular crop of 6 ft tall tumbleweeds.