Water Source for Almonds in California May Run Dry (NYTimes)

[KamaAina]

1. Westlands AGAIN?!

This is the area of the Central Valley marked on early maps as "desert". And yet people thought it was a good idea to grow thirsty crops like almonds, as well as lettuce (which should come from the wetter Salinas Valley over the Coast Range) and cotton (which should come from the much wetter South). Oh, and rice, which basically has its own special water district that covers two counties in the Sacramento Valley, which locked up its water rights just after Gold Rush days.

Herein lies the problem: Westlands is at the bottom of the water food chain, behind private rights (an even bigger deal in SoCal, including Kern County (Bakersfield and vicinity)), districts like the one in rice country, and state rights which serve the rest of the Central Valley. It's bad enough that Ahh-nuld (remember him?) tried to gin up a "Latino Water Coalition" out there!