<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"><head><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml><o:OfficeDocumentSettings><o:AllowPNG/><o:PixelsPerInch>96</o:PixelsPerInch></o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--></head><body><div class="ydp3e21c7cyahoo-style-wrap" style="font-family:garamond, new york, times, serif;font-size:16px;"><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><div><p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<b><i><span style="font-size:13.0pt;font-family:serif;color:#C00000;">He
looked out to the horizon where orchards meet sky, where in the immense
spread of California almonds stood his own trees and a well that in the
last few days had begun to surge
and groan. He could hear in its death rattle a whole community. "We're
on the brink of losing our way of life,” he said. The only solution he
could muster—and it won’t go down easily—was for
<u>valley farmers, in the name of community, to figure out a way to
retire 1 million acres of the 6 million farmed in the San Joaquin. A
first step toward soundness. “Otherwise, we’re looking at a race to the
bottom</u>,” he said.</span></i></b></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;color:#5E6A74;"> </span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:16.0pt;color:#C00000;">THE ATLANTIC</span></b></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447MsoNormal" style="text-align:center;" align="center"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;color:#5E6A74;"> </span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447MsoNormal" style="text-align:center;" align="center"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;color:#5E6A74;"></span></p><div class="ydp548f5aebimg-preview-wrapper"><img style="width: 100%; max-width: 800px;" id="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447Picture_x0020_8" src="cid:Jetbu3jTjdT9TO9rVClS" alt="Matt Angell posing between almond tress on an orchard" class="ydp548f5aebpreview"><span class="ydp548f5aebimg-dl-btn"></span></div><p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447MsoNormal" style="text-align:center;" align="center"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;color:#5E6A74;"></span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;color:#5E6A74;">Matt Angell, a well fixer in California's San Joaquin Valley (Jim McAuley for The Atlantic)</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447MsoNormal" style="text-align:center;line-height:10.5pt;" align="center">
<span style="font-size:10.5pt;color:#E7131A;text-transform:uppercase;letter-spacing:.55pt;"><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span style="color: rgb(231, 19, 26); text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-color: currentcolor;">POLITICS</span></a></span></p>
<h1 style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:13.5pt;margin-left:0in;text-align:center;line-height:36.0pt;" align="center">
<span style="font-size:33.0pt;font-family:serif;color:black;text-transform:uppercase;letter-spacing:1.5pt;font-weight:normal;">THE WELL FIXER’S WARNING</span></h1>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articledekroot1tnx" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:13.5pt;margin-left:0in;text-align:center;line-height:24.0pt;" align="center">
<span style="font-size:18.0pt;font-family:serif;color:black;">The lesson that California never learns</span></p>
<address style="text-align:center;line-height:24.0pt;" id="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447byline">
<span style="font-size:18.0pt;font-family:serif;color:black;font-style:normal;">By <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/author/mark-arax/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span style="color: black; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-color: currentcolor;">Mark Arax</span></a></span></address>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447MsoNormal">AUGUST 17, 2021</p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;">T<span class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447smallcaps"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.75pt;">he well fixer</span></span> and
I were standing at the edge of an almond orchard in the exhausted
middle of California.
It was late July, and so many wells on the farms of Madera County were
coming up dry that he was running out of parts to fix them. In this
latest round of western drought, desperate voices were calling him at
six in the morning and again at midnight. They
were puzzled why their pumps were coughing up sand, the water’s flow to
their orchards now a trickle.</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;">It occurred to him
that these same farmers had endured at least five droughts since the
mid-1970s and that drought, like the sun, was an eternal condition of
California. But he also understood that
their ability to shrug off nature—no one forgot the last drought faster
than the farmer, Steinbeck wrote—was part of their genius. Their
collective amnesia had allowed them to forge the most industrialized
farm belt in the world. Whenever a new drought set
down, they believed it was a force that could be conquered. <span class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447smallcaps"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.75pt;">build more dams</span></span>,
their signs along Highway 99 read, even though the dams on the San
Joaquin River already
numbered half a dozen. The well fixer understood their hidebound ways.
He understood their stubbornness, and maybe even their delusion. Here at
continent’s edge, nothing westward but the sea, we were all deluded.</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;">Besides, he couldn’t
turn them away. His company, Madera Pumps, was his livelihood; the city
of Madera was his home. He farmed his own acres of almonds near the
center of town. The voices on the line
weren’t simply customers. Many were lifelong friends who were true
family farmers. So he was patching up their irrigation systems the best
he could to get them through a last drink before the nut harvest began
in mid-August. At the same time, he knew that
something fundamental had changed. If he was going to keep on planting
wells, pursuing a culture of extraction that had defined California
since the Gold Rush, he could no longer remain silent about its peril.</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;">As he guided me out to
the almond orchard in the colony of Fairmead on the county’s northern
fringe, Matt Angell, the well fixer, a big man with kind eyes, wasn’t
sure what role he had assumed. Was
he a whistleblower? Was he a communitarian? When I suggested that he
had the tone and tilt of an agrarian Cassandra, he paused for a second
and said, “I like that.” We pulled into the orchard, row after row of
perfectly spaced trees laced by the plastic hoses
and emitters of drip irrigation. It looked to be one more almond
orchard in the 2,350-square-mile vastness of almond orchards up and down
California. He stepped out of his white heavy-duty truck and pointed to
two wells in the ground. They told of the dilemma,
the moral quandary, he was now facing.</span></p>
<h2 style="margin: 0in; border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: medium;"><span style="font-size:24.0pt;font-family:Times;text-transform:uppercase;letter-spacing:.75pt;font-weight:normal;">RECOMMENDED READING</span></h2>
<ul type="disc"><li class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articlerelatedcontentlistlistitemvqe3t">
<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/the-economics-of-californias-drought/388375/" title="Read More: The Economics of California's Drought " rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: 16.5pt; color: black; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-color: currentcolor;"><img style="width:.9375in;min-height:.9375in;" id="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447Picture_x0020_7" src="cid:IuI58IXUxihQ2U2z1NW1" data-inlineimagemanipulating="true" width="90" height="90" border="0"></span></a><span style="font-size:16.5pt;"></span></li></ul>
<h3 style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:4.5pt;margin-left:.5in;">
<span style="font-family:serif;font-weight:normal;"><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/the-economics-of-californias-drought/388375/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">The Economics of California's Drought</span></a></span></h3>
<address style="margin-left:.5in;line-height:10.5pt;"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;text-transform:uppercase;letter-spacing:.4pt;font-style:normal;"><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/author/matthew-schiavenza/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">MATT
SCHIAVENZA</span></a></span></address>
<ul type="disc"><li class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articlerelatedcontentlistlistitemvqe3t" style="border-top-style: none; border-top-width: medium;">
<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/11/giants-in-the-face-of-drought/508601/" title="Read More: Giants in the Face of Drought " rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: 16.5pt; color: black; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-color: currentcolor;"><img style="width:.9375in;min-height:.9375in;" id="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447Picture_x0020_5" src="cid:jeS03TTueD1QInVrbOIB" data-inlineimagemanipulating="true" width="90" height="90" border="0"></span></a><span style="font-size:16.5pt;"></span></li></ul>
<h3 style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:4.5pt;margin-left:.5in;">
<span style="font-family:serif;font-weight:normal;"><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/11/giants-in-the-face-of-drought/508601/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">Giants in the Face of Drought</span></a></span></h3>
<address style="margin-left:.5in;line-height:10.5pt;"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;text-transform:uppercase;letter-spacing:.4pt;font-style:normal;"><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/author/thayer-walker/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">THAYER
WALKER</span></a> AND <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/author/biographic/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;">BIOGRAPHIC</span></a></span></address>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;">The first well, 350
feet deep, had been dug decades earlier by a Midwestern corn farmer who
had moved to the San Joaquin Valley to become a nut grower. This well
had done yeoman’s work in keeping the
drip lines running until the drought of 2012–16, a history-breaker. To
make up for the scant flow of rivers, farmers across the valley had
pumped so much water out of the earth that thousands of wells came up
dry. This well surged and groaned, a death rattle,
and finally succumbed in 2014, years after the farmer had.</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;" id="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447injected-recirculation-link-0">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;">His family, needing to
grab a bigger share of the aquifer, dug the second well 1,100 feet deep
and called on Angell to install a more powerful pump. He lowered its
tentacles until he hit the ancient
lake beneath the valley, a mother lode, and went home thinking that was
the last of it.</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;">Now it was seven years
later, and he’d been summoned back to the almond orchard to figure out
why the second well, barely broken in, was failing. He snaked his camera
down the stretch of hole where
he remembered the aquifer being. It wasn’t there. He went deeper, but
the only flow he could find was pinched off. What little water the pump
was drawing was so fouled with salts that the orchard was burning. If
the well wasn’t fixed—it happened to be a $40,000
job—the trees would be as good as dead before the crop came in.</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;">Angell could see what
was all around him. The snow on the mountain had melted two months
earlier than normal (whatever “normal” meant), and the San Joaquin River
was running so low it had been turned
into a series of ponds decorated with lilies. But nature alone didn’t
explain what had gone wrong with this well and scores of others—ag
wells, home wells, business wells, the junior-high and high-school
wells—that were bringing up so much air.</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;"></span></p><div class="ydp548f5aebimg-preview-wrapper"><img style="width: 100%; max-width: 800px;" id="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447Picture_x0020_4" src="cid:CnRdYHkNkLXxrQIMU39K" alt="Diptych of a water supply on an orchard and a worker pulling up well pipes to diagnose them." class="ydp548f5aebpreview" data-inlineimagemanipulating="true" border="0"><span class="ydp548f5aebimg-dl-btn"></span></div><p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;"></span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;">As the aquifer gets over-tapped, wells in the San Joaquin Valley are running dry more frequently. (Jim McAuley for The Atlantic)</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;">From the data on his
devices, Angell calculated that the underground water table in Madera
County, one of the most over-tapped in the West, had dropped an
astounding 60 feet over late spring and summer.
So many agricultural pumps were dipping their bowls into the same
depleted resource that the aquifer was collapsing, a descent he had
never witnessed. “I’m 62 years old. I’ve been doing this more than half
my life, and I’ve never seen this. Not even close,”
he said. “This is all brand new, and it’s shaken everything I believe
in.”</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;">When he took a closer
look at the well’s steel casing, he could see six hairline fractures
that started at the 280-foot level and ended at the 900-foot level. But
what he encountered between those
two depths confirmed a phenomenon sometimes found in clay soils but
rarely in sandy loams such as this. The casing had been bent by a
profound force; the steel was rippled like a crushed soda can. That
force, he knew, was the downward pull of subsidence. As
a consequence of too much water being sucked out of the aquifer, the
earth itself was sinking, first by inches and then by feet, shearing off
pumps, eating away at ditches, canals, and aqueduct, stealing gravity
from California’s one-of-a-kind water-delivery
system that counted on gravity to flow.</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;">He finally got the
well to work, but the output, 350 gallons a minute, was not even half of
what it should have been. It might draw water for another year or two,
but he couldn’t guarantee more. That’s
how fast the aquifer was petering out. “Drought on top of drought.
Climate change on top of drought. And our response is always the same,”
Angell said. “Plant more almonds and pistachios. Plant more housing
tracts on farmland. But the river isn’t the same.
The aquifer isn’t the same.”</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;">A<span class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447smallcaps"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.75pt;">cross from the</span></span> orchard
sat the Galilee Missionary Baptist Church of Fairmead. During the worst
of the
previous drought, the community of old farmhands had suffered an
especially cruel fate. Theirs had been a mighty story of Black families
that had fled the South and Southwest in the 1930s and ’40s and followed
the cotton trail to California, thinking it might
hold a promise. What they found instead was a more prettified version
of old Jim Crow. They had to fetch their drinking and bathing water in
milk pails and oil drums from nearby cities that used restrictive
real-estate codes to keep them from living in town.
They built shacks with no plumbing, outhouses out back. They eventually
dug their own wells, grew their own crops, built houses and a church,
only to discover, in 2015, that the almond orchards now surrounding them
had drunk up the aquifer’s shallower water.
Their puny wells couldn’t compete with the wells that the ag giants dug
deeper and deeper. The Black Okies found themselves fetching water the
old way. Some of them left. Others died.</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;" id="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447injected-recirculation-link-1">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;">Migrant families from
Mexico, for the most part, have replaced them. With the help of rural
advocates for the poor and state funding, a new community well has been
drilled a few hundred feet deeper,
which should buy residents some time. But Fairmead’s story of
dispossession can now be seen in other small country settlements across
middle California, where the struggle for water against the creeping
orchards carries on.</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;">From one end of the
valley to the other, 500,000 acres of new almond and pistachio trees
have been added to the old trees over the past 10 years. This, in a
period plagued by two of the worst droughts
in California history or, grimmer yet, one epic drought interrupted by
the record flood year of 2017. If the water-guzzling almonds demand less
irrigation than the water-guzzling crops that feed the mega-dairies,
the aggregate of their intensification is no
less alarming. In Madera County, during this same scorched decade, the
ground devoted to almonds has expanded by 60,000 acres. The trend makes
selfish sense. Almonds ring up far more profits than the wine and raisin
grapes they’re replacing. But it makes almost
no communal sense. Almonds consume far more of everyone’s water.</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;"></span></p><div class="ydp548f5aebimg-preview-wrapper"><img style="width: 100%; max-width: 800px;" id="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447Picture_x0020_3" src="cid:iWKfEGwhjSJ7XqXa1bez" alt="Diptych of an almond tree being irrigated and Mark Angell holding a plastic bottle filled with muddy water." class="ydp548f5aebpreview" data-inlineimagemanipulating="true" border="0"><span class="ydp548f5aebimg-dl-btn"></span></div><p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;"></span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;">An almond grove in distress near Madera, California, and a sample of water from an overdrawn well (Jim McAuley for The Atlantic)</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;">Angell’s surveys of
wells across the Madera sub-basin tell him that the underground water
table that sustains 348,000 acres of cropland, cattle ground, and
suburbia is bleeding out three feet of water
from one harvest to the next. This amounts to 1 million acre-feet of
overdraft each dry year. That’s water taken out of the earth and not
returned by rain or snowmelt. That’s mining. All the houses and
businesses of Los Angeles, by comparison, consume 580,000
acre-feet of water each year.</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;">“I’ve been putting my camera down three wells a day,” he said. “I used to use the word <em><span style="font-family:serif;">unprecedented</span></em> to describe what we’re doing to the land.
Now I use the word <em><span style="font-family:serif;">biblical</span></em>.
I could keep my mouth shut and make a lot of money fixing wells between
now and the time it all goes to hell. But I wouldn’t be able to look my
son, who’s running our farm,
in the eye.”</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;">If the math of
irrigation didn’t work before the arrival of climate change, it
certainly doesn’t work now. Even in a wet year, the San Joaquin River
provides nowhere near enough flow to sustain the
sub-basin’s 235,000 irrigated acres. Three-fourths of the water must
come from the ground. The fight over what remains of the aquifer now
pits two camps of farmers against each other: those inside the
irrigation district, who trace their fertile soil three
generations back, and newcomers outside the district, whose orchards
grow in poorer dirt and rely wholly on groundwater.</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;">That some of the
outsiders are institutional investors awash in easy money from hedge
funds, pension funds, and the Mormon Church only adds to the rancor.
They seem willfully oblivious to the plummeting
water table. When they turn on their ag pumps at 5 p.m. on Fridays and
run them until noon on Mondays, a “cone of depression” sucks water from
farms inside the district. Meanwhile, real-estate developers are adding
more subdivisions to a new town of 100,000
people rising atop the same spent aquifer.</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;">“Every farmer I meet, I
explain how far and fast the water table is dropping,” Angell said. “I
tell them, ‘We’re going to get our asses handed to us.’ Some of them
listen and mutter. Most of the others
look at me like I’m crazy.”</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;"></span></p><div class="ydp548f5aebimg-preview-wrapper"><img style="width: 655px; max-width: 655px;" id="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447Picture_x0020_2" src="cid:VvMAZesBNgnFje6v5lNT" alt="Wood chips from a former almond orchard are piled up next to dead trees." class="ydp548f5aebpreview" data-inlineimagemanipulating="true" border="0"><span class="ydp548f5aebimg-dl-btn"></span></div><p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;"></span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;">A former almond orchard in Madera County, with trees pulled and their wood chipped (Jim McAuley for The Atlantic)</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;">Whether it’s water,
soil, climate, or crop, Californians believe they can keep on flouting
the bounds. But drought reveals the lie of a place. The invention of the
“Golden State” was an overreach from
the get-go. That it relied on the genocide of the biggest flowering of
Indigenous culture in North America should have been a first clue. The
continent’s edge that the settlers bit off and called one state was
1,000 miles long with a dozen different states
of nature inside it. The rain fell 140 inches on one end. It fell 12
inches on the other end. The other end happened to be where most of the
people wanted to live. Our conceit was to believe that if we built the
grandest water system ever, we could make that
difference disappear. California proceeded with the federal Central
Valley Project in the 1930s and the State Water Project in the 1960s and
erected dams, canals, and a concrete river 444 miles long—we called it
The Aqueduct—to move the rain to farms and faucets.
We had engineered our way past drought and flood, if not earthquake and
wildfire, or so we believed.</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;" id="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447injected-recirculation-link-2">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;">Angell grew up hearing
the story of this agricultural miracle from his father, a civil
engineer with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation who helped build the
Central Valley Project. By the 1990s, holding
a degree in agriculture from California Polytechnic State University,
he was running his own irrigation business and developing vineyards for
Freddie Franzia, the wine-grape grower who gifted the world the cheap
red known as Two Buck Chuck.</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;">A tech geek, Angell
perfected a field-to-cellphone system that told a farmer, at any hour,
the moisture content in the root zones of his trees. The precise
applications of drip irrigation doubled almond
yields to 4,000 pounds an acre. Suddenly, nut growers were buying
Lamborghinis, second houses in Pebble Beach, and $10 million Cessna
jets. When he took over his stepfather’s vineyard in the early 2000s,
Angell planted 100 acres of almonds to go along with
his 100 acres of wine grapes.</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;">“I grew up believing
that the agriculture here was something to admire, and it is,” he said.
“But look at how we developed. At first, we were farming the alluvial
plain, the best soil. It was flat,
and you could easily utilize flood waters to recharge the aquifer. In
the 1920s, the turbine pump got invented and allowed us to overdraft the
aquifer and expand onto soils high in alkali. They required lots of
water to push the salts down past the root zone.
Then in the 1990s, we went all-in on drip. It was supposed to save
water. But those plastic lines let us to grow onto rangeland and up
hillsides—soils so inferior they should never have been farmed.”</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;">It took 170 years, but
California finally decided, in 2014, to regulate groundwater
extraction. Problem is, the law won’t actually reduce pumping for
another 20 years. By granting growers such a long
reprieve, the state set in motion a consequence that’s less unintended
than expected: more pumping. Farmers developing new acres are trying to
establish their legal possession before no more water can be grabbed.
The state and the county, which lean libertarian
in such matters, have no will to stop the drilling.</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;"></span></p><div class="ydp548f5aebimg-preview-wrapper"><img style="width: 655px; max-width: 655px;" id="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447Picture_x0020_1" src="cid:eNLSZl17KwUJAkB1w9ht" alt="Dust whirls up near an almond orchard during sunset." class="ydp548f5aebpreview" border="0"><span class="ydp548f5aebimg-dl-btn"></span></div><p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;"></span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;">Almond harvest near Madera (Jim McAuley for The Atlantic)</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;">How far down the water
has descended, how salty it’s become, isn’t something farmers like to
advertise. Angell, with the support of his wife and his son and a
Stanford graduate student who’s crunching
the data, knows he’s taking a risk by going public. “Every well we work
on, we’re measuring the standing water level. If I can get a farmer to
listen, I tell him we can’t keep on doing this. It’s not going to last.
Another dam won’t solve this. Another flood
won’t solve this.”</span></p>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447articleparagraphroot2qm08" style="margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:22.5pt;margin-left:0in;">
<span style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:serif;">He looked out to the
horizon where orchards meet sky, where in the immense spread of
California almonds stood his own trees and a well that in the last few
days had begun to surge and groan. He could
hear in its death rattle a whole community. "We're on the brink of
losing our way of life,” he said. The only solution he could muster—and
it won’t go down easily—was for valley farmers, in the name of
community, to figure out a way to retire 1 million acres
of the 6 million farmed in the San Joaquin. A first step toward
soundness. “Otherwise, we’re looking at a race to the bottom,” he said.</span></p>
<address id="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447article-writer-0"><span style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:serif;font-style:normal;"><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/author/mark-arax/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" class="enhancr_card_0424635082"><span style="text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-color: currentcolor;">Mark Arax</span></a> is
a California-based journalist and the author<strong><span style="font-family:serif;"> </span></strong>of several books, most recently </span><div><br></div><div id="ydp6dd756denhancr_card_0424635082" class="ydp6dd756dyahoo-link-enhancr-card ydp6dd756dymail-preserve-class ydp6dd756dymail-preserve-style" style="max-width:400px;font-family:YahooSans, Helvetica Neue, Segoe UI, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" data-url="https://www.theatlantic.com/author/mark-arax/" data-type="YENHANCER" data-size="MEDIUM" contenteditable="false"><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/author/mark-arax/" style="text-decoration-line: none !important; text-decoration-style: solid !important; text-decoration-color: currentcolor !important; color: rgb(0, 0, 0) !important;" class="ydp6dd756dyahoo-enhancr-cardlink" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><table class="ydp6dd756dcard-wrapper ydp6dd756dyahoo-ignore-table" style="max-width:400px" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tbody><tr><td width="400"><table class="ydp6dd756dcard ydp6dd756dyahoo-ignore-table" style="max-width:400px;border-width:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:rgb(224, 228, 233);border-radius:2px" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tbody><tr><td class="ydp6dd756dcard-primary-image-cell" style="background-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: cover; position: relative; border-radius: 2px 2px 0px 0px; min-height: 175px;" valign="top" height="175" bgcolor="#000000" background="https://s.yimg.com/lo/api/res/1.2/uSPl9ao5EwgmdptIPqlAJg--~A/Zmk9ZmlsbDt3PTQwMDtoPTIwMDthcHBpZD1pZXh0cmFjdA--/https://cdn.theatlantic.com/tng/static/theatlantic/img/lacroix-default-thumbnail.png.cf.jpg"><!--[if gte mso 9]><v:rect fill="true" stroke="false" style="width:396px;height:175px;position:absolute;top:0;left:0;"><v:fill type="frame" color="#000000" src="https://s.yimg.com/lo/api/res/1.2/uSPl9ao5EwgmdptIPqlAJg--~A/Zmk9ZmlsbDt3PTQwMDtoPTIwMDthcHBpZD1pZXh0cmFjdA--/https://cdn.theatlantic.com/tng/static/theatlantic/img/lacroix-default-thumbnail.png.cf.jpg"/></v:rect><![endif]--><table class="ydp6dd756dcard-overlay-container-table ydp6dd756dyahoo-ignore-table" style="width:100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tbody><tr><td class="ydp6dd756dcard-overlay-cell" style="background-color: transparent; border-radius: 2px 2px 0px 0px; min-height: 175px;" valign="top" bgcolor="transparent" background="https://s.yimg.com/cv/ae/nq/storm/assets/enhancrV21/1/enhancr_gradient-400x175.png"><!--[if gte mso 9]><v:rect fill="true" stroke="false" style="width:396px;height:175px;position:absolute;top:-18px;left:0;"><v:fill type="pattern" color="#000000" src="https://s.yimg.com/cv/ae/nq/storm/assets/enhancrV21/1/enhancr_gradient-400x175.png"/><v:textbox inset="0,0,20px,0"><![endif]--><table class="ydp6dd756dyahoo-ignore-table" style="width: 100%; min-height: 175px;" height="175" border="0"><tbody><tr><td class="ydp6dd756dcard-richInfo2" style="text-align:left;padding:15px 0 0 15px;vertical-align:top"></td><td class="ydp6dd756dcard-actions" style="text-align:right;padding:15px 15px 0 0;vertical-align:top"><div class="ydp6dd756dcard-share-container"></div></td></tr></tbody></table><!--[if gte mso 9]></v:textbox></v:rect><![endif]--></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr><tr><td><table class="ydp6dd756dcard-info ydp6dd756dyahoo-ignore-table" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-size: auto; position: relative; z-index: 2; width: 100%; max-width: 400px; border-radius: 0px 0px 2px 2px; border-top: 1px solid rgb(224, 228, 233);" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" align="center"><tbody><tr><td style="background-color:#ffffff;padding:16px 0 16px 12px;vertical-align:top;border-radius:0 0 0 2px"></td><td style="vertical-align:middle;padding:12px 24px 16px 12px;width:99%;font-family:YahooSans, Helvetica Neue, Segoe UI, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;border-radius:0 0 2px 0"><h2 class="ydp6dd756dcard-title" style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 6px; font-family: YahooSans, Helvetica Neue, Segoe UI, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(38, 40, 42); max-width: 314px;">Mark Arax</h2><p class="ydp6dd756dcard-description" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; color: rgb(151, 155, 167);">The Atlantic covers news, politics, culture, technology, health, and more, through its articles, podcasts, video...</p></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></a></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><em><span style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:serif;">The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across
California</span></em><span style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:serif;font-style:normal;">. His work has appeared in </span><em><span style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:serif;">The New York Times</span></em><span style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:serif;font-style:normal;"> and </span><em><span style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:serif;">The
California Sunday Magazine</span></em><span style="font-size:15.0pt;font-family:serif;font-style:normal;">, among other publications.</span></address>
<p class="ydp548f5aebyiv6680956447MsoNormal"> <br></p></div><div><br></div></div></div></body></html>