What Is California Drought

The issue of the California drought is one that has recently become front and center on the minds of its citizens. For the last couple of years California has been experiencing a drought noticeably hotter and drier than anything that we who live here are used to. In fact, the first six months of 2014 were the hottest California has experienced since 1934, the previous “hottest year”, beaten out by a whole degree. In fact, the NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, reported that 95 percent of California is in severe drought conditions and nearly 60 percent of the state is listed as D4, the worst drought conditions possible (Jahad, 2014). That is quite a margin of difference seeing as changes in temperature are usually measured …show more content…
Some believe it is possible to save enough water by just saving it on the urban level. Everyday people and businesses cutting water use so everyone can benefit from more water later. The other side sees the agricultural business in California as the problem and that they are using way too much water growing crops in our desert climate. No matter what view you have on the issue the fact still remains, California is using too much water. For an example of how much water California uses in a year, one can look to the year 2010 an average water usage year. In the year in question agriculture consumed 33 million acre feet of irrigated water, while urban uses, including landscaping, consumed 8.3 million acre feet. One acre foot is about 326,000 gallons meaning the state’s total agricultural and urban consumption exceeded an incomprehensible 13.4 trillion gallons of water (McGinty, 2015). Given these numbers the big problem with California's water usage is not the everyday person and businesses it seems to be all the food grown here. As of April 2015 statewide water use has decreased about 13.5 percent. While that may seem like good progress towards saving water state wide you have to consider where it is being saved. The problem with this “progress” is this is mostly in urban areas and that even though a lot of places are using less, some really dry areas use two to three times the normal average. This two to three times the normal consumption is not an annual average either, it’s daily (Park et al. 2015). So everyday these dry areas use double or triple the amount of water they are supposed to when in fact they are areas of the state that have been asked to cut back by a projected cut of anywhere from twenty to thirty-seven percent of their total use(Park et al. 2015). Even a matter of wealth makes a difference in water use; wealthier areas