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| In this June 30, 2015 photo, Gilbert Arredondo, left, looks down as he talks about his town's water crisis, standing in front of his tenant's sons, in the community of Okieville, on the outskirts of Tulare, Calif. Arredondo had just informed his tenant, Tino Lozano, that the well connecting their houses had gone dry. The water is disappearing at a particularly alarming pace in their neighborhood, forcing neighbors to rig lines from house to house to share what underground water is still reachable from the deepest wells. |
TULARE, Calif.
(AP) -- Looking for water to flush his toilet, Tino Lozano pointed a
garden hose at some buckets in the bare dirt of his yard. It's his daily
ritual now in a community built by refugees from Oklahoma's Dust Bowl.
But only a trickle came out; then a drip, then nothing more.
"There
it goes," said Lozano, a 40-year-old disabled vet, masking his
desperation with a smile. "That's how we do it in Okieville now."
Millions
of Californians are being inconvenienced in this fourth year of
drought, urged to flush toilets less often, take shorter showers and let
lawns turn brown. But it's dramatically worse in places like Okieville,
where wells have gone dry for many of the 100 modest homes that share
cracked streets without sidewalks or streetlights in California's
Central Valley.
Farming in Tulare County
brought in $8.1 billion in 2014, more than any other county in the
nation, according to its agricultural commissioner. Yet 1,252 of its
household wells today are dry, more than all other California counties
combined.
Lozano, a 40-year-old disabled vet
and family man, has worked with his neighbors to rig lines from house to
house, sharing water from a well deep enough to hit the emptying
aquifer below. County trucks, funded with state drought relief money,
fill 2,500-gallon tanks in many yards. Residents also get containers of
drinking water, stacking them in bedrooms and living rooms.
These
"Third-World-type conditions" are hidden from plain sight, says Andrew
Lockman, of Tulare County's Office of Emergency Services. "It's not an
earthquake or flood where you can drive down the street and see the
devastation."
Okieville is quiet, dry and hot.
Close your eyes and you're likely to hear a rooster crow or a dog bark.
Agriculture is the main employer, and for miles around, dense fields of
deep green cornstalks grow as feed for dairy cows. Alfalfa, almond,
oranges and grapes abound. Residents express pride in their town, and
support the need for irrigation.
"They need
water for the cows," said Okieville resident and tire salesman Gilbert
Arredondo. "Without dairies we wouldn't have jobs. They produce cheese."
For
150 years, surface canals and underground aquifers turned semi-arid
regions of California green, and even in drought, the state produces
most of America's fruit, vegetables and nuts.
But
the meager Sierra Nevada snowpack doesn't replenish the rivers like it
used to, and farmers are drilling ever-deeper wells to compensate for
the plunge in surface water. One farm bought its own $1 million drilling
rig just to ensure its supply.
So far, 15 shallower wells used by 23 homes in Okieville are depleted.
Maria
Marquez, a 50-year-old widow, panicked when her shower abruptly ended
in June 2014. They couldn't afford to move, and who would buy a house
without running water? Drilling her own new well would cost more than
years of earnings from the food truck where she works.
Unlike
Lozano, who rents his home, Marquez was eligible as a homeowner to get a
tank installed for washing and flushing, to be filled each Monday by a
county truck, as well as bottled water for drinking and cooking through
California's $3.7 billion drought relief program, which includes $38
million for drinking water and tanks.
"It's our home," said her daughter Judy Munoz, 26. "She doesn't want to leave it behind."
Her
neighbor Christine Dunlap, 72, is among the few left with Dust Bowl
roots. As with other "Okieville" communities in California, the hundreds
of thousands of Midwesterners who migrated west in the 1930s were
mostly replaced by migrants from Mexico after the camps evolved into
permanent communities.
"We've got used to it,"
said Dunlap, whose 170 foot-deep well ran dry in February. She's still
got family, she said, so "we consider ourselves lucky."
California
became the last state in the West to regulate groundwater when Gov.
Jerry Brown signed legislation ending a Gold Rush-era policy that
generally let property owners take as much as they wanted. A $7.5
billion water bond measure also approved in 2014 includes $2.7 billion
to boost water storage.
But sustainable
alternatives remain years away, and the groundwater supplying nearly 60
percent of the state's needs in dry years is being used up like never
before.
Seeking a solution for problems in
Okieville, 5 miles outside of Tulare, Maria Marquez welcomed Maria
Herrera, an organizer for the nonprofit Self-Help Enterprises, who
brought a team of engineers and a lawyer to address about 50 people
gathered in her dirt yard. "We have a lot of important items to talk
about tonight," began Herrera.
As the night
wore on, consensus seemed to grow around forming their own water
district, and applying for state and federal grants to pay for two
500-foot deep wells costing about $2 million. Monthly water bills would
be about $50, and everyone would get reliable water - at least until the
surrounding farms dig deeper.
It would take at least two years to design and build it before water flows, engineer Owen Kubit explained.
"I don't think we can last this summer without no water," Arredondo said.
Others nod in frustration.
"We can pray for rain," Kubit said.
Marquez does pray, kneeling alongside one of her granddaughters after the girl's nightly bath.
"God,
give us water so we don't have to move," the 4-year-old says, pressing
her palms together. "God, please fill up our tank, so we don't run out
of water."
