Water in California

In 1849, they discovered gold in California.

In 1850, California became a state.

But what is the real gold in California?  Water!

At this time, we have a serious emergency.
We do not have enough water.  This is called a drought.

Drought rhymes with about. The vowel sound is like "wow."

We need water for all the people who live here.   People need water for drinking, cooking, and cleaning.

We need to grow food on farms and water animals on ranches.  Agribusiness is a very part of the California economy.   The fruit, vegetables, and meat from California goes to many places in the United States.



Terra Bella, California (Central Valley)
Photo Credit:  LA Times

We need water for fishing.  Many in rivers in California are controlled by dams.  The fish in these rivers need water to survive.

We need water for industry.  Factories and fracking (pulling oil out of the ground) need water. 

Bottling water and selling it in other places in an industry in California, too.


Information to help you understand the drought in California:

1.  Water in California:

California is like many places in the world with dry land and weather.  It moves water to grow food and make cities.  It moves water from the mountains or pulls it out of the ground.

California's water system serves over 30 million people.  It irrigates over 5,680,000 acres of farmland.  Irrigate means bring water in a pipe.

There are many, many, many arguments about water in California.  It is not like the air.  It does not belong to everyone.  Some people have rights to water.

Water rights means the legal right to use water.  When non-native people moved here, they claimed land and the water on the land.  They claimed the right to use or sell the water on the land.

There are many people in California but not enough water for them unless you move the water from the mountains or pull it out of the ground.

People argue about who should get the water and what to use it for and how to pay for it.  Farmers and ranchers and fishermen, factory owners and oil drillers, people in cities and suburbs - they all want water.  How about animals and plants?  They need water, too. 

2.   Aqueducts.  Look at this map.  See the lines?  Those are aqueducts - canals that move water from one place to another place. 

There are many aqueducts in California.  They move water from the Sierra mountains or the Sacramento Delta or the Colorado River to other places in California.

3.  Irrigation.  The number one source for water in California is snow in the mountains.  The snow melts and becomes a river.  The water in the river is kept in a dam and then carried in an aqueduct to cities and farms.

A very big part of the farmland in California is dry.   You can raise animals or grow many kinds of food only with water from far away.  Some crops like cotton, almonds, rice, and alfalfa (for hay for animals) need a lot of water.




4  Hetch Hetchy.   That's we get our water from.  Hetch Hetchy is a big valley next to Yosemite.  Many people say it was more beautiful than Yosemite.  Now the valley is filled with water. This is the water we drink.  It is the water from the Tuolumne River.  The water travels from this valley all the way to us.

Drinking water in San Francisco and San Mateo is from Hetch Hetchy.


Hetchy Hetchy Valley

5.  Crystal Springs.  That's where our water waits for us to drink.  The water flows from Hetch Hetchy to Crystal Springs.

Crystal Springs is not far from San Mateo Adult School.  It is near Highway 92.  You can walk or ride your bicycle or hike around it. 




6.  Seismic safety for water.  Seismic means about earthquakes. 

Crystal Springs runs along the San Andreas Fault.  A fault is where two earth plates push against each other, creating earthquakes. 

California has many faults.  The San Andreas is the biggest.

All the aqueducts and water storage systems in California must be extra strong because of earthquakes.





7.  Water Conservation.  Conserve means save.  Conservation means savings.  Because of the drought, we have new water conservation rules.  Governor Brown mandated the first water cuts in the history of California.  Mandate means order or command. 

This drought is a very serious emergency.  We must take strong actions. 

Each water district must reduce their water usage by some measurement.  It is different for different areas.

This video explains more:

7.  Water and fire.

There is another problem in California: fire.  In a drought, there is more fuel - more dry trees and grass - for fires... and less water to put the water out.  This is a big problem.  You can read more about fire in California and the big Yosemite Fire in 2013 by clicking here.

8.  Climate Change

All over the world, Climate Change is changing everything.  The polar ice caps are melting.  The water is rising in the seas and oceans.  There are bigger hurricanes and storms. 

And there are bigger droughts. 

Everything is happening in bigger and longer ways. 

Scientists are working very hard to understand what is happening.  They are doing their best to predict what will happen.  Predict means see things before they happen.

We must try to understand what is happening.  We must try to predict what can happen next.

And we must create solutions for these problems.


9.  Underground Water.

The drought is complicated.  Not enough snow and rain is only part of the problem.

Climate Change makes the temperature hotter.  With more heat, there is more evaporation.  The water lifts up out of the rivers, lakes, and reservoirs.  It moves up into the air and moves away to come down somewhere else - maybe far away.

When the ecosystem is healthy, water moves around.  It makes a circle between the earth and the sky.

Everywhere on the earth, there is more water underground than in the rivers and lakes.  This underground water is called groundwater or the aquifer.

Groundwater is an important part of California water supply. During a normal year, 30% of the state’s water supply comes from this underground water.  In extreme drought, groundwater can be 60% or more of our water supply.

For many reasons, we have less water in our aquifer.  Our aquifers are depleted.  Depleted means less, less, less, finally empty.

One reason is we are pumping water out of the ground.  If you drink bottled water, you are usually drinking water from an aquifer.  Farmers and ranchers in the Central Valley also pump water out of the ground.

NASA: “The ongoing California drought is evident in these maps of dry season (Sept–Nov) total water storage anomalies (in millimeter equivalent water height; anomalies with respect to 2005–2010). California’s Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins have lost roughly 15 km3 of total water per year since 2011 — more water than all 38 million Californians use for domestic and municipal supplies annually — over half of which is due to groundwater pumping in the Central Valley.”

Many reasons - Climate Change, water pumping, more people living and growing food and raising animals in dry places - combine to bring one result:  Less water. 

We have another problem with the aquifers:  Some of the water in the aquifers is contaminated.  Contaminated means it is dirty or poisonous or bad in some way.  A new study from the United States Geological Service shows that 20% of the underground water has been contaminated.  

Depletion and pollution of the aquifer, the underground water, is the most serious problem of all.

If we get more snow next winter, the lakes will fill with water again.  But it takes a long, long, long time to refill an aquifer.

What are people doing about the drought in our area?  What can we do?

Learn more about drought in the Bay Area, the new water pricing system, and what we are doing to save water at our school in this blog post.

You can learn more about the Drought here.

You can learn more about the USGS study about aquifers here.