California’s Current Dust Bowl
When the rains didn’t fall and the snows didn’t stay, life in the hard-luck Central Valley got harder. Small towns died. Dreams dried up. And the very ground was sinking.
Pumping the earth dry
Up and down these rural Madera roads with fractional names — Avenue 19, Avenue 19 1/2, Avenue 20 — nut trees were going in, wells were going dry and farmers were putting debt-heavy bets on a crop that requires twice as much water as thirsty cotton.James Turner thought the folks buying up swaths of land for orchards — some of them investment fund managers who had never farmed a day in their lives — were missing the bigger picture.
“You pump all the water out, the land collapses, see? All those pockets where the water is supposed to go, they won’t be there when it does rain,” he said.
“I’ve seen so much stupid in my years that I can’t remember all of it. But pumping the earth dry? We’re killing ourselves, plain and simple.”
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