LA Times: Salinas Valley water woes
–LA Times excerpt–
Salinas Valley’s thriving crops mask fears over the area’s lone water source
At a time when lakes have hit bottom, wells have run dry, and farmland 100 miles away in the Central Valley has gathered dust, the Salinas Valley remains an oasis — a green patchwork quilt of farmland unfurling roughly 90 miles along U.S. 101 north of Paso Robles to Monterey Bay, where the Salinas River meets the ocean.
The marina docks at Oak Shores are stranded in the mud on the shore of Lake Nacimiento last year at 21-percent capacity. The lake is currently at 22-percent capacity.
But the verdant landscape hides long-term troubles with the region’s only water source.
Isolated from state and federal aqueducts, the region can’t afford to run out of local water. Changes need to be made, but agreement on what to do and how to pay for it has been elusive.
“The problems of other areas is they have no water,” said Norm Groot, executive director of the Monterey County Farm Bureau. “Our problem here is we still have water. And to some degree, that presents a different set of challenges.”
Foremost among them is how to preserve the massive, but overdrafted, aquifer — one of the most stressed groundwater basins in the state, according to the California Department of Water Resources.
Read the full story in the LA Times
Click here for current Lake Nacimiento water levels
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