But in California farm country, his comments about water are also getting top attention.

The Golden State grows three-quarters of the country’s fruits and nuts and more than a third of its vegetables, largely thanks to a complex network of dams and canals that funnel water to the state’s fertile Central Valley.

In recent years, farmers have faced more limits on how much water they can access from this network because of environmental concerns, as well as on how much groundwater they can pump after years of overuse and drought.

Now, farmers are hoping the second Trump administration will ensure more stable water flows to their fields from the federally managed Central Valley Project and a plan for future water supplies. Trump recently posted on his Truth Social platform a criticism of the “rerouting of MILLIONS OF GALLONS OF WATER A DAY FROM THE NORTH OUT INTO THE PACIFIC OCEAN, rather than using it, free of charge, for the towns, cities, & farms dotted all throughout California.”

“It is the number one issue,” said Jason Phillips, chief executive of the Friant Water Authority, which represents more than a dozen irrigation districts serving a large swath of the crop-rich valley. “You only need labor and you only need the products and the equipment and everything else to grow food if you have water.”

California relies on water supplies from the Central Valley Project and the state-run State Water Project. The federal project provides 5 million acre-feet of water to farms each year and 600,000 acre-feet to cities, as well as water to maintain water quality in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which provides critical habitat to fish and wildlife.

During the prior Trump administration, government officials issued rules to allow for a greater flow of water to California farms.

The move was blasted by environmental groups. The Biden administration pushed back on those decisions and has been working on new rules aimed at balancing farming with protections for endangered wildlife such as the delta smelt, a tiny fish that is an indicator of the health of California’s waterways, and Chinook salmon.

In recent years, California farmers said federal water allocations have been more limited than they feel is necessary after two years of ample rain boosted the state’s reservoirs. The state previously grappled with a yearslong drought that in 2022 saw the driest January-to-March period in at least a century, with scientists saying weather whiplash will likely become more common as the planet warms.

That is a big concern of environmentalists and commercial fishermen, who want to see less water diverted to agriculture and more flowing to the delta. Salmon fishing has been banned off the California coast for the past two years because of dwindling stocks, and critics say Trump’s prior decisions moving water away from salmon-spawning areas are to blame.

“They delivered all the cold water behind Shasta Dam. It literally cooked the baby salmon before they were hatched,” said Barry Nelson, policy advisor to the Golden State Salmon Association, a nonprofit focused on restoring California salmon. “Math is a brutal master, and we’ve hit physical limits on the amount of water we can take from the Bay delta, and the sign of that is the collapse of the ecosystem.”

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a long-time Trump critic, recently called on California lawmakers to gear up ahead of another Trump presidency to safeguard the state’s progressive policies.

Environmental advocates, however, contend Newsom has not done enough to improve the situation in the delta for fish and wildlife. During Trump’s prior administration, Newsom opposed his rules for water flows, filing a legal challenge, but since then put forth his own rules, which Jon Rosenfield, San Francisco Baykeeper’s science director, said “were never that much different.”

Competing demands on California’s water have led to numerous battles over who gets how much. Advocates for fishermen, environmental interests and farmers all say more must be done to shore up future water supplies. But what that looks like depends on who is asked, with proposed solutions spanning from more conservation to expanding water storage to technological upgrades.

Aubrey Bettencourt, who oversaw Department of Interior water policy during the prior Trump administration, said she would like to see the system updated to respond to swings in climate rather than setting water releases based on the calendar. One of the issues, she said, is not how much water you get but knowing how much water you will get.

“It makes it very hard to plan not just as a farmer but as a city manager,” she said. “I would expect an emphasis on restoring operational certainty.”

The incoming Trump administration has discussed a series of economic policies that could also affect agriculture, including tariffs that could wind up affecting some exports and push up input costs for growers, according to a recent Rabobank report.

But when it comes to water, many farmers in California are hopeful.

Daniel Errotabere, a third-generation farmer and previous Westlands Water District president whose family grows tomatoes, garlic and almonds, is among them. As California ramps up limits on groundwater pumping, it is even more important to ensure a stable flow of surface water to grow the food the country is counting on, he said. Farmers have had to fallow fields and often don’t plant as much as they could because of water uncertainty, he said.

“If electricity was delivered this way there’d be a revolt,” Errotabere said. “This is not any way to operate resources.”

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FAIRMEAD, Calif. (AP) — As California’s drought deepens, Elaine Moore’s family is running out of an increasingly precious resource: water.

The Central Valley almond growers had two wells go dry this summer. Two of her adult children are now getting water from a new well the family drilled after the old one went dry last year. She’s even supplying water to a neighbor whose well dried up.

“It’s been so dry this last year. We didn’t get much rain. We didn’t get much snowpack,” Moore said, standing next to a dry well on her property in Chowchilla, California. “Everybody’s very careful with what water they’re using. In fact, my granddaughter is emptying the kids’ little pool to flush the toilets.”

Amid a megadrought plaguing the American West, more rural communities are losing access to groundwater as heavy pumping depletes underground aquifers that aren’t being replenished by rain and snow.

More than 1,200 wells have run dry this year statewide, a nearly 50% increase over the same period last year, according to the California Department of Water Resources. By contrast, fewer than 100 dry wells were reported annually in 2018, 2019 and 2020.

The groundwater crisis is most severe in the San Joaquin Valley, California’s agricultural heartland, which exports fruits, vegetables and nuts around the world.

Shrinking groundwater supplies reflect the severity of California’s drought, which is now entering its fourth year. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, more than 94% of the state is in severe, extreme or exceptional drought.

California just experienced its three driest years on record, and state water officials said Monday they’re preparing for another dry year because the weather phenomenon known as La Nina is expected to occur for the third consecutive year.

Farmers are getting little surface water from the state’s depleted reservoirs, so they’re pumping more groundwater to irrigate their crops. That’s causing water tables to drop across California. State data shows that 64% of wells are at below-normal water levels.

Water shortages are already reducing the region’s agricultural production as farmers are forced to fallow fields and let orchards wither. An estimated 531,00 acres (215,000 hectares) of farmland went unplanted this year because of a lack of irrigation water, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

As climate change brings hotter temperatures and more severe droughts, cities and states around the world are facing water shortages as lakes and rivers dry up. Many communities are pumping more groundwater and depleting aquifers at an alarming pace.

“This is a key challenge not just for California, but for communities across the West moving forward in adapting to climate change,” said Andrew Ayres, a water researcher at the Public Policy Institute of California.

Madera County, north of Fresno, has been hit particularly hard because it relies heavily on groundwater. The county has reported about 430 dry wells so far this year.

In recent years, the county has seen the rapid expansion of thirsty almond and pistachio orchards that are typically irrigated by agricultural wells that run deeper than domestic wells.

“The bigger straw is going to suck the water from right beneath the little straw,” said Madeline Harris, a policy manager with the advocacy group Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability. She stood next to a municipal well that’s run dry in Fairmead, a town of 1,200 surrounded by nut orchards.

“Municipal wells like this one are being put at risk and are going dry because of the groundwater overdraft problems from agriculture,” Harris said. “There are families who don’t have access to running water right now because they have dry domestic wells.”

Residents with dry wells can get help from a state program that provides bottled water as well as storage tanks regularly filled by water delivery trucks. The state also provides money to replace dry wells, but there’s a long wait to get a new one.

Not everyone is getting assistance.

Thomas Chairez said his Fairmead property, which he rents to a family of eight, used to get water from his neighbor’s well. But when it went dry two years ago, his tenants lost access to running water.

Chairez is trying to get the county to provide a storage tank and water delivery service. For now, his tenants have to fill up 5-gallon (19-liter) buckets at a friend’s home and transport water by car each day. They use the water to cook and take showers. They have portable toilets in the backyard.

“They’re surviving,” Chairez said. “In Mexico, I used to do that. I used to carry two buckets myself from far away. So we got to survive somehow. This is an emergency.”

Well drillers are in high demand as water pumps stop working across the San Joaquin Valley.

Ethan Bowles and his colleagues were recently drilling a new well at a ranch house in the Madera Ranchos neighborhood, where many wells have gone dry this year.

“It’s been almost nonstop phone calls just due to the water table dropping constantly,” said Bowles, who works for Chowchilla-based Drew and Hefner Well Drilling. “Most residents have had their wells for many years and all of a sudden the water stops flowing.”

His company must now drill down 500 and 600 feet (152 to 183 meters) to get clients a steady supply of groundwater. That’s a couple hundred feet deeper than older wells.

“The wells just have to go deeper,” Bowles said. “You have to hit a different aquifer and get them a different part of that water table so they can actually have fresh water for their house.”

In March, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order to slow a frenzy of well-drilling over the past few years. The temporary measure prohibits local agencies from issuing permits for new wells that could harm nearby wells or structures.

California’s groundwater troubles come as local agencies seek to comply with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which Gov. Jerry Brown signed in 2014 to prevent groundwater overpumping during the last drought. The law requires regional agencies to manage their aquifers sustainably by 2042.

Water experts believe the law will lead to more sustainable groundwater supplies over the next two decades, but the road will be bumpy. The Public Policy Institute of California estimates that about 500,000 acres (202,000 hectares) of agricultural land, about 10% of the current total, will have to come out of production over the next two decades.

“These communities are going to be impacted from drinking water supplies and loss of jobs,” said Isaya Kisekka, a groundwater expert at the University of California, Davis. “There’s a lot of migration of farmworkers as this land gets fallowed.”

Farmers and residents in the Valley are hoping for help from above. “Hopefully we get a lot of rain,” Chairez said. “There’s a big need: water. We need water, water, water.”

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For Western water planners, the path it took to get there serves either as a blueprint or a cautionary tale.

Over the past three decades, San Diego County diversified its water supply, ramped up conservation and invested in big-ticket water infrastructure including the Western hemisphere’s largest desalination plant, which removes salt and impurities from ocean water. As a result, the water agency that serves 24 water utilities including the city of San Diego says it can avoid cuts until at least 2045, even during dry periods. But that security has come at a cost.

San Diego County’s water is among the most expensive in the country, costing about 26% more at the wholesale level in 2021 than the Metropolitan Water District’s, which serves Los Angeles and surrounding counties. Now, two rural irrigation districts in San Diego County home to large avocado industries want to break away from the regional water supplier, saying they can purchase cheaper water elsewhere. If they succeed, water in San Diego County could grow even more expensive.

“San Diego’s situation is very surprising, very striking,” said Michael Hanemann, an environmental economist at Arizona State University who recently was commissioned to study the region’s water costs for a California agency. “I think this is a harbinger of something that’s going to happen elsewhere in California and elsewhere in the U.S.”

WHY SO EXPENSIVE

San Diegans didn’t always rest easy during drought. In the 1990s, a severe dry period cut the region’s water supply by 30%. At the time, almost all of its water came from the Metropolitan Water District, the country’s largest water provider. That experience and a tense, dysfunctional relationship — California water experts say — with water officials in Los Angeles spurred San Diego County’s aggressive, decades-long pursuit of water self-sufficiency.

“At that point, our community came together and said, ’We’re not going to be in this situation again. We need to plan for our own reliability,” said Sandy Kerl, general manager of the San Diego County Water Authority.

So in 2003, the water authority cut a deal to get water from the single largest user of the Colorado River, the Imperial Irrigation District, in Southern California. San Diego County funded repairs to leaky canals belonging to Imperial and signed a historic water transfer deal. Today, it receives about 55% of its total supply from Imperial as part of the deal.

The water authority also helped farmers use less water. It raised dams to increase storage capacity in reservoirs. It provided rebates to homeowners who ripped out grass lawns for water-efficient alternatives.

In 2012, San Diego County forged a deal to get 10% of its water supply from the Carlsbad Desalination Plant for the next 30 years. The plant produces 50 million gallons of drinkable water — enough for about 400,000 people — every day and is by far the region’s most expensive water source.

“In round terms, it’s twice as expensive as imported surface water,” said Hanemann. “On the other hand, it’s a very reliable supply because it’s not affected by drought and low flows in rivers in Northern California or the Colorado.”

While those efforts took hold, demand steadily fell, even as half a million more people moved to San Diego. Statewide water cuts during drought, more efficient showers, toilets and taps, rebates to tear out grass and the use of recycled water did what they were supposed to do — steeply reducing per-person water use. By 2020, San Diegans used 30% less water than in 1990.

Water officials, however, didn’t foresee the coming drop in demand and consistently overestimated how much water was needed. Today, San Diego County says it is no longer searching for more water, a position that some in the West might consider enviable. But they wouldn’t envy the water rates.

Thanks to selling less water, San Diego County has raised rates — by an average of 4% for each of the past five years — to cover fixed costs including the San Vicente Dam and desalination plant. Such costs make up the lion’s share — roughly 90% — of the agency’s annual expenses.

The price of water, Hanemann said, is largely determined by the infrastructure that moves and stores it. “You’re screwed if suddenly you deliver fewer gallons of water since your costs don’t go down.”

“Water is a terrible business to be in because we have to promote people to use less of our product and charge them more when they do,” said Tom Kennedy, general manager of the Rainbow Municipal Water District, one of the two water agencies trying to detach from the San Diego County’s water authority.

AVOCADO COUNTRY

Rainbow and Fallbrook, the other town whose agency is trying to source its water elsewhere, say doing so would give them access to cheaper water, though the potential savings aren’t yet known. A state agency is considering whether they can leave, with a decision expected by the end of the year. If their exit is approved, the next step would be a vote among residents. Only if that vote passes can the two districts leave.

At a recent public hearing, angry residents shouted at officials about how long the process is taking — and how expensive their bills have gotten in the meantime.

The rural towns cut a striking contrast to San Diego’s constellation of beach towns and waterfront skyline. Northeast of the city, steep, dry hills and sweeping canyons dot the landscape.

Steep water costs have hurt farming in Fallbrook and Rainbow, once the largest producer of avocados in the country. Between 2016 and 2020, Fallbrook lost nearly a fifth of its avocado groves, government records show, due to urbanization and fallowed groves.

Jason Kendall, a farmer in Rainbow whose family took out their avocado groves years ago, said growing the fruit without supplementary groundwater is a losing business.

“You just can’t be profitable buying district water and growing avocados,” said Kendall, who has 350 acres (142 hectares) of cut flowers, which are widely grown in the region.

POSEIDON, NOT AGAIN

Water officials in San Diego County say higher water costs are coming for other parts of California and the West, even if desalination is less popular today than it once was. Recently, a California coastal commission denied a permit for Poseidon Water to build another decades-in-the-making desalination plant some 60 miles (97 kilometers) up the coast, in Huntington Beach. The rejection came after years of opposition from environmentalists.

The rest of the state has work to do, officials in San Diego County said, as climate change continues to intensify droughts and shrink the rivers feeding California’s reservoirs and the Colorado River.

“There’s no more cheap water available,” said Kerl.

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At meeting with the state’s largest urban water suppliers, Governor Newsom called for an increase in water conservation

www.gov.ca.gov | Contributed

Governor Gavin Newsom convened leaders from the state’s largest urban water suppliers, which cover two thirds of Californians, and water associations imploring them to take more aggressive actions to combat drought and better engage their customers to ensure all Californians are doing their part to save water.

After the last drought, local water agencies pushed for greater flexibility on water conservation and drought response based on regional needs and water supplies, arguing that tailored local approaches would be more effective than statewide mandates. Governor Newsom has embraced this localized approach, but voiced concerns given recent conservation levels around the state, and called on water agencies to step up efforts to reduce water use amid extreme drought conditions.

Governor Newsom warned that if this localized approach to conservation does not result in a significant reduction in water use statewide this summer, the state could be forced to enact mandatory restrictions.

The Governor will reconvene these same agencies in the next two months to provide an update on their progress.

“Every water agency across the state needs to take more aggressive actions to communicate about the drought emergency and implement conservation measures,” said Governor Gavin Newsom. “Californians made significant changes since the last drought but we have seen an uptick in water use, especially as we enter the summer months. We all have to be more thoughtful about how to make every drop count.”

The Governor also called upon local water agencies to submit water use data more frequently and increase transparency in order to more accurately measure whether California is meeting water conservation goals. In addition, the Governor called on local water agencies to increase education and outreach efforts to Californians on the urgency of the crisis.

In July 2021, Governor Newsom called on Californians to voluntarily reduce their water use by 15%. At the end of March 2022 after the state failed to meet its 15% goal, the Governor issued an Executive Order calling on local water agencies to escalate their response to the ongoing drought. Tomorrow, at the Governor’s direction, the State Water Resources Control Board will vote on a statewide ban on watering of non-functional turf in the commercial, industrial and institutional sectors as well as regulations requiring local agencies to implement water use restrictions amid the possibility that water supplies may be up to 20% lower due to extreme weather. Currently, local water agencies have implemented restrictions on about half of California’s population. If the Board’s regulations are approved, every urban area of California will be covered by a local plan to reduce water use.

Banning watering of decorative lawns would save between 156,000 acre-feet and 260,000 acre-feet per year, the equivalent of water used by 780,000 households in a year.

The climate crisis has resulted in the western United States experiencing one of the most extensive and intense droughts on record. January through March were the driest first three months in the state’s recorded history, the state’s largest reservoirs are currently at half of their historical averages, and the state’s snowpack is just 14 percent of average.

The Governor’s California Blueprint proposed this year would invest an additional $2 billion for drought response, which includes $100 million in addition to a previous investment of $16 million this fiscal year for a statewide education and communications effort on drought. These investments build on the previous $5.2 billion three-year investment in the state’s drought response and water resilience through the California Comeback Plan (2021).

California’s master water plan, the Water Resilience Portfolio, is a comprehensive vision to build water resilience containing more than 142 separate detailed actions to be taken by state agencies to ensure that California’s water systems can cope with rising temperatures, shrinking snowpacks, rising sea levels and more intense and frequent periods of drought. In March 2021, the Administration released the 2012-2016 Drought Report, which contains lessons learned by state agencies during the last drought.

The state is calling on Californians to take immediate action to avoid a crisis, including:

• Limiting outdoor watering – cutting back by even just one day a week can save you up to 20% more water.

• Taking shorter showers. Going to a 5 minute shower to save up to 12.5 gallons per shower when using a water-efficient shower head.

• Taking showers instead of baths – a bath uses up to 2.5 times the amount of water as a shower.

• Using a broom instead of a hose to clean outdoor areas to save 6 gallons of water every minute.

• Washing full loads of clothes to save 15-45 gallons of water per load.

More water saving tips can be found at www.saveourwater.com. For the latest on drought, please visit drought.ca.gov.

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California’s water use jumped dramatically in March, state officials said Tuesday, as one of the driest stretches on record prompted a wave of homeowners to start watering their lawns earlier than usual in defiance of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s pleas for conservation amid a severe drought.

Newsom last summer asked residents to voluntarily cut water use by 15% compared to 2020 as climate change intensified a drought that threatened to drain the state’s reservoirs to dangerously low levels. Water conservation increased gradually through December, aided by some intense fall and early winter storms that reduced water demand.

But the first three months of 2022 have been the driest on record. Californians averaged 77 gallons (291.48 liters) per person per day in March, an 18.9% increase from March 2020. It’s the most water Californians have used in March since the middle of the previous drought in 2015. Statewide, water consumption is up just 3.7% since July compared to 2020, woefully short of Newsom’s 15% goal

Newsom responded on Tuesday by pledging to spend $100 million on a statewide advertising campaign to encourage water conservation. The campaign will include traditional radio and television spots while also paying people with large followings on social media to urge others to save water. He also promised to spend an $211 million to conserve more water in state government buildings by replacing plumbing fixtures and irrigation controls.

“Conservation actions are most impactful when they account for the diversity of conditions and supply needs around the state,” Newsom’s office said in a statement. “We are hopeful these actions will significantly contribute to the state’s overall water reduction goals as outdoor watering is one of the biggest single users of water.”

In Los Angeles — the second most populous city in the U.S. — Mayor Eric Garcetti said residents and businesses would have to reduce outdoor landscape watering from three days per week to two. Irrigation makes up 35% of the city’s water use.

Urban water use accounts for a relatively small percentage of California’s overall water use when compared to agriculture. But the state’s farmers have been suffering, too, as state and federal officials have reduced water allocations to zero in some places.

Demand for non-agriculture water is typically low in March, which comes near the end of the state’s rainy season. It can sometimes rain so much in March that it makes up for the rest of the year, a phenomenon officials have dubbed the “March miracle.”

But California got just 1 inch (2.54 centimeters) of precipitation in March while the temperatures were 3 degrees warmer than usual, further increasing water demand.

A series of April storms have improved things slightly since March. Still, most of the state’s reservoirs are well below their historic averages. The reservoirs depend on melted snow from the Sierra Nevada to replenish them for the dry summer months. But the statewide snowpack was at just 27% of its historic average as of April 1.

“This is what we have. This is what we’re going to get. We can’t expect anything significant past this date,” said Jeanine Jones, manager for interstate resources with the California Department of Water Resources.

State officials said 20% of the wells they monitor are reporting all-time low water levels, while nearly half of them have less than 10% of their historic averages. In some cases, the state is helping to haul water to small communities that don’t have access to it. State officials said they were assisting 687 households through a small community drought relief program.

Some larger communities were also in danger. Lindsay, a city of about 13,000 people in California’s Central Valley, was projected to run out of water on July 1. Federal officials approved an additional allocation for the city, which they now say will have enough water to last through February — provided they continue to conserve.

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“This is something that we will see in the future, it’s part of our climate,” says Dr. Julie Kalansky, a Climate Scientist with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “It’s part of the Mediterranean climate. It’s part of California. So we will continue to have these droughts.”

Drought caused water issues as recently as 2015. During that dry spell, then-Gov. Jerry Brown instituted a 25% cut in water usage. People turned off their sprinklers, replaced their lawns with artificial grass, and began using more efficient, low-flow shower heads, toilets and faucets.

This month, Gov. Gavin Newsom asked Californians to cut their own water usage by 15%, although he did not make it mandatory.

Stricter restrictions could cause problems in the housing market.

Dr. Tom Corringham, a Research Economist from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, says coastal areas may not see the drought impact housing. But, he says rural and inland communities that depend on groundwater will be a different story.

“In some parts of the state it is becoming increasingly difficult to get hookups for water in certain communities because of the drought conditions,” he says.

A drought-related drop in new housing developments would cut into years of improvement when it comes to building homes in San Diego.

Data from the Real Estate Research Council of Southern California shows new home construction has gone up significantly since the recession (see chart above).

During the last drought, as restrictions went in place, nearly 10,000 homes were built in San Diego County in both 2015 and 2016.

In 2020, that number was just under 9,500.

While those numbers are high, experts say they’re just a drop in the bucket compared to what the area needs to keep pace with demand. Some housing experts say about 20,000 homes need to be built in San Diego every year.

Building more houses requires more water.

“It’s a serious problem,” says Dr. Norm Miller, a Real Estate Professor at USD. “But it’s solvable.”

Miller believes San Diego already has enough water to build that many new homes. But he thinks the State and Federal Governments need to make housing a priority over other water users, like agriculture.

Miller believes the state should reallocate water away from farming, especially from growing produce that uses a lot of water, like rice and almond trees.

“I don’t really buy into the fact that we have a water shortage,” Dr. Miller says. “We have a political problem.” Miller also says California can diversify its water sources to be more drought tolerant.

San Diego is on the cutting edge of doing that. The region already has desalination plants in Carlsbad and Chula Vista, pulling water from the ocean.

Several cities in San Diego County have also started “Pure Water” programs, where used water is recycled into potable “grey” water.

“I think San Diego has been thoughtful and proactive in what we have,” says Dr. Kalansky. “Not just in terms of natural resources, but other new technologies that we can use to make ourselves more resilient.”

Dr. Corringham adds that new homes could be built with less landscaping, or even drought tolerant yards that use the areas natural ecology as a guide.

“If you go and visit Arizona, for example, and you look at the front yards there, it’s all desert plants,” he says. “Somewhere like Southern California, it is basically a coastal desert ecosystem.”

Doing all of that could make San Diego’s housing market more drought resistant.

But the drought could still have an impact. Dry climates make wildfires more dangerous. That means any homes build in the wildland/urban interface areas at risk. Building in fire-prone areas could be restricted, and any homes that are built in those parts of the county would be expensive to insure.

Dr. Kalansky and Dr. Corringham also say prolonged drought is only one aspect of climate change that could impact the housing market.

As temperatures rise, it could get too hot to build inland or in desert areas. And as sea levels rise, homes along the coasts will be put in jeopardy.

Jared Aarons | Contributed

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Its receding shoreline has caused an ecological crisis as exposed silt is blown into surrounding areas.

From the air, brown furrowed fields stretch as far as the eye can see and the sun beats down on an almost evaporated canal that looks like a gaping wound.

Dusty former boat launches have fallen into disuse, too far from the waters they once served.

Drought has scorched much of the West, prompting farmers in California to leave fields fallow and triggering water and energy rationing in several states.

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FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — For thousands of years, an Arizona tribe relied on the Colorado River’s natural flooding patterns to farm. Later, it hand-dug ditches and canals to route water to fields.

Now, gravity sends the river water from the north end of the Colorado River Indian Tribes reservation through 19th century canals to sustain alfalfa, cotton, wheat, onions and potatoes, mainly by flooding the fields.

Some of those fields haven’t been producing lately as the tribe contributes water to prop up Lake Mead to help weather a historic drought in the American West. The reservoir serves as a barometer for how much water Arizona and other states will get under plans to protect the river serving 40 million people.

The Colorado River Indian Tribes and another tribe in Arizona played an outsized role in the drought contingency plans that had the state voluntarily give up water. As Arizona faces mandatory cuts next year in its Colorado River supply, the tribes see themselves as major players in the future of water.

“We were always told more or less what to do, and so now it’s taking shape where tribes have been involved and invited to the table to do negotiations, to have input into the issues about the river,” first-term Colorado River Indian Tribes Chairwoman Amelia Flores said.

Lake Mead on the Nevada-Arizona border has fallen to its lowest point since it was filled in the 1930s. Water experts say the situation would be worse had the tribe not agreed to store 150,000 acre-feet in the lake over three years. A single acre-foot is enough to serve one to two households per year. The Gila River Indian Community also contributed water.

The Colorado River Indian Tribes received $38 million in return, including $30 million from the state. Environmentalists, foundations and corporations fulfilled a pledge last month to chip in the rest.

Kevin Moran of the Environmental Defense Fund said the agreement signaled a new approach to combating drought, climate change and the demand from the river.

“The way we look at it, the Colorado River basin is ground zero for water-related impacts of climate change,” he said. “And we have to plan for the river and the watersheds that climate scientists tell us we’re probably going to have, not the one we might wish for.”

Tribal officials say the $38 million is more than what they would have made leasing the land. The Colorado River Indian Tribes stopped farming more than 15 square miles (39 square kilometers) to make water available, tribal attorney Margaret Vick said.

“There’s an economic tradeoff as well as a conservation tradeoff,” she said.

While some fields are dry on the reservation, the tribe plans to use the money to invest in its water infrastructure. It has the oldest irrigation system built by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, dating to 1867, serving nearly 125 square miles (323 square kilometers) of tribal land.

The age of the irrigation system means it’s in constant need of improvements. Flores, the tribal chairwoman, said some parts of the 232-mile (373-kilometer) concrete and earthen canal are lined and others aren’t, so water is lost through seepage or cracks.

A 2016 study conducted by the tribe put the price tag to fix deficiencies at more than $75 million. It’s leveraging grants, funding from previous conservation efforts and other money to put a dent in the repairs, Flores said.

“If we had all the dollars in the world to line all the canals that run through our reservation, that would be a great project to complete,” Flores said. “I don’t think that’s going to happen in our lifetime.”

The tribe is made up of four distinct groups of Native Americans — Chemehuevi, Mohave, Hopi and Navajo. The reservation includes more than 110 miles (177 kilometers) of Colorado River shoreline with some of the oldest and most secure rights to the river in both Arizona and California.

While much of the water goes to farming, it also sustains wildlife preserves and the tribe’s culture.

“We can’t forget about the spiritual, the cultural aspect to the tribes on the Colorado River,” Flores said. “Our songs, clan songs, river and other traditional rites that happen at the river.”

The tribe can’t take full advantage of its right to divert 662,000 acre-feet per year from the Colorado River on the Arizona side because it lacks the infrastructure. It also has water rights in California.

An additional 46 square miles (121 square kilometers) of land could be developed for agriculture if the tribe had the infrastructure, according to a 2018 study on water use and development among tribes in the Colorado River basin.

“One day,” Flores said. “That’s the goal of our leaders who have come behind me, to use all of our water allocation and develop our lands that right now are not developed.”

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Teviston, a rural community in the San Joaquin Valley’s Turea County, has been struggling since early June when the only functioning well stopped working. Since then, the more than 700 residents there have been without running water.

During a virtual conference that addressed the area’s drought on Monday, Teviston Community Services District board member Frank Galaviz said sand in the well’s pump is believed to be the likely culprit of it breaking down. Galaviz told The Fresno Bee in an interview that the town could still be weeks away from having running water restored to households, as the well’s pump still needs essential parts for repair. For residents, he said surviving is “day-to-day.”

In the meantime, the people of Teviston have been relying on bottled water and on friends and family from neighboring communities. Galaviz said another looming concern is that he fears the well might have dried up. The district has been providing bottled water and five-gallon jugs to town residents. Tanker trucks deliver water from a town located 23 miles away to fill Teviston’s two water storage tanks.

“It’s just barely enough, and in some cases, not enough. Some families are larger than others,” Galaviz said. A temporary pump was also recently installed, though it reportedly only provides enough water pressure for some residents to flush their toilets.

Teviston Water Board Director Martin Correa spoke with Fresno’s KFSN-TV about the temporary pump. “It is not enough pressure from what we are usually used to getting, but our focus is to get water to the community and residents,” Correa said.

California’s State Water Board is in the process of building a modern well for Teviston, which Galaviz said during the virtual conference is expected to be finished by 2022 or 2023. He called for expediting the funding to finish the well, and also suggested the possibility of incorporating Teviston with nearby town Pixley to share its water system.

Teviston has experienced well failures before, with the most recent large-scale outage occurring in 2017. At the time, Teviston received state funding for emergency response and received water from Pixley.

The state could also offer Teviston relief in the future. In May, California Governor Gavin Newsom proposed $5.1 billion for drought preparedness, infrastructure and response. His four-year package allots $1.3 billion of the funding to go toward drinking water and wastewater infrastructure, especially for small and disadvantaged communities.

JON JACKSON | CONTRIBUTED

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PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Hundreds of farmers who rely on a massive irrigation project that spans the Oregon-California border learned Wednesday they will get a tiny fraction of the water they need amid the worst drought in decades, as federal regulators attempt to balance the needs of agriculture against federally threatened and endangered fish species that are central to the heritage of several tribes.

Oregon’s governor said the prolonged drought in the region has the “full attention of our offices,” and she is working with congressional delegates, the White House and federal agencies to find relief for those affected.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation briefed irrigators, tribes and environmental groups early Wednesday after delaying the decision a month. The federally owned irrigation project will draw 33,000 acre-feet of water from Upper Klamath Lake, which farmers said was roughly 8% of what they need in such a dry year. Water deliveries will also start June 1, two months later than usual, for the 1,400 irrigators who farm the 225,000 acres (91,000 hectares).

“The simple fact is it just hasn’t rained or snowed this year. We all know how dry our fields are, and the rest of the watersheds are in the same boat. … There is no easy way to say this,” Ben DuVal, president of the Klamath Water Users Association, told several dozen irrigators who gathered in Klamath Falls on Wednesday morning to hear the news.

“We all know what this is going to mean to our farms, our families and our community as a whole. For some of us, it may mean we’re not in business anymore next year.”

Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, said in a statement that Oregon water regulators are reviewing a plan to allow irrigators to pump more than twice as much groundwater per acre for their crops as allowed last year when drought reduced water supplies to a lesser extent.

“My message to the people of the Klamath Basin today is this: You are not alone,” said Brown, who has also declared a drought emergency in the region.

The Bureau of Reclamation set aside $15 million in immediate aid for irrigators, and irrigation districts at Wednesday’s meeting said they could expect some additional water from two other reservoirs and groundwater wells.

The seasonal allocations are the most dramatic development in the region since irrigation water was all but cut off to hundreds of farmers in 2001 amid another severe drought — the first time the interests of farmers took a backseat to those of fish and tribes.

The crisis made the rural farming region hundreds of miles from any major city a national political flashpoint and became a touchstone for Republicans who used the crisis to take aim at the Endangered Species Act, with one GOP lawmaker calling the irrigation shutoff a “poster child” for why changes were needed. A “bucket brigade” protest attracted 15,000 people who scooped water from the Klamath River and passed it, hand over hand, to a parched irrigation canal.

“My hope is we can all stick together and look to help each other where we can,” said DuVal, who added that his biggest fear is “outsiders coming in and using what we do here and using our crisis as a soapbox for them.”

The Yurok Tribe, one of the tribes affected by the water decision, said that even with the slashes to farmers’ water, they were facing a “catastrophic loss” of salmon this year.

“The Yurok Tribe is suffering significant economic damage on top of the extreme cultural and social impacts of failing fish runs,” said tribal Vice Chairman Frankie Myers.

Jay Weiner, an attorney for the Klamath Tribes, said the tribe was pursuing legal action over water releases that will impact fish and accused the federal government of precipitating the crisis by mismanaging water in the basin for decades.

“What we’re seeing with climate change increasingly — year after year after year — is that there is not enough water to go around. This crisis should not come as a surprise to anyone,” he said. “We have over-drafted our account, essentially, and now we have to deal with the consequences.”

The situation in the Klamath Basin was set in motion more than a century ago, when the U.S. government began drawing water from a network of shallow lakes and marshlands and funneling it into the dry desert uplands. Homesteads were offered by lottery to World War II veterans who grew hay, grain and potatoes and pastured cattle.

The project turned the region into an agricultural powerhouse — some of its potato farmers supply In ‘N Out burger — but permanently altered an intricate water system that spans hundreds of miles from southern Oregon to Northern California.

In 1988, two species of sucker fish were listed as endangered under federal law, and less than a decade later, coho salmon that spawn downstream from the reclamation project, in the lower Klamath River, were listed as threatened.

The water necessary to sustain the coho salmon downstream comes from Upper Klamath Lake — the main holding tank for the farmers’ irrigation system. At the same time, the sucker fish in the same lake need at least 1 to 2 feet (30 to 60 centimeters) of water covering the gravel beds that they use as spawning grounds.

In a year of extreme drought, there is not enough water to go around. This year, those on all sides of the issue predict a summer as bad — or worse — than 2001 as climate change takes hold.

Beyond the farmers’ concerns, the Klamath Tribes sued the Bureau of Reclamation on Tuesday to ensure minimum water levels in Upper Klamath Lake for the sucker fish and asked for a temporary restraining order from the court. That order, if granted, would mean less water flowing down the Klamath River for the coho salmon that are critical to the Yurok Tribe. The tribe is already documenting a proliferation of worms that carry a bacteria fatal to salmon in the lower river because of historically low water levels.

The Klamath Tribes said in a statement after filing their lawsuit that it was “beyond repugnant” that the mismanagement of the ecosystem in the basin forced them to court, potentially jeopardizing a fish key to another tribe’s heritage.

“Our hearts break that we have been forced into this position,” Klamath Tribes council member Clay Dumont said. “We know how important the salmon are to our tribal brothers and sisters.”

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