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| photo by Steve Barbour |
Doubt there is a drought? While people are watering their lawns (gaw!) and living in ignorant bliss, one look at Folsom Lake will astound you. A couple of friends and I went out there to take photographs. Mouths agape, we witnessed a post apocalyptic world, with people wandering the barren landscape with their dogs and children. Overhead, wispy clouds mocked the scene below.
A veritable moonscape, water levels are 15 percent of normal. It puts a whole new spin on the Tunnels project, which would divert water from Northern California to Southern California, land of deserts. Why it took the Governor so long to pronounce a water emergency in the state is beyond me....unless he wanted to protect the Tunnels project.
Mormon Island is now accessible by foot. What remains there are ruins of a cemetery that was moved when plans to create the lake took place.
The rangers we spoke to talked about how many people have come to view the dry lake bed. The park service is raking in the money (good for them) in a season where they usually get very few visitors.
A sobering trip, for sure. So, whether you live north or south, you'd better be taking this drought thing seriously. Fill buckets of shower water to flush your toilet or water your plants. There is a meteorological rumor that we may get rain later this week. Even if we do, we're still deep in mucky ground that is Folsom Lake.
One of the best articles I read about the drought was this one in the Santa Cruz Sentinel:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.santacruzsentinel.com/ci_24993601/california-drought-past-dry-periods-have-lasted-more?IADID=Search-www.santacruzsentinel.com-www.santacruzsentinel.com
Very informative. One of the things that blows my mind is that agribusiness uses 80% of all the water in the state. Even all 38 million of us only use 20%. That's CRAZY. We are going to get some rain. It'll be interesting to see what comes our way in February. That's the second wettest month on average. I'm hoping for a few good storms, but not flooding deluges. Oy.
Brutal and creepy -- water shortages do freak me out. It rained today, though, and perhaps we all need to do some sort of rain dance along with conserving --
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