The Great California Groundwater Grab

Short Wave

NPR

Nature, News, Astronomy, Science, Daily News, Life Sciences

4.7 • 6.5K Ratings

🗓️ 23 July 2021

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

California is in the middle of a terrible drought. The rivers are running low, and most of its farmers are getting very little water this year from the state's reservoirs and canals. And yet, farming is going on as usual.

NPR food and agriculture correspondent Dan Charles explains how farmers have been using wells and underground aquifers to water their crops. But that's all set to change. California is about to put dramatic limits on the amount of water farmers can pump from their wells, and people have some pretty strong feelings about it.

Email the show at shortwave@npr.org.

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:04.6	Hey everybody, Emily Quang here with NPR's Food and Agriculture Correspondent Dan Charles.
0:11.4	Hello Dan.
0:12.4	Hi Emily, I have a riddle for you.
0:14.8	Oh, fun.
0:15.8	Love riddles, go on.
0:17.7	Tell me how these two facts can both be true, okay?
0:21.5	Fact number one, California is in the middle of a terrible drought.
0:25.5	The rivers are running low.
0:27.0	Most of its farmers are getting very little water this year from the states reservoirs and canals.
0:31.9	This year there is no allotment because there is no water.
0:35.3	Oof, yeah, the drought in the west, it's gotten really bad.
0:38.1	Okay, fact number two, on most of the states farms, this is pretty much the typical scene.
0:44.9	We're harvesting watermelons and onions and carrots and garlic right now and we've got hundreds
0:49.7	of people out here on the farm and we've got trucks leaving.
0:53.8	Farming is just going on as usual despite the drought.
0:56.8	So this is the riddle, what makes this possible?
1:00.2	Hmm, maybe the farmers found a secret source of water somewhere else.
1:05.2	Wait, did you look ahead in the script?
1:08.0	I wanted to know where this was all going.
1:10.4	Okay, you are absolutely right.
1:13.4	Farmers in California have turned to their wells.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.