Chapter 7.

Title: Drought in California. Text under the title: California Department of Water Resources; Natural Resources Agency; State of California. A label of the letter A appears below the text under the title. The page is illustrated by a photo of a desert. The bottom of the page lists the sections of the brochure along the bottom, from left to right, as follows: Definition, California Drought, Cause & Prediction, Impact, Groundwater, Preparation.

In the left margin of the page is a Contents listing that reads: 2 Definition. 4 Droughts in California. 6 Drought Causation and Prediction. 8 Drought Impacts from a Water Use Perspective. 10 Droughts and Groundwater. 11 Preparing for Droughts and Mitigating Drought Impacts. At the top of the page is a tab that reads Defining Droughts. The text reads as follows: There are many ways that drought can be defined. Some ways can be quantified, such as meteorological drought (period of below normal precipitation) or hydrologic drought (period of below average runoff), others are more qualitative in nature (shortage of water for a particular purpose). There is no universal definition of when a drought begins or ends. Drought is a gradual phenomenon. Impacts of drought are typically felt first by those most dependent on annual rainfall, such as ranchers engaged in dryland grazing or rural residents relying on wells in low-yield rock formations. Drought impacts increase with the length of a drought, as carry-over supplies in reservoirs are depleted and water levels in [text continues on next page]. At the bottom of the page is a graph titled California Statewide Precipitation Oct–Sept (Water Year). The vertical axis is labeled Inches and ranges from 0 at the bottom to 40 at the top, in increments of 10. The horizontal axis is labeled Year and ranges from 1900 on the left to 2010 on the right, in increments of 10. The graph shows the data for each year in a bar graph. Also shown on the graph is a red line running across the graph. A note at the bottom of the graph says Red Line Denotes 11-year running mean. A label of the letter B appears to the left of the graph. A label of the letter C appears next to the running foot and folio.

[text continues from previous page]: ground water basins decline. Hydrologic impacts of drought to water agencies may be exacerbated by other factors such as regulatory requirements to protect environmental resources or to satisfy the rights of senior water right holders. From a water use perspective, drought is best defined by its impacts to a particular class of water users in a particular location. In this sense, drought is a very local circumstance. Hydrologic conditions constituting a drought for water users in one location may not constitute a drought for water users in a different part of the state or with a different water supply. California's extensive system of water supply infrastructure—reservoirs, managed groundwater basins, and inter-regional conveyance facilities—mitigates the effect of short-term (single year) dry periods. Individual water suppliers may use criteria such as rainfall/runoff, amount of water in storage, decline in groundwater levels, or expected supply from a water wholesaler to define their water supply conditions. Criteria used to identify statewide drought conditions—such as statewide runoff and reservoir storage—do not address these localized circumstances. And although California's water supply infrastructure provides a means to mitigate impacts for some water users, other types of impacts (increased wildfire risk, stress on vegetation and wildlife) remain. The pull quote reads: California's extensive system of water supply infrastructure—reservoirs, managed groundwater basins, and inter-regional conveyance facilities—mitigates the effect of short-term (single year) dry periods. Beside the text is a photo of a river boat on a river with a large rock formation in the background. The caption reads: Through water year 2012, Colorado River inflow into Lake Powell has been below average in 10 of the past 13 years, resulting in reduced storage levels in Lakes Mead and Powell. The Colorado has historically been a highly reliable water supply for Southern California despite long-term drought, thanks to its large reservoir storage capacity. Interim guidelines adapted in 2007 for Lower Basin shortages and coordinated operations of Lakes Mead and Powelll help reduce the risk of shortages in California. A label of the letter D appears to the left of the caption.

The article appears to be a screenshot from the Pacific Standard website. The text reads as follows: Title: Scorched. Text: Clara Orozco was leaning against the doorway of her apartment in a complex of two-story buildings that span several blocks in the Cantaloupe Capital of the World. Her arms were crossed over her chest and her curly auburn hair was tied tightly. It was a sunny day in November, during what is usually harvest season, and she wanted to know if I worked for the government. Since Clara—which isn't her real name—crossed the border last June and ended up in California, immigration officers had been stopping by every other week to check up on the 40-year-old would-be farmworker. I assured her I was just a writer. Then she explained: I can't leave the house because of this, lifting her ankle to show me a bulge the size of a bar of soap: a tracking bracelet, a term of her release from detention in Arizona. As a result, she said, I don't go to the store, don't go to church, and I can't work.The original plan had been for Clara's husband to come to California to work the melon and grape and almond harvests in the Central Valley based from the city of Mendota. When he'd earned enough for the couple to retire, he'd move back to his wife and kids in Lempira , Honduras. But then Clara got involved with local politics in Central America. She started supporting El Partido Libre, an opposition party, and the threats began. Strangers would call and tell her that if she didn't stop organizing political gatherings, she and her daughter would be kidnapped and killed. Callers told Clara they'd find her and her daughter—whom I'll call Melanie—wherever they went in Honduras. [The next text is a pull quote and appears in bold]: Across the Golden State, fields lay dry and fallow, crops unplanted, no work crews in sight. Fear hasn't been the only thing keeping Clara inside. [bold ends] Text: We stood outside of Clara's apartment while 13-year-old Melanie , who had just returned home from school, brushed her hair until it gleamed. Occasionally a van pulled through the lot and a mud-caked worker or two trickled out: the lucky ones who'd found a job that day."

The Scorched article text continues: A bad thing had been happening, too. Across the Golden State, fields lay dry and fallow, crops unplanted. Fear hasn't been the only thing keeping Clara inside. Of all the state's agricultural regions, California's Central Valley has taken the brunt of the drought that has gripped the state for more than three years. A University of California-Davis study estimates that the state lost $800 million in crop revenue last year. And more growers have been relying on groundwater, a rapidly diminishing and increasingly pricey resource. Farmers have left 428,000 acres, or five percent, of the state's irrigated cropland unplanted, and between January and May 2014, there were 17,100 fewer seasonal jobs than the year before. My husband has been working the fields here for 20 years, Clara said. He worked a few days this week in the almond groves, but other than that, there's been very little work. Clara's court date was set for this spring, and she'd hired a lawyer—for several thousand dollars—to help her apply for political asylum. The evening had grown cold as we spoke, and I fiddled with my scarf. You aren't wearing a camera, are you? she asked suddenly. I unraveled the scarf as proof. Shaking her head and waving for me to put my scarf back on, she said, I know, I'm sorry. She looked down at the ground. Through the upstairs window, her roommate's baby cried. Across the lot, a young man tinkered beneath the hood of his truck, pumping bachata music from a radio as an older gentleman in a boisterous cowboy hat lumbered beneath a street lamp. I asked Clara what she will do if she gets papers. If you get papers, you can do anything, she said dreamily. I could move to another state, or work in a restaurant. She wouldn't be stuck in the dry pit of California, waiting for rain.