California Drought: Parts of Central Valley sinking 2 inches a month - San Jose Mercury News

Parts of the great San Joaquin Valley are sinking almost 2 inches every month, as the state's subterranean water supply is being drained to record lows by farms and towns coping with the devastating drought. On Wednesday, the most comprehensive study yet of the problem revealed the startling pace and extent of the damage: NASA satellites found the ground subsiding almost everywhere in the 140-mile stretch between Modesto and Tulare, with some of the... Even worse, the sinking is threatening the stability of the California Aqueduct, as satellite images show a bowl of land between Huron and Kettleman City plunged about 14 inches less than half a mile from the state's great canal. "We are pumping more than we are recharging," Mark Cowin, California Department of Water Resources director, lamented in a Wednesday news briefing to release data collected for the state by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Another report released Wednesday warned of the drought's calamitous impact if California's historic dryspell continues for another two to three years. Rural low-income communities, which rely on shallow wells for their water supply, and the environment will suffer the most acute affects, according to a new Public Policy Institute of California study. Source: www.mercurynews.com