Making Water More Liquid

The water wells in the rich farmland of California’s Central Valley keep getting deeper, and the pumps keep getting more powerful. Farmers have agreed to reduce their usage of surface water, but nothing stops them from looking for water beneath their properties. So, in the fourth year of a devastating drought, down they go, pursuing a water table that keeps receding. So much water is being pumped out that the land is subsiding, damaging bridges and canals. One Central Valley cotton farmer has drilled five 2,500-foot wells, each the depth of two Empire State Buildings, the San Jose Mercury News reports. It’s literally a race to the bottom.

What’s going on in the Central Valley is a tragedy of the commons. As with overfishing or overgrazing, the drilling farmers overexploited a free, shared resource even before the drought struck. Individually, their logic is impeccable. Collectively, it could be disastrous. In that respect, the Central Valley is a microcosm of an increasingly parched world that hasn’t learned how to manage one of its most precious resources. A NASA study released in June said that “about one-third of earth’s largest groundwater basins are being rapidly depleted by human consumption.”