SCENE CHANGES: The Unmaking of Place

JOHN STEINBECK
The Grapes of Wrath

They drove through Tehachapi in the morning glow, and the sun came up behind them, and then — suddenly they saw the great valley below them. Al jammed on the brake and stopped in the middle of the road, and, "Jesus Christ! Look!" he said. The vineyards, the orchards, the great flat valley, green and beautiful, the trees set in rows, and the farm houses.

And Pa said, "God Almighty!" The distant cities, the little towns in the orchard land, and the morning sun, golden on the valley. A car honked behind them. Al pulled to the side of the road and parked.

"I want ta look at her." The grain fields golden in the morning, and the willow lines, the eucalyptus trees in rows.

Pa sighed, "I never knowed they was anything like her." The peach trees and the walnut groves, and the dark green patches of oranges. And red roofs among the trees, and barns — rich barns. Al got out and stretched his legs.

He called, "Ma — come look. We're there!"

Ruthie and Winfield scrambled down from the car, and then they stood, silent and awestruck, embarrassed before the great valley. The distance was thinned with haze, and the land grew softer and softer in the distance. A windmill flashed in the sun, and its turning blades were like a little heliograph, far away. Ruthie and Winfield looked at it, and Ruthie whispered, "It's California."

Winfield moved his lips silently over the syllables. "There's fruit," he said aloud.

— John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath,
New York: The Viking Press, 1939

 

Two Landsat images showing farms in the San Joaquin Valley, between Fresno and Bakersfield. The first is from July 12, 2003, a few years before the drought began. The second is from July 12, 2009, in the third year of drought. The dark areas are unplanted fields. The dark band running up the left side is the California Aqueduct.

To explore a 30-year timelapse record of this area using Earth Engine, an easy to use Google-sponsored web tool, click on the What’s New tab above for the link and a few tips, and enter Bakersfield CA in the Earth Engine search box. Drag and zoom to explore the area.

To take a look at variable water levels in Lake Mead, the largest reservoir funneling water to the Central Valley (and the largest reservoir in the U.S.), enter Lake Mead AZ in the Earth Engine search box. Zoom for closeup views.

To the Joad family, refugees from the exhausted Dust Bowl farmland, with their memories of dessicated soil and the harrowing Mojave Desert they had just passed through, California's San Joaquin Valley must have seemed a paradise beyond their imagining. Steinbeck's descriptive powers are fully a match for the scene below them, each detail further evidence of the goodness of the land; and Winfield's child's-eye view pairs the mystique of the idea of California with the very essence of the real: "There's fruit."

The Joads entered the San Joaquin Valley near Bakersfield, at its southern end. Together with the Sacramento Valley to the north, it comprises the Central Valley, the great flat basin between the Sierra and the Coastal Range, its fertile soil washed down from both sides and enriched by the vegetation of the ages. The 400-mile-long Central Valley is the world's largest agricultural area. It contains nine of the nation's top ten producing agricultural counties, and is the nation's largest supplier of dairy products and the source of over a third of its vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts.¹ Yet most of the annual precipitation in the San Joaquin falls in the winter, leaving the valley relatively dry during the growing months. Thus all of this bounty depends on the Central Valley Project, an enormous water management venture that includes 20 dams and reservoirs and 500 miles of major canals.²

The most recent episode in the area’s long history of water trouble began in 2007. It was a drought year, followed by another, and then another. Farmers pumped groundwater to make up for the lack of surface water. By early in 2009, with snowpack in the Sierra estimated at only 61% of normal,³ the state was promising farmers only 15% of their former water deliveries. By then the aquifer had dropped nearly 400 feet from its 1961 levels,⁴ and was thought unlikely to recover at any time in the near future.⁵ Farmers began fallowing their fields, and some almond and walnut farmers, knowing their trees would not survive and that dead and dying trees would bring disease and insects, began to fell groves that were the work of generations. Unemployment rates soared, along with social ills of all sorts. Looking ahead from his vantage point in early 2009, then U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu told the Los Angeles Times, "We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California." He said he couldn't see how the state's cities would survive.⁶

That year was followed by a more normal one in 2010, then a truly wet one in 2011, before plunging back into a drought that worsened over the next four years. With each additional year comes the stronger question of whether California could be in a megadrought, one lasting ten, twenty, or more years, with an occasional wetter year. A megadrought would not be new to the state, where the longest known drought, beginning around the year 850, lasted some 240 years. Cornell University Earth and Atmospheric Sciences professor Toby Ault calls megadroughts “the great white sharks of climate: powerful, dangerous, and hard to detect before it’s too late.” He calls them “a threat to civilization,” and foresees a strong likelihood that the southwestern US will experience one in this century.⁷

California’s water comes largely from the snowpack in the Sierra, which as it melts is stored in a system of reservoirs; and from the pumping of groundwater from the underground aquifers. The impact of dry years on the snowpack is clear, with 2015 chalking up an April 1 reading of only 5% of average; and the levels in the reservoirs had dwindled to well under half of capacity, with some as low as 9%.

Farmers have tried to make up for massive shortages by increasing the pumping of groundwater. But even in wetter years, with the state’s needs persistently exceeding the supply, substantial groundwater is lost. The loss rises dramatically during drought years. Not only is the aquifer steadily depleted, but as water is lost, the land itself subsides. In this newly compacted geology, there is no longer as much space for water to collect, and it is no longer possible for the aquifer to recharge to its former levels.

Governor Jerry Brown declared a statewide drought emergency in 2014, restricting outdoor water use throughout the state. Then in April 2015 he issued a mandate requiring Californians to reduce water use by 25%, a mandate that residents have come close to meeting.

In the meantime, scientists ponder the best approaches to finding the water to keep both people and farm fields supplied. According to University of Arizona climate scientist Gregg Garfin, "If California suffered something like a multi-decade drought, the best-case scenario would be some combination of conservation, technological improvements (such as desalinization plants), multi-state cooperation on the drought, economic-based water transfers from agriculture to urban areas and other things like that to get humans through the drought. But there would be consequences for ecosystems and agriculture," he said.⁸

The respite brought to northern California by El Nino storms in early 2016 has, for the moment, given that part of the state a little breathing space. Yet there is much reservoir capacity to be made up, and El Nino won’t be around most years to help out.

With new restrictions on groundwater pumping scheduled to begin in 2020, excessive pumping will be reduced. But the state may lose as much as 300,000 acres of farmland. Without skillful land management, and urgent and thoroughgoing action on carbon emission reduction, this acreage could deteriorate into fields of dust that might indeed bring the Dust Bowl to mind. What actions are taken next may determine whether we will see a San Joaquin Valley that would make the Joads wonder why they had bothered to make the trip.