Social Droughts and Water Wars: The Never-Ending Californian Saga.

Boarding a flight so no time but take 80 (half water use per person per day in gallons) and multiply it by the number of people in California. Then take that amount and figure out you need a 40 ft in Diameter pipeline. Now image in energy required to move all of that water.

Safe travels.

Yes, there is a cost, but we do massive water moves via aqueduct in California already. We can pipeline billions of gallons of oil, but not water? I was just thinking we could abate the flooding of the Missouri River while supplying water to the West at the same time.
 
Safe travels.

Yes, there is a cost, but we do massive water moves via aqueduct in California already. We can pipeline billions of gallons of oil, but not water? I was just thinking we could abate the flooding of the Missouri River while supplying water to the West at the same time.

Thank mate.

I think we could figure out something to handle the flooding to contain it but since the Mississippi is such a vital artery for shipping, any suggestion of changes to its water table will be met with anger.
 
Thank mate.

I think we could figure out something to handle the flooding to contain it but since the Mississippi is such a vital artery for shipping, any suggestion of changes to its water table will be met with anger.

The Missouri River.... I don't think we can mess with the Mississippi without real bad economic consequences as you suggest. It is a huge shipping lane for the U.S.
 
The Missouri River.... I don't think we can mess with the Mississippi without real bad economic consequences as you suggest. It is a huge shipping lane for the U.S.

I thought the Missouri feeds into the Miss? I could be very wrong.
 
I have a simple question. Why is it that we have hundreds of oil pipelines, but no significant water pipelines from say the ever flooding Missouri River to Lake Powell that feeds the Colorado River and SoCal? We have a huge Infrastructure Bill and water is not addressed at all.

The formerly ever-flooding Missouri River is also drying up.

And as I have said many times in the thread, the only real solution for the droughts in California is for us to be self-sufficient through Water Reclamation/Recycling (which is actually quite simple, economical, AND proven in Orange County), not finding more outside water sources to steal (which is getting more and more difficult).

If every county in SoCal have their own Reclaimation facility, that's billions of gallons recycled and reused each day, water that they don't have to drain from NorCal or other States.
 
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I have a simple question. Why is it that we have hundreds of oil pipelines, but no significant water pipelines from say the ever flooding Missouri River to Lake Powell that feeds the Colorado River and SoCal? We have a huge Infrastructure Bill and water is not addressed at all.

California Democrats have used water as a political weapon for years. I am sure Nestle' is out of line, but it's far too political.

There isn’t profits in water like oil. Compare the price you currently pay for water vs the price of oil. A barrel of oil is 42 gallons.
 
The formerly ever-flooding Missouri River is also drying up.

And as I have said many times in the thread, the only real solution for the droughts in California is for us to be self-sufficient through Water Reclamation/Recycling (which is actually quite simple, economical, AND proven in Orange County), not finding more outside water sources to steal (which is getting more and more difficult).

If every county in SoCal have their own Reclaimation facility, that's billions of gallons recycled and reused each day, water that they don't have to drain from NorCal or other States.

You are correct. I live right by Fountain Valley that reclaims all the water. It's a world class facility.
 
I do it for you TS

Cliffs: giant corporations are scum without human morals
 
I do it for you TS

Cliffs: giant corporations are scum without human morals

Giant corporations? That's quite possibly 1% of the thread.

I would recommend that you'd actually read the discussion to see what else you'd learn.
 
And then what happens when there aren’t enough workers? I’ll wait. No I won’t. You’ll bitch about $3 oranges and California will still have water issues as an influx of Americans flock to CA to work the fields.

Illegals are in these states for a reason and it’s not for food stamps. They get paid more in CA than they do in Honduras and fill a role native born Americans won’t do. You’re probably from Canada so what the hell do you know.

for one im not american so i dont care what you pay for oranges plus theres this thing called a work visa...why not offer hondurans work visas then when the fruit is picked they return.

or continue overloading a dry state...
 
<TheWire1>

I'll act surprised.

Nestle guy said:
“Water is, of course, the most important raw material we have today in the world. It’s a question of whether we should privatize the normal water supply for the population. And there are two different opinions on the matter. The one opinion, which I think is extreme, is represented by the NGOs, who bang on about declaring water a public right. That means that as a human being you should have a right to water. That’s an extreme solution. The other view says that water is a foodstuff like any other, and like any other foodstuff it should have a market value. Personally, I believe it’s better to give a foodstuff a value so that we’re all aware it has its price, and then that one should take specific measures for the part of the population that has no access to this water, and there are many different possibilities there.”
 
There isn’t profits in water like oil. Compare the price you currently pay for water vs the price of oil. A barrel of oil is 42 gallons.
There is no profit in water, save for bottling and selling it, since it is a utility and you can't charge exorbitant prices for people that overuse it. Pricing is a rationing system.

We'd probably have greater access to water but even people on the right would feel uncomfortable with that solution.
 
Water policies in CA are screwed and good work on the TS for trying to make sense of it all. It always bothered me to see all those almond orchards along HWY 5 in NorCal in an area hot and dry, I'm guessing they put out of the Sacramento River. It takes over a gallon of water to grow one almond and they have huge orchards of trees. I'm wondering if those almond plants won't eventually be replaced by pot plants.
 
Water War you say...

Ethiopia's gigantic dam on the Nile may actually spark a war between it and Egypt.
 
Taking over public water supplies, using child labor, mislabeling products, preying on mothers in impoverished countries....
Nestle has got to be the winner for most evil corporation.
 
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Tensions rise in water battle along Oregon-California line
By GILLIAN FLACCUS | April 12, 2021​

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PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — One of the worst droughts in memory in a massive agricultural region straddling the California-Oregon border could mean steep cuts to irrigation water for hundreds of farmers this summer to sustain endangered fish species critical to local tribes.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees water allocations in the federally owned Klamath Project, is expected to announce this week how the season’s water will be divvied up after delaying the decision a month.

For the first time in 20 years, it’s possible that the 1,400 irrigators who have farmed for generations on 225,000 acres (91,000 hectares) of reclaimed farmland will get no water at all — or so little that farming wouldn’t be worth it. Several tribes in Oregon and California are equally desperate for water to sustain threatened and endangered species of fish central to their heritage.

A network of six wildlife refuges that make up the largest wetland complex west of the Mississippi River also depend on the project’s water, but will likely go dry this year.

The competing demands over a vanishing natural resource foreshadow a difficult and tense summer in a region where farmers, conservationists and tribes have engaged in years of legal battles over who has greater rights to an ever-dwindling water supply. Two of the tribes, the Klamath and Yurok, hold treaties guaranteeing the protection of their fisheries.

The last — and only — time that water was cut off for irrigators, in 2001, some family farms went out of business and a “bucket brigade” protest attracted 15,000 people who scooped water from the Klamath River and passed it, hand over hand, to a parched irrigation canal. The farmers-vs.-fish debate became a touchstone for Republicans who used the crisis to take aim at the Endangered Species Act, with one GOP lawmaker calling the irrigation shutoff a “poster child” for why changes were needed.

Tribes, for their part, say the fish are intertwined with their existence going back millennia. The Klamath believe the sucker fish — the first fish to return to the river after the winter — were created to provide for and sustain their people. Further downstream, the Yurok define the seasons by the fish runs.

“Some people say that because of those fish, our people are still here,” Don Gentry, chairman of the Klamath Tribes, said of the sucker fish. “They’re the canary in the coal mine. If they die out, it shows you that something is going very wrong here in the Basin.”

This season, amid a pandemic and an ever-deeper partisan divide, some in the region fear what’s to come.

“I think that the majority of people understand that acts of violence and protest isn’t going to be productive, but at the same time people down here are being backed into a corner,” said Ben DuVal, a farmer and president of the Klamath Water Users Association. “There’s a lot of farms that need a good stable year this year — myself included — and we’re not going to get that this year. I’m questioning the future.”

The situation in the Klamath Basin was set in motion more than a century ago, when the U.S. government began drawing water from a network of shallow lakes and marshlands and funneling it into the dry desert uplands. Homesteads were offered by lottery to World War II veterans who grew hay, grain and potatoes and pastured cattle.

The project turned the region into an agricultural powerhouse — some of its potato farmers supply In ’N Out burger — but permanently altered an intricate water system that spans hundreds of miles from southern Oregon to Northern California.

In 1988, two species of sucker fish were listed as endangered under federal law, and less than a decade later, coho salmon that spawn downstream from the reclamation project, in the lower Klamath River, were listed as threatened.

The water necessary to sustain the coho salmon downstream comes from Upper Klamath Lake — the main holding tank for the farmers’ irrigation system. At the same time, the sucker fish in the same lake need at least 1 to 2 feet (30 to 60 centimeters) of water covering the gravel beds that they use as spawning grounds.

In a year of extreme drought, there is not enough water to go around. Already this spring, the gravel beds that the sucker fish spawn in are dry and water gauges on Klamath River tributaries show the flow is the lowest in nearly a century. A decision late last summer to release water for irrigators, plus a hot, dry fall with almost no rain has compounded an already terrible situation.

“Given what I know about the hydrology, it’s just impossible for them to make everyone happy,” said Mike Belchik, a senior water policy analyst for the Yurok Tribe in Northern California. “There’s just not enough water.”

The Klamath Water Users Association sent a warning to its membership last week saying there would be “little to no water for irrigation from Upper Klamath Lake this year.” It is holding a public meeting Wednesday to provide more information.

Meanwhile, sucker fish in the Upper Klamath Lake are hovering near dried-up gravel beds, fruitlessly waiting for water levels to rise so they can lay eggs, said Alex Gonyaw, a senior fisheries biologist for the Klamath Tribes.

“You can see them sort of milling around out in the lake water. They’re desperately trying to get to this clean, constant lake water that they need,” he said. “It’s going to be like 2001. It’s going to be, hopefully not catastrophic but very, very stressful for people and fish.”

In 2001, the Bureau of Reclamation cut off water for 90 percent of the farms served by the Klamath Project when a drought cut water supply by two-thirds. The decision to do so went all the way to then-Vice President Dick Cheney and marked the first time farmers lost out to tribes and fish.

The water was held in Upper Klamath Lake for endangered sucker fish and allowed to run down the Klamath River for threatened coho salmon, rather than moving through the intricate series of canals to farms before dumping into wildlife refuges.

In previous severe droughts, including in the early 1990s, the federal government allowed more water to flow to farmers — a policy that contributed to the current crisis, said Jim McCarthy, of WaterWatch of Oregon.

Some are hoping this year’s crisis will help all the interested parties hash out a water-sharing compromise that could save both the ecology and economy of the Klamath River Basin before it collapses entirely.

“This is the reality of climate change. This is it. We can’t rely on historical water supplies anymore. We just can’t,” said Amy Cordalis, counsel for the Yurok Tribe and also a tribal member. “It’s no one’s fault. There’s no bad guy here — but I think we’d all do well to pray for rain.”

https://apnews.com/article/wildlife-fish-droughts-oregon-california-c202dd2986fb8b7fa2cf91695237c89c
 
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At California's Folsom Lake, a stark image of state's drought
By Jon Schlosberg, Lindsey Griswold and Anthony Rivas | June 10, 2021

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Empty boat docks sit on dry land at the Browns Ravine Cove area of drought-stricken Folsom Lake, currently at 37% of its normal capacity, in Folsom, Calif., May 22, 2021.
Folsom Lake, one of California's largest reservoirs, is crucial to providing water to the state's 40 million-plus residents.

But this year, relentless heat and dry conditions have evaporated the already below-average snowpack on the nearby Sierra Nevada Mountains that supply the reservoir, bringing the lake's water levels to previously unseen lows.

Speaking to ABC News' Zohreen Shah on what should be the lake's floor, Rich Preston-Lemay, the sector superintendent for Folsom Lake Park, said that under normal conditions, where they were standing would be 70 feet underwater.

"The water that we're on right now is used for a variety of things, from drinking water for some of the local municipalities [to] ... downstream on the American River for the fisheries habitat, and then for other water consumers downstream for farming, agricultural purposes," said Preston-Lemay, who's overseen the lake for nearly 20 years.

Worsening drought is currently affecting all of California, threatening cascading issues from farmers' yields to the state's hydroelectric power plants, which could then cause rolling blackouts statewide and wildfires that displace entire communities.

California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot said the drought is caused by climate change, and that it's no longer a phenomenon they are solely trying to preempt.

"We recognize that we are in a race against time to protect our communities and our natural places from the effects of climate change," he said.

"Climate change impacts have become a matter of protecting communities in California -- worsening wildfire risk, worsening drought, extreme heat," he continued. "We used to think about preparing for climate change impacts as sort of a future planning exercise for coming decades. Now, we're actually responding to it as the public safety imperative."

Crowfoot spoke to ABC News last year after an exchange at a briefing near Sacramento between him and former President Donald Trump about the effects of climate change on the raging wildfires that spread throughout the state.

"We want to work with you to really recognize the changing climate and what it means to our forests, and actually work together with that science," Crowfoot told Trump, who has expressed skepticism about climate change. "That science is gonna be key because if we ignore that science and sort of put our head in the sand and think it's all about vegetation management, we're not going to succeed together protecting Californians."

Crowfoot said that nearly a year later, he's focused on solutions.

"We do have to take action," he said. "We cannot stick our heads in the sand. We have to be driven by science and facts, and actually make the investments and make the decisions we need to both reduce carbon pollution and combat climate change, and also protect our communities in the meantime."

Crowfoot said the state is currently in its second drought season this year. If it continues, he expects the state to take drastic measures like it did in 2015, when it recommended several water-saving measures, like asking people to refrain from flushing their toilets as often.

"If this drought … lasts into a third dry winter, those types of restrictions would certainly be possible, if not expected," he said.

Just this week, Santa Clara County, one of the state's largest, announced that it would restrict water use and that people could face fines for overuse.

California's wine industry, meanwhile, has been suffering from the persistent water shortages. The environmental issues have forced them to adapt. Susan Tipton, winemaker and owner of Acquiesce Winery, said they've already been preparing after her harvest dropped by 25% last season.

"It's a worry," she said. "I wonder if my granddaughter will be able to walk through this vineyard one day and make wine from it."

She said she recently donated a portion of her 18 acres of land to the University of California, Davis so that researchers could study which grapes thrive the most in the changing weather conditions.

To preserve the art of making wine, she said many of the local farmers have placed a tax on themselves, hoping to use the money in part to meet each month with climate scientists.

"It's disturbing," she said. "But I think you have to put a spin on it to think long term and what you can do."
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/calif...age-states-drought-disaster/story?id=78209909
 
California’s Drought Is So Bad That Almond Farmers Are Ripping Out Trees
The famed farming valleys of California are being swept into what feels like permanent dryness, raising the specter of food inflation.
By Elizabeth Elkin | June 23, 2021

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Water is so scarce on the Gemperle’s orchard in California’s Central Valley, they’ve been forced to let a third of their acreage go dry.

Christine Gemperle is about to do what almond farmers fear the most: rip out her trees early.

Water is so scarce on her orchard in California’s Central Valley that she’s been forced to let a third of her acreage go dry. In the irrigated areas, the lush, supple trees are dewy in the early morning, providing some relief from the extreme heat. Walking over to the dry side, you can actually feel the temperature start to go up as you’re surrounded by the brittle, lifeless branches that look like they could crumble into dust.

“Farming’s very risky,” said Gemperle, who will undertake the arduous process of pulling out all her trees on the orchard this fall, replacing them with younger ones that don’t need as much moisture. It’s a tough decision. Almond trees are typically a 25-year investment, and if it weren’t for the drought, these trees could’ve made it through at least another growing season, if not two. Now, they’ll be ground up into mulch.

“I don’t think a lot of people understand just how risky this business is, and it’s a risk that’s associated with something you can’t control at all: The weather,” she said.
It’s a stark reminder of the devastating toll that the drought gripping the West will take on U.S. agriculture, bringing with it the risk of food inflation. Dairy farms are sending cows to slaughter as they run short of feed and water. Fields are sitting bare, because it’s too costly to irrigate the rows of cauliflower, strawberries and lettuce that usually flourish in abundance. Meanwhile, fieldworkers are being put into life-threatening conditions as the brutal temperatures increase the risk of heat stroke and dehydration.

The famed farming valleys of California were once romanticized as an Eden for the Joad family escaping the Oklahoma dust bowl in John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath.” The state’s more than 69,000 farms and ranches supply over a third of U.S. vegetables and two-thirds of its fruit. The annual almond harvest accounts for about 80% of global production. But after years of what seems like permanent dryness, some growers are starting to wonder if Steinbeck’s story will start playing out in reverse, with unstoppable drought posing an existential threat to the future of ag

“Are we going to be able to farm here?,” asks Sara Tashker, who’s worked at Green Gulch Farm just outside of San Francisco for almost 20 years. This is the first time she’s ever seen the reservoirs the farm depends on to water its lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage, not fill with winter rain.

With so little water, there was no way around planting less, so total acreage got cut by about 25% from last year. And the crops are getting put into the ground closer together, in about half the typical amount of space. It’s an attempt to make the root structure denser and keep moisture in the soil. The limited spacing means fieldworkers are having to cultivate by hand, instead of using tractors. But in the midst of an early heat wave, Tashker can’t help but wonder if the new methods will be enough.

“Is there going to be enough water? Are we going to be able to adapt? Is it going to be too dangerous to live in these fire ecosystems? Is this just going to become too expensive?,” she said.

Of course, this isn’t just a California problem. Climate change is here and it’s wreaking havoc on food production across the world. This year in Brazil, the world’s biggest exporter of coffee, sugar and orange juice, the rainy season came and went with very little rain. Water reserves are running so low that farmers are worried they’ll run out of supplies that are needed to keep crops alive over the next several months, the typical dry period. In recent years, drought has plagued wheat growers in Europe and livestock producers in Australia, while torrential downpours flooded rice fields and stands of palm oil trees in Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia.

All told, about 21% of growth for agricultural output has been lost since the 1960s because of climate change, according to research led by Cornell University and published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Meanwhile, this year’s production problems come at a time when the world is already saddled with the highest global grocery costs in about a decade and hunger is on the rise. Extreme weather is combining with the economic shocks of Covid-19 and political conflicts to leave 34 million people on the brink of famine, United Nations’ World Food Programme has warned.

For California, “over time, unless something changes in regard to weather patterns, ultimately it’s gonna be fewer, probably larger farming operations controlling most of the water,” said Curt Covington, senior director of institutional credit AgAmerica Lending LLC, one of the largest non-bank agricultural lenders in the U.S.

“And the price of those commodities would typically increase,” he said.

California gets the vast majority of its precipitation during the winter months, when the state’s mountains get blanketed with snow and rain fills the reservoirs that farms and hydropower plants depend on. This past winter, the moisture never came. From May 2020 to April 2021, the state posted its driest-ever 12-month period.

Meteorologists have a saying: Drought begets drought. When land is dry, the sun’s energy is focused on heating the air instead of evaporating water. That raises temperatures, which leads to more dryness, which allows drought to spread even further. That’s why the brutally parched conditions of this year could spell additional trouble down the road, especially if next winter isn’t a wet one.

“It’s been a couple of years of pretty solid drying, and so the whole region out there, from a fruit and vegetable perspective, is at risk,” said Drew Lerner, president of World Weather Inc. in Kansas.“ A lot of pressure is going to be put on for better rainfall during the winter next year, in order to prevent a larger crisis.”

California’s drought could have significant impacts on both the production and price of crops, according to analysis by Gro Intelligence. Tree crops, like almonds, avocados and citrus, are particularly vulnerable to dry conditions. It’s still too early to say with any certainty how much prices could increase, but avocados might be providing an early warning sign -- they’re already up about 10% from last year. That could mean that prices for nuts and even products like almond milk could increase down the road if harvests continue to be constrained.

Meanwhile, almond farmer Gemperle is ready to invest $250,000 on a “Cadillac” water system that will more efficiently irrigate about 92 acres of her orchard. Between that and the younger trees getting planted, she sees an opportunity for water savings on her farm, at least for a few seasons.

Still, it’s unclear when she’ll recoup the cost of the new water system, especially if almond prices stay low. A massive crop last year has kept the market well supplied.

Farming “has never been riskier,” Gemperle said in an email.

“But farmers are tough, they are survivors and they don’t like to give up. They can’t, farming defines them, it’s in their blood.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/feat...g-almond-dairy-farms-in-food-inflation-threat
 
California's historic drought is causing Sacramento's drinking water to taste like dirt. Just 'add lemon,' officials say
By Rachel Ramirez |June 22, 2021

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Something is off about Sacramento's water. It smells and tastes a little "earthy," residents are saying — an effect of compounding climate change crises: extreme heat, little to no precipitation and a historic drought that has gripped the region for the better part of a decade.

Up and down the state of California, rivers, streams and reservoirs are drying up. In Sacramento, that has led to an increase in the concentration of geosmin in its drinking water, one of two organic compounds that give soil its characteristic smell.

It might not taste great, city officials say, but it's still safe to drink.

Sacramento utilities officials said they had to put out a statement after receiving calls from residents complaining about the taste.

"We realize that it's unpleasant," Carlos Eliason, the city's utilities spokesperson, told CNN. "The earthy taste that some of our customers are experiencing is harmless and can be neutralized by adding some lemon or putting it in the refrigerator."

After more than a decade of extreme drought, it's not unusual for Sacramento's water to taste a little off. It just doesn't usually start to taste funky until the late summer or early fall, when water levels are at their lowest.

It's not clear how high the geosmin concentration will get in the coming months, as lakes and reservoirs continue to dry up. But given the trends, it will likely increase.

Future improvements and expansions to Sacramento's water treatment plants could eliminate such compounds.

"We're evaluating different treatment technologies to adapt to some of these (dry) conditions," Eliason said, adding that the city is expanding research programs at water treatment facilities to monitor the effects of climate change as well as investing in groundwater infrastructure instead of relying on rivers. "Our goal is always to provide high quality, good-tasting drinking water and we want to do that as much as possible."

Scientists have warned that human-caused climate change is fueling drought and ravaging the water supply in the West. On top of that, warmer temperatures mean less snow in the mountains. Sacramento residents rely in part on snowpack from the Sierra Nevada, which melts into a series of reservoirs, lakes, and dams that feeds the Lower American and Sacramento Rivers.

Already, California officials announced Thursday that because of the fast-depleting water supply at Northern California's Lake Oroville, they will likely be forced to shut down the Edward Hyatt Power Plant for the first time since it opened in 1967.

Lake Oroville — the state's second-largest reservoir — is on the Feather River, which feeds into the Sacramento River and delivers water to Sacramento residents. Meanwhile, Folsom Lake, which feeds the Lower American River and is another one of the city's primary surface water reservoirs, is also seeing tragically low water levels. The river is also a critical habitat for salmon and steelhead fish.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom in May declared a drought emergency in 41 of 58 counties, about 30 percent of the state, including counties surrounding the Klamath River and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, underscoring that climate change fueled the early warm temperatures and severely dry soil that resulted in low amounts of water flowing to major reservoirs. State officials are increasingly urging residents, farmers and businesses to find ways to conserve water.

The State Water Resources Control Board also sent out a notice last week about the lack of water availability to thousands of water rights holders in the Sacramento-San Joaquin region. The notice urged water users in the agriculture, municipal, recreation and environmental protection sectors to preserve the rapidly declining water supply to meet demands for the current and following year.

"We do not come to this decision easily," Erik Ekdahl, deputy director of the division of water rights, said in a news release. "We are asking people to reduce their water use, and we recognize this can create hardships. However, it's imperative that we manage the water we still have carefully as we prepare for months, perhaps even years, of drought conditions."

As the planet continues to warm, researchers say California will continue to experience drier conditions and an unprecedented loss of water runoff.

"Effects like the change in taste in drinking water serve as an important reminder that the city and our partners have to be good stewards of our resources as these dry conditions continue throughout Sacramento, the region, and the state," Eliason said.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/06/22/us/sacramento-water-taste-drought/index.html
 
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