Some Bay Area Communities Could Run Out Of Water Within 4 Months
As the drought in California continues, 17 communities throughout the state could run out of water within 60 to 120 days, state officials said.
In some districts, the wells are running dry while other reservoirs are nearly empty. The state Health Department compiled a list after surveying the more than 3,000 water agencies in California last week.
The water systems are in all in rural areas that serve from 39 to 11,000 residents. They range from tiny Lompico County Water District in Santa Cruz County to districts that serve the cities of Healdsburg and Cloverdale in Sonoma County.
Some districts have long-running problems that began before the drought. Larger communities like Santa Clara Valley however, have fared better because of long-running conservation programs.
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/01/29/report-some-bay-area-communities-could-run-out-of-water-within-4-months/
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Healdsburg used to be the buckle in the prune belt. In my childhood visits to relatives in Healdsburg, I remember seeing miles and miles of prune orchards.
Eat prunes at night and wake up with that get up and go feeling.
But prune juice doesn't go all that well with the French Laundry tasting menu 
Just so you know, prunes were once planted all around the brothel and the Veterans' home; our men were regular back in those days. 
It's an eau de vie from the southwest of France—earthy, but totally delightful. Hard to find in the US, though. My husband sent for a bottle for my birthday once, and only one US shop (in San Francisco) had it.
I'm afraid I'll never probably be able to plunk down the cash for dinner at French Laundry, but I might try making the escalopes roulées aux pruneaux at home!
This is the usual problem of the United States, which is not just the richest and most powerful nation on Earth now, but on Earth ever, and one of the most blessed in terms of natural resources. We just collectively make loopy decisions about how to distribute the money and water, and we could make other decisions. Whether or not those priorities will change, we could at least have a reality-based conversation about them.
Take water. My friend Derek Hitchcock, a biologist working to restore the Yuba River, likes to say that California is still a place of abundance. He recently showed me a Pacific Institute report and other documents to bolster his point. They show that about 80% of the state's water goes to agriculture, not to people, and half of that goes to four crops -- cotton, rice, alfalfa and pasturage (irrigated grazing land) -- that produce less than 1% of the state's wealth. Forty percent of the state's water. Less than 1% of its income. Meanwhile, we Californians are told the drought means that ordinary households should cut back -- and probably most should -- but the lion's share of water never went to us in the first place, and we should know it.
It essentially says that water should flow to those with the most money. It's a mindset widely embraced by those with money, and shunned by those without it.
California rice crops and irrigated pasturage mostly takes place on the soil under the former marshlands and lakes that used to dominate much of the Central Valley before the water was diverted and the white man dried everything out. When people are complaining about "raising rice in the desert", what they're really complaining about is the fact that farmers are still giving the land a portion of the water that originally flowed there anyway. To cut that water off would simply complete the process of desertification and destroy some of the last remaining habitat for Valley wildlife, including migratory birds.
Alfalfa is raised as feed for many of the livestock industries in the Valley. Eliminate that, and you eliminate both the livestock industry, and the roughly half million jobs that are either directly or indirectly dependent on it (so much for "low value" .
Cotton we'll agree on. There shouldn't be cotton in the Valley. But it's largely a moot point anyway...acres dedicated to Valley cotton production have plunged by nearly 80% since 2007. The farmers are replanting more valuable crops, but it's been a big problem for many of the businesses that once served the cotton growers. Still, they'll adapt.