Author Archive
Fresno, Calif.’s Groundwater is Dangerously Low
Posted by Associated Press: Gosia Wozniacka on September 7th, 2013
Associated Press: For decades, this city in California's agricultural heartland relied exclusively on cheap, plentiful groundwater and pumped increasingly larger amounts from an aquifer as its population grew.
But eventually, the water table dropped by more than 100 feet, causing some of Fresno's wells to cave in and others to slow to a trickle. The cost of replacing those wells and extracting groundwater ballooned by 400 percent.
"We became the largest energy demand in the region - $11 million a year for electricity...
Powerful Calif. water district backs tunnel plan
Posted by Associated Press: Gosia Wozniacka on August 4th, 2013
Associated Press: As a giant harvesting machine uprooted and sucked in hundreds of tomato plants a row at a time, Dan Errotabere contemplated massive strips of bare land on his farm.
"Everything we have in our operation is under duress," he said, looking at a stretch of fallow acres once covered in garlic, onions and other crops.
Errotabere and hundreds of others who run massive farms in California`s Central Valley have left tens of thousands of acres barren this year after seeing their water supplies severely...
Fever hits thousands in parched US West farm region
Posted by Associated Press: Gosia Wozniacka on May 6th, 2013
Associated Press: California and federal public health officials say valley fever, a potentially lethal but often misdiagnosed disease infecting more and more people around the nation, has been on the rise as warming climates and drought have kicked up the dust that spreads it.
The fever has hit California's agricultural heartland particularly hard in recent years, with incidence dramatically increasing in 2010 and 2011. The disease — which is prevalent in arid regions of the United States, Mexico, Central and...
Surge in valley fever blamed on climate change
Posted by Associated Press: Gosia Wozniacka on May 5th, 2013
Associated Press: California and federal public health officials say that valley fever, a potentially lethal but often misdiagnosed disease infecting more and more people across the nation, has been on the rise as a warming climate and drought have kicked up the dust that spreads it. The fever has hit California's agricultural heartland particularly hard in recent years, with the incidence dramatically increasing in 2010 and 2011. The disease -- which is prevalent in arid regions of the United States, Mexico, Central...
Calif. groups sue EPA over civil rights complaint
Posted by Associated Press: Gosia Wozniacka on July 8th, 2011
Associated Press: Sixteen years ago, soon after she gave birth to her first baby, Maricela Mares-Alatorre joined residents of three small California farmworker towns who alleged they were being discriminated against by environmental regulators, because all three of the state's toxic waste dumps were located in or near poor rural Latino communities.
But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which received that civil rights complaint when Bill Clinton was president, hasn't addressed it and all the dumps continue...