Hotspots H2o

This is an excerpt of the June 21, 2021 edition of What's Up With Water. On Memorial Day, while many Californians were celebrating the unofficial start to summer, the residents of a house off of County Road 200 were contemplating a loss. That day, the homeowners in northern Glenn County submitted an anonymous report to a state database. It said that their drinking water well was on the verge of sputtering out. The well was shallow, only 75 feet deep, and the flow had slowed to a trickle. It pulled water from its site outside the town of Orland, an agricultural valley some 100 miles north of Sacramento, an area covered by almond, walnut, and olive orchards. The failing well was not an isolated case — and not a quick fix either, as the incident report went on to recount, saying: “Everyone around us and neighbors are having the same problems and with our water table being so low we will have to drill the well deeper but the wait list in Orland and Glenn County is months out and we cannot afford that cost.” I