California's Water Network: Engineering Triumphs, Enduring Challenges

SLING NEWS: California’s agricultural dominance (e.g. Southern, Central and Northern California) rests not on favorable weather but on a vast, meticulously engineered water infrastructure. With almost no rain falling during the vital growing season, the State’s $50 billion farming industry is largely propped up by an intricate network of aqueducts, reservoirs, and groundwater basins. “It’s not summer rain that makes California’s agriculture so productive,” said Jay Lund, Vice-Director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California, Davis. “It’s our ability to move and manage water on an enormous scale.”