California farms dried up a river for months. Nobody stopped them.
During California’s most recent drought, officials went to great lengths to safeguard water supplies, issuing emergency regulations to curb use by thousands of farms, utilities and irrigation districts. It still wasn’t enough to prevent growers in the state’s agricultural heartland from draining dry several miles of [the Merced River] for almost four months in 2022, in a previously unreported episode that raises questions about California’s ability to monitor and manage its water amid worsening droughts … [T]he severity and duration of the 2022 decline of the river in this case, the Merced, where one stream gauge showed zero water moving past it nearly every day from June to early October, stood out even to experts … [T]he State Water Resources Control Board … has so far found that the river most likely went dry as a result of people taking water legally, [the board's deputy director Erik] Ekdahl said. In other words, local farmers do not appear to have violated the board’s drought controls that year by slurping up every last drop.