The Central Valley is sinking: drought forces farmers to ponder the abyss
by Suzanne Goldenberg in Firebaugh, California from on (#W0KC)
As people dig ever deeper to find water, nearly 1,200 square miles of California is sinking 2 inches a month - destroying roads, bridges and farmland in the process
On a day when the skies were ashen from the smoke of distant wildfires, Chase Hurley kept his eyes trained on the slower-moving disaster at ground level: collapsing levees, buckling irrigation canals, water rising up over bridges and sloshing over roads.
This is the hidden disaster of California's drought. So much water has been pumped out of the ground that vast areas of the Central Valley are sinking, destroying millions of dollars in infrastructure in the gradual collapse.
