California Drought Eyewitness

California has been in the national news because of their severe drought — according to the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources a lot of the fault of the severity of this drought is man-made. Some of the facts shared on the Natural Resources Committee’s website: in 2007 federal district judge ruled that increased amounts of water needed to go towards protecting an Endangered Species, Delta Smelt — a three inch fish. Because of this ruling the following two years more than 300 billion gallons of water was diverted away from the farmers of the Central Valley and into the San Francisco Bay leading out into the Pacific Ocean. According to the website this man-made drought has cost thousands of farm workers their jobs and has fallowed hundreds of thousands of acres of fertile farm land.Paul Neiffer, CliftonLarsonAllen Partner and Farm CPA Today Blogger recently visited California and witnessed firsthand the devastation caused by the drought in California. He shares what he saw in citrus groves in the San Joaquin Valley.Neiffer: “The one thing that was sad is down towards Bakersfield. My wife and I we probably drove by at least six or seven or maybe more orchards where they pulled the trees. The trees were cut and lying in the fields dead. I knew that had gone on but to see the evidence was sort of sad. That was primarily by the guys who knew that they weren’t going to have water for the whole year.”