{"id":4124,"date":"2015-08-23T09:02:07","date_gmt":"2015-08-23T13:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/?p=4124"},"modified":"2015-08-23T17:32:24","modified_gmt":"2015-08-23T21:32:24","slug":"california-drought-could-cost-2-7-billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/2015\/08\/california-drought-could-cost-2-7-billion\/","title":{"rendered":"California drought could cost $2.7 billion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How much are the losses from the California drought? \u00a0Economists have various estimates depending on how the losses are tallied. \u00a0The <em>Fiscal Times<\/em> estimates that the direct losses from fallowed land that is not in production are around $1.8 billion. \u00a0But they also point out that if the estimated number of acres of land not in use is too low, losses could be higher. \u00a0And that does not account for other losses due to loss of income from businesses that service farmers. \u00a0If all of those costs were added in, the total losses could top $2.7 billion. \u00a0You can read their analysis <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thefiscaltimes.com\/2015\/07\/16\/Drought-Costing-California-Farms-18-Billion-Revenue\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Future costs may be even higher. \u00a0Land has been sinking due to massive use of groundwater, and that could create problems for infrastructure. \u00a0Repairs of damaged bridges, levees, and roads could provide a significant cost in the future as well.<\/p>\n<p><em>Yahoo News<\/em> released a report this afternoon which shows that some areas of the Central Valley are sinking at the rate of 2 inches per month due to heavy groundwater withdrawals based on analysis of NASA photos. \u00a0Scientists believe that some of the aquifers depleted by the massive pumping may permanently lose capacity, reducing their use as a hedge against future droughts. \u00a0You can read that article at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/california-sinking-faster-thought-aquifers-could-permanently-shrink-140333912.html\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/california-sinking-faster-thought-aquifers-could-permanently-shrink-140333912.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/08\/subsidence-california.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-4127\" src=\"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/08\/subsidence-california-300x287.jpg\" alt=\"subsidence-california\" width=\"300\" height=\"287\" srcset=\"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/08\/subsidence-california-300x287.jpg 300w, https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/08\/subsidence-california-144x138.jpg 144w, https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/08\/subsidence-california.jpg 575w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How much are the losses from the California drought? \u00a0Economists have various estimates depending on how the losses are tallied. \u00a0The Fiscal Times estimates that the direct losses from fallowed land that is not in production are around $1.8 billion. \u00a0But they also point out that if the estimated number of acres of land not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":4127,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,15,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate-and-ag-in-the-news","category-drought","category-interesting-weather-images"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4124"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4128,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4124\/revisions\/4128"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}