The Cuyama Valley is the driest agricultural region in the county; the valley floor gets just a little more rain than the Sahara. Yet for the past 75 years, this high desert region has been a mecca for water-intensive farming on an industrial scale — first alfalfa, and now carrots, a $69 million annual crop.
Most years, farmers pump 60,000 acre-feet of water out of the valley’s giant groundwater basin — enough water, in theory, to supply six cities the size of Santa Barbara. That’s three times the sustainable yield of the basin, or the amount of water that reliably flows in from rain and runoff.
In the heavily farmed central portion of the Cuyama Valley, studies show, the water table is dropping as much as eight feet per year, the ground surface is sinking, and well water is 1,000 feet deep in places. Some of the water being sprayed on crops is 33,000 years old. Water quality in the valley is poor.