Opinion: My state is 1,000 miles long, and not everyone living in it hates the rain
Here in Fig Garden, a suburb that creeps up to the edge of the San Joaquin River, on land my neighbors prefer not to think of as a floodplain, the rain started falling in late December and didn’t stop for two weeks. My lawn turned into pond. Geese were honking like they haven’t honked in years. As the last big storm was nearing, I got a call from my aunt and uncle, California natives who high-tailed it to Cleveland a half century ago. “You guys all right?” they asked. The pond had yet to reach my front door. “I think we’re going to be OK,” I said. I reminded them that there are seven dams on the San Joaquin. I don’t know of any other river in America that has been more corralled by man. Over 90 percent of its flow is shunted via canals and ditches to farmland that produces almonds, pistachios, table grapes and mandarins.
-Written by Mark Arax, author of “The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California.”Related article: