As price of water skyrockets in California, this city paid $1.1M to keep faucets running through March
Coalinga usually gets its water through an aqueduct which runs from the San Luis Reservoir, about 70 miles northwest of the city. But as the West’s megadrought pushes reservoir levels to precarious new lows, the US Bureau of Reclamation this year reduced the amount of water Coalinga could take from the reservoir by 80%, city officials told CNN. The restriction left Coalinga short about 600-acre feet of water through March 2023 … With the city on track to run out of water by mid- to late November, officials turned to the increasingly expensive open market to make up the difference. They finalized a purchase from a California public irrigation district last week. The city’s price tag for life’s most basic necessity was roughly $1.1 million dollars. … [T]he same amount of water used to cost $114,000.