Dbq 13 The California Drought

To this day, California has been in a drought. The governor, Jerry Brown is struggling to create policies to prevent people from using large amounts of water. He has made proposals to reduce the water use in California by building tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to increase the supply of water. One of the reasons California is in a drought is because of our history of dealing with the gold miners using hydraulic mining to mine gold, and damming the Tuolumne River to provide water for San Francisco. Although the use of of water has benefitted farmers and cities, it has not been in the best interest of the state because it has harmed the Native Americans and the environment.

The use of water is in the best interest of California
For example, in 1853, E.A. Stevenson states, “I saw the Indians taking barrels of these beautiful fish and drying them for the winter. But the miners have turned the streams from their beds and conveyed the water to the mines... ”(Doc. 2). The Indians couldn’t hunt anymore because of the scarcity of the water, caused by the gold miners. In order for the Native Americans to provide for their families, they will need water so that they could hunt for fish. Because the Native Americans lost all of their water, from the miners stealing it, the Native Americans couldn’t provide for their family. This meant that most of the water was going to the miners, which wasn’t where most of the water should be because it’s not benefiting the state as a whole. The only people who were benefited from this were the miners. Another example, in 1997, Jerry Stanley stated, “The Gold Rush meant death by starvation for thousands of Native Californians, and death from disease for thousands more...Hydraulic mining, by which hillsides were sprayed with large quantities of water, destroyed plants and wildlife habitats ” ( Doc. 7). The Gold Rush led to the starvation of the Native Americans and destroyed the environment. The people who were trying to find gold polluted the land and they starved the Native Americans and destroyed the environment. This quote connects to the
For example, on April 7th, 2015, Steven Johnson states, “The single most important statistic in understanding the current crisis is this: 80% of California’s surface water supports agriculture, largely the farms and ranches of the Central Valley…The Central Valley takes up only 1% of the landmass of the United States, but it produces 25% of the food we eat, and almost half of the fruits or nuts we consume…” (Doc. 4). Even though the Central Valley is very low in land mass, it produces most of the foods. The Central Valley makes 25% of the country's food, and even though they have very low land mass, which makes supposedly makes them earn a lot of money. This affects the environment because since the Central Valley think they make lots of money, even though it only contributes to 1% of the state's economy, it is in high need of water, so the Central Valley and farmers try to take most of the water. The Central Valley and Farmers would dig holes into the ground to get water underground, which would destroy the environments storage of water and affects the rest of the state. Another example is a picture of Rancho Mirage by the New York Times showing how in the left side of the photo is a desert with shrubs, which is the original way the environment looked like. The right side is where the residents lived and is covered with grass, golf courses, and houses. Rancho Mirage used lots of