That area was initially desert. The only greenery was along river banks. One canal was built with essentially no money. Individuals would be assigned a section to dig and, in exchange, gain water rights. They sometimes had to take a break from digging it to get a job for a time. When financial drama and legal drama came along later, this canal was fine because money had never been a large part of the equation.
A later canal had money from the start. When financial and legal drama reared its ugly head, this canal really suffered. The fact that money was central to its development turned out to be an Achilles heel.
There were a number of important court cases in Fresno that helped shape water rights in California. California water law is influenced by two conflicting sets of rules. There is an old English principle that you can't take so much water from the river that you are depriving people downstream. This is one expectation of California water law. The other is first come, first served.
As the canals got dug, the once barren landscape grew lush. The book had interesting before and after photos of old farm houses in a barren landscape, then the same house surrounded by trees and greenery.
A number of canal building tools were developed in Fresno and patented. Fresno County played something of a keystone role in water development and water rights development.
They also developed ground water recharge systems. The success of the canals led to the emergence of ponds in low lying areas due to a rising water table. They worked to direct this into the aquifer and help support local wells.
Fresno probably has better water security than the rest of California. It has gone through periods where it was successfully improving the status of its aquifer, probably while most other aquifers in the US were being inexorably drawn down, leading to subsidence.
I am somewhat skeptical of the doomsday pronouncements of articles like this. I suspect there is a lot of room for improvement in terms of using drip irrigation and other conservation farming methods.
Having lived in Fresno, which is absolutely not a barren desert these days, and read about it's water history, I find myself a bit bemused by the fact that it gets so little attention for how it was transformed. People harp on the farmland in the desert. They fail to recognize that Fresno is something of a modern Hanging Gardens of Babylon scenario in part because it's current lushness goes back more than a hundred years, so we don't really recognize that it's current state is a case of widespread, persistent terraforming. However it only gets about 11 inches of rain a year. Without constant tending, the current greenery there would not survive. It would revert to desert.
Anyone interested in water issues in California should read Salt Dreams and also read about the history of water development in Fresno County.