Hacker News Reader

The farmers are getting no "Federal" water. I don't know what exactly this means -- presumably the state too supplies water to it's farmers via various water-works projects (your 2nd link indicates that farmers relying on state supplied water will get 20% of their usual quota this year) and farmer's also possibly have other sources of water like wells, bore-wells, etc.

View on HN

There are two different water systems in California. The Central Valley Project [1] is run by the the federal government, the California State Water Project [2] by the state.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_Project [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Water_Project

It's much more convoluted than that, unfortunately. There are many layers of rights to water. Farmers will get anywhere from 100% to 0% of water from government sources. For instance, my family's farm is getting 0, so they are forced to rely on well water.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com