Where are wells running dry in California?

Over 95% of Californians in the Central Valley rely on groundwater — water pumped up from wells — in order to sustain their lives and grow food for the rest of the world. Without the wells, the workers who grow our food, pick our food, package our food, those workers would have no water. But, the wells are starting to run dry in the valley

But the Central Valley is just the canary in the coal mine. Throughout California, communities are waking up to see that their wells are no longer pumping water. The tap has run out.

Using California’s Household Water Supply Shortage Reporting System, I visualized where the wells are running dry throughout the state.

Regions

Most of California’s wells have been running dry within the interior of the state. But the effects of drought and overusing our water is not limited to the Central Valley - wells right on the coast in Mendocino and San Luis Obispo counties are running dry too.

Cities

Porterville saw hundreds of wells run dry in 2015 and 2016. Interestingly however, the city hasn’t seen as many reports since then — almost none at all in 2021 despite wells throughout the region increasingly failing.

Cities like Visalia, Madera and Paso Robles, continue to see wells drying up throughout the city limits.

Counties

The Central Valley is where California is seeing the larget growth in reports of wells running dry in the state — Tulare, Fresno and Madera county, making up the core of the Central Valley and have tallied up the highest number of dry wells to date.

Tulare saw the most dry wells out of all counties back in 2016. Now however, counties like Fresno and Madera are starting to creep up in the rankings. More counties are reporting wells running dry than ever.

Explore how many dry wells each county has reported between 2014 and 2021: