Green Daily

Last Friday, federal officials announced that California's main source of water for agriculture, the federally-run Central Valley Project, is expected to go dry this year, as "zero allocation" was declared. On the state level, officials repeated their plans to cut the amount obtained from a separate system to only 15 percent of normal.

The snow pack levels in the Sierras and reservoir levels remain far below normal for this time of year. Richard Howitt, of the University of California, Davis, calls the drought "hydrologically as bad as 1977."

The Central Valley of California produces over half of the fruits, vegetables and nuts grown in the U.S. While the area is already feeling the effects of the recession, experts forecast that the drought is likely to worsen the effects, with projected losses of 60,000 to 80,000 jobs as farmland is idled.

Lester Snow of the state's Department of Water Resources expects mandatory conservation to go into effect across the state. He also warned that California's droughts could get worse as the planet warms, and that state water managers are seeing earlier spring runoff and other changes as "our hydrology has become more uncertain."