There’s some positive news on the water front. State officials say they’ll be able to deliver about 50 percent of the water requested by California farmers and agencies this year. The initial allocation in December was only five-percent.
Department of Water Resources officials say they’re able to make the increase because of the rainy spring and healthy Sierra snowpack. Wendy Martin, the California statewide drought coordinator, says it’s an improvement, but things could be a lot better.
"If your child brought home a 50 percent score on their school project it would still not be a very good score," Martin said. "So 50 percent is certainly better than the 5 percent that we were at, but it’s not anywhere near the amount of water that we would deliver in a really wet year.”
Martin says the last wet year in California was in 2006. She says back then, the Department of Water Resources was able to deliver 100-percent of the requested water.
The water shortage has put a strain on agriculture in the Central Valley.
