cbslocalsanfrancisco | California’s four year drought has the whole state in a water
crisis, but no area has been harder hit than the state’s Central Valley,
where the wells have run dry.
In the small town of Okieville, in Tulare County, residents are struggling to stay in their homes.
At Myra Marquez’s house, she checks the gauge on her 2500 gallon
water tank before she touches a faucet. The tank gets filled every
Monday.
Rationing 2000 gallons over five or six days is tough.
“It’s hard,” she said.
It’s become the way of life in Okieville, which has about 90
residents. The town was named after the people who migrated there in the
1930s during the Dust Bowl.
Homes like Marquez’s are stacked with boxes of drinking water, and
trucks haul in more to fill tanks, funded by the state’s Emergency
Drought Relief Program.
“So without this (tank), you know, we can’t take a shower. We can’t
wash clothes. We can’t do anything without it,” says Marquez.
In Tulare County, nearly 1700 household wells are dry. That’s more than all other counties combined.
Gilbert Arrendondo ran a pipe three blocks to tap into a neighbor’s well when his dried up last year.
“I’ve never seen this happen before because they would drill down and find a way to help us out,” said Arrendondo.
