As Voluntary Conservation Fails, Advocates Call For Mandates And Action to Address Factory Farm Water Use

Newsom ignores corporate water abuses and delays mandatory action.

Published May 11, 2022

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Clean Water

Newsom ignores corporate water abuses and delays mandatory action.

Newsom ignores corporate water abuses and delays mandatory action.

Sacramento, CA – Morning headlines in California today announced that domestic water use climbed by 19 percent in March, signaling the clear failure of Governor Gavin Newsom’s repeated pleas for voluntary reductions in household water consumption. Environmental advocates have long urged mandatory action to curb excessive urban water use and the need to rein in some of the biggest corporate water abusers, which Newsom has thus far ignored.

Research from the nonprofit environmental advocacy group Food & Water Watch lays out the enormous scale of corporate water abuse among fossil fuel interests and agribusiness in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Tulare County houses the most mega-dairies of any CA county, and half of its water supplies are predicted to go dry this year.

“It’s beyond clear that voluntary cutbacks on household water usage won’t make a dent in impacts of this climate change driven drought across the state,” said Mark Schlosberg, Managing Director of Research and Litigation for Food & Water Watch. “If Governor Newsom is serious about dealing with this water crisis, his laissez-faire attitude towards the drought must stop. It’s time to address water-intensive and polluting industries like out-of-control corporate agriculture and oil extraction, while enforcing mandates to curb excessive water use in households.”

Eighty percent of the state’s water goes to agriculture, including heavy water users like almonds. In 2019, more than 60 percent of almonds produced in California were exported, rerouting 910 billion gallons of water out of the state for corporate profit. It takes 142 millions of gallons of water every day to operate California’s mega-dairies, enough to supply every person in San Diego and San Jose with their needed daily water.

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Contact: Jessica Gable, (202) 683-2478, [email protected]

Press Contact: Jessica Gable [email protected]

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