Water
Supplying Salinas Valley farms is an underground water supply fed, in part, by the large watershed in surrounding mountains. Two reservoirs – Nacimiento and San Antonio -- store and release the water for groundwater recharge, flood control and farming. Wells access the groundwater to irrigate about 275,000 acres (1,110 km2) of fruits and vegetables and to supply the valley cities. The Salinas River itself is a sand river, so water appears on the surface only during heavy rains or when water is released from the upstream reservoirs. Increasing demand for water near the mouth of the valley is pulling seawater under the coastal area. The Salinas Valley Water Project, now under construction by the Monterey County Water Resources Agency, will use an inflatable dam near Salinas to capture more water during wet periods. Monterey County Water Recycling Projects, a combination of the Castroville Seawater Intrusion Project and the Salinas Valley Reclamation Project, started delivering recycled water to fields near Castroville in 1998. The projects reduce pumping of groundwater and slow down seawater intrusion.
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Famous quotes containing the word water:
“We then entered another swamp, at a necessarily slow pace, where the walking was worse than ever, not only on account of the water, but the fallen timber, which often obliterated the indistinct trail entirely. The fallen trees were so numerous, that for long distances the route was through a succession of small yards, where we climbed over fences as high as our heads, down into water often up to our knees, and then over another fence into a second yard, and so on.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The Laws of Nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Nature—were Man as unerring in his judgments as Nature.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
“The tower nearest the water gets the moonlight first.”
—Chinese proverb.