Traffic makes it’s way toward downtown Los Angeles along the Hollywood Freeway past an electronic sign warning of severe drought. Los Angeles has concluded another rain season with little to show for it. The National Weather Service says just 6.08 inches of rain was recorded downtown between July 1, 2013, and June 30. That’s less than half the normal average of 14.93 inches and enters the books as the seventh-driest rain season since record-keeping began downtown in 1877.SAN FRANCISCO – Throughout California’s desperately dry Central Valley, those with water to spare are cashing in.
As a third parched summer forces farmers to fallow fields and lay off workers, two water districts and a pair of landowners in the heart of the state’s farmland are making millions of dollars by auctioning off their private caches.
Nearly 40 others also are seeking to sell their surplus water this year, according to state and federal records.
Economists say it’s been decades since the water market has been this hot. In the last five years alone, the price has grown tenfold to as much as $2,200 an acre-foot – enough to cover a football field with a foot of water.
Unlike the previous drought in 2009, the state has been hands-off, letting the market set the price even though severe shortages prompted a statewide drought emergency declaration this year.