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The reason that the Friant Water Authority struggles to get as much flow as it used to is because overpumping has caused a portion of the canal to sink and create a large U-shaped depression. Where the gradual slope previously ferried water downhill through the canal’s boxy, open-air concrete mass without a problem, the water now gets stuck in what can be fairly described as a pit — hence DeFlitch’s “pinch point.”

The Friant Water Authority is responsible for getting Sierra Nevada snowmelt to roughly 15,000 farms and a handful of towns across a million acres of industrialized farmland. But over the decades, those surface water supplies have decreased. To continue growing crops like table grapes, almonds and pistachios — which fetch high prices around the world — agribusinesses, particularly large corporate growers without surface water rights, dug deeper wells and pumped ever more water. This caused the land to sink, and, ironically, the canal the industry depends on to sink along with it.

The impact of overpumping is landscape-scale and nearly beyond perception, save for certain visual clues. The county bridge, once high above the canal, now barely clears the water.

The Friant-Kern Canal is one of three state and federal canals impacted by such woes. It’s also in the worst shape: About 60% of its carrying capacity has been lost, meaning that farms past the pit get less water, and the water ends up costing more for others. 

There have been attempts to fix this. In 2018, a state proposal would have funded $750 million in repairs along the Madera and Friant Kern Canals. It failed. Critics maintained that the infrastructure’s real beneficiaries — private agribusinesses — should pay for it, not the public.

In 2021, during an exceptionally dry year, the “State Water Resiliency Act” cleared California’s Senate and was poised to deliver nearly $800 million to the same effort. In this attempt, the bill covered only a third of repairs across three canals, including the California Aqueduct, which delivers water to large cities in Southern California. But in September, the bill was halted by the Appropriations Committee because lawmakers were unclear on how public funding would benefit disadvantaged communities or the public — one of the measure’s central claims. According to Kyle Jones, the policy director at Community Water Center, an environmental justice organization, it also lacked adequate public oversight and accountability. “The attempt to get public funding was originally structured in a way to make people think it did more than it actually did,” Jones said. “To say that rural communities should be happy because they get what’s left over from industry is the problem. We’ve seen this in the environmental justice movement forever.”

The Friant Water Authority has already secured over $400 million — a combination of federal grants, loans, and money from farmers most responsible for over pumping. But they still want the state’s taxpayers to pay the final third. So far, Gov. Gavin Newsom has promised a separate $200 million for canal repair funds. 

If the water needs of vulnerable communities were the real priority, taxpayer funds might be spent differently, Clary said. “You could build many groundwater-recharge projects for that much.” 

TOOLEVILLE, an unincorporated town of 290 people, sits underneath the east valley’s foothills. It’s entirely dependent on the aquifer, despite being bordered on its eastern boundary by the Friant Kern Canal. Gloria and Jose Mendoza live a quarter mile away from the canal. When I visited them in October, Jose had just finished pruning the pomegranate tree in the glaring sun and sunk into a camping chair to relax. Before retirement, the couple worked on farms while raising their two children, Jose said. “We were so good at picking oranges we paid off our house in 11 years.”