California

H

Conservation

Conservationists in California are active in the fields of flood control, prevention of soil erosion, forest conservation, preservation of the state’s scenic areas and wildlife resources, and reduction of air pollution. Federal agencies that maintain conservation programs in California include the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Water and Power Resources Service, the National Park Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Army Corps of Engineers. The resources agency of California is responsible for state conservation programs. Also active are such private groups as the Save-the-Redwoods League, Sierra Club, and California Conservation Council.

Numerous conservationists in California consider urban encroachment on farmland and scenic rural areas to be a major problem, especially around the rapidly growing cities of the south. Efforts are being made to avoid haphazard development by regional planning. Air pollution, an essentially urban problem, is particularly serious in the Los Angeles area, the San Francisco Bay area, and the Central Valley.

One of California’s greatest problems is to provide adequate water to meet the needs of its rapidly expanding population. There is an abundant water supply in sparsely settled northern California, but the demand is greatest in the more densely populated and much drier sections of central and southern California. In addition, water flow in the rivers is often irregular, and flooding may occur in the winter and spring. The redistribution and regulation of the water supply is the major objective of the state’s water projects.

The federal Central Valley Project, sponsored by the United States Bureau of Reclamation in the 1930s, is an extensive system of dams, reservoirs, and irrigation canals that supplies water to the Central Valley for irrigation and urban use. The aims of the project also include flood control and the generation of hydroelectric power. The main units include the Shasta, Friant, Trinity, and San Luis dams and their reservoirs, and the Delta-Mendota and Friant-Kern canals.

---

---

The California State Water Project seeks to alleviate water shortages in the Central Valley and also in southern California. Key units include the Feather River Project and the huge Oroville Dam in northern California, the California Aqueduct, and Lake Perris in Riverside County, the southern terminus of the nearly 1,000-km (600-mi) long system.

San Francisco receives much of its water supply from the Tuolumne River in the Sierra Nevada, by way of Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct. A large part of the water supply of Los Angeles is carried by aqueduct from the distant Owens River, the Mono Lake area, and the eastern Sierra Nevada watershed. The Los Angeles Aqueduct system, run by the city’s Department of Water and Power, is the only gravity-flow water redistribution system in the state. Water carried by the aqueduct flows downhill from the Mono Basin, at an elevation of 1,945 m (6,380 ft), southward to the Los Angeles Basin, at near sea level. All other major projects use pumps to lift water over elevated terrain. Another project bringing water to southern California is the Colorado River Aqueduct, which taps the Colorado River. The All-American Canal carries irrigation water from Imperial Dam on the Colorado to the Imperial Valley. Water from the Colorado, of major importance to southern California, is available in amounts limited by agreements with Arizona and other states in the Colorado River basin.

Heavy use of groundwater, from wells, in coastal areas of southern California has lowered the water table. As a result, salt water from the ocean has seeped into the water table and is a threat to local water supplies. However, the ocean is also a possible source of fresh water. Small desalination plants have been built in Santa Barbara, on Santa Catalina Island, and elsewhere. The cost to consumers of desalinated water, however, is many times that of water supplied by freshwater redistribution projects. Moreover, with desalination plants using large amounts of electricity to operate and traditional sources of energy dwindling in supply, desalination is unlikely to become a viable solution to California’s water problems.

In 2006 the state had 93 hazardous waste sites on a national priority list for cleanup due to their severity or proximity to people. Progress was being made in efforts to reduce pollution; in the period 1995–2000 the amount of toxic chemicals discharged into the environment was reduced by 26 percent.

III

Economic Activities

Since the earliest settlement of the region by the Spanish in the 18th century, agriculture has been vital to the California economy. The gold rush of the mid-19th century was followed by the intensive exploitation of petroleum and other minerals. As the population grew, fishing and forestry became important, and by the late 19th century light manufacturing industries had developed. Industrial diversification proceeded swiftly in the early 20th century. The motion-picture, radio, and, later, television industries added other dimensions to the economy. World War II (1939-1945) accelerated industrial development and spawned the state’s large aerospace industry. Government and educational services expanded rapidly after the war, as did tourism and other service industries. The economy suffered a recession in the early 1990s, fueled by cutbacks in aerospace and other military-related industries, coupled with a slowdown in housing construction. By the late 1990s, however, California’s economy had rebounded, showing sustained growth in both jobs and production.

California had a work force of 17,902,000 people in 2006. Of those the largest share, 39 percent, worked in the diverse services sector, doing jobs such as restaurant work or computer programming. Another 19 percent worked in wholesale or retail trade; 15 percent in federal, state, or local government, including those in the military; 12 percent in manufacturing; 31 percent in finance, insurance, or real estate; 5 percent in construction; 5 percent in transportation or public utilities; 3 percent in farming (including agricultural services), forestry, or fishing; and just 0.2 percent in mining. In 2005, 17 percent of California’s workers belonged to a labor union.

A

Agriculture

By a number of different measures, California has long been the nation’s leading agricultural state. In 1997 California led all other states with farm sales of $23 billion. Several of the state’s commodities have annual sales of more than $1 billion, including milk and cream, grapes, vegetables and melons, cattle and calves, nursery products, poultry and eggs, and cotton lint and seed. California produces a greater variety of crops, and has higher yields of those crops from each unit of land planted, than any other state.

California’s farms are among the most productive in the world. For example, the state’s highly automated rice industry generates a yield three times greater than the labor-intensive rice paddies of Asia. The high production is based in large part on the fertile soils and long growing season of the region, the widespread practice of advanced farming techniques, and the availability of water. Most of the farmlands lie in the dry Central Valley and southern areas of the state, where farmers are dependent on irrigation projects, such as the Central Valley Project, for water. With the exception of only a few commodities, such as barley, most of the state’s numerous crops are grown on irrigated lands. Livestock ranching is the main activity on the nonirrigated farmlands. However, livestock are also frequently raised on irrigated pastures. California leads all other states in the total amount of land irrigated. Although many crops are grown in each of the farming areas of the state, within each area the individual farms tend to specialize in certain products.

There were 76,500 farms in California in 2005. Some 59 percent of them had annual income of more than $10,000. Many of the rest were sidelines for operators who held other jobs. Farmland occupied 10.7 million hectares (26.4 million acres), of which 38 percent was cropland. Most of the rest was used as range for the grazing of livestock. Some 75 percent of California’s cropland was under irrigation.

A

1

Crops

A great variety of crops, especially fruits and vegetables, are grown in California. The state accounts for nearly the entire U.S. production of walnuts, almonds, nectarines, olives, dates, figs, pomegranates, and persimmons. It leads the nation in the production of vegetables, including lettuce, tomatoes, broccoli, celery, cauliflower, carrots, lima beans, and spinach, and also of apricots, grapes, lemons, strawberries, plums and prunes, peaches, cantaloupes, avocados, and honeydew melons. It is the nation’s leading producer of hay and the second leading producer of cotton. California is also the second ranking state in the production of rice, oranges, tangerines, grapefruit, apples, pears, sweet corn, and asparagus. Nearly every crop grown in the United States is represented in California fields.

Crops account for 73 percent of the state’s annual farm income, with the rest coming from livestock and animal products. Vegetables are grown primarily in the Central, Imperial, and Salinas valleys. Cotton is raised primarily in the southern San Joaquin Valley. Citrus fruit production is centered in southern California and the southeastern San Joaquin Valley. Grapes, peaches, potatoes, barley, and figs are raised chiefly in the San Joaquin Valley; and rice, sugar beets, and pears are raised mainly in the Sacramento Valley.

A

2

Livestock

California leads the nation in egg and milk production and ranks high in the marketing of cattle and calves, chickens, turkeys, and sheep and lambs. Beef cattle and sheep are raised primarily in the hillier parts of the Central Valley and the adjacent foothills. In addition, cattle ranching is the most important activity in some of the dry, sparsely populated basins east of the Sierra Nevada. Dairy cattle and poultry are raised in the Central Valley and near the major urban centers.

	More from Encarta
	•  Presidential Myths Quiz •  Coffee break: Recharge your brain