California will receive $50 million for drought research, U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced this weekend.
Jewell, who was joined by Gov. Jerry Brown, said that most of the funds would be used to develop strategies to end the drought that has plagued the Golden State for the last three years, according to local Fox affiliate Fox40.
“California is ground zero for drought. There isn’t a state that is worse off than this state,” Jewell said, noting that Sen. Dianne Feinstein helped present the funding proposal to Congress.
In his remarks, Gov. Brown said that the fight between farmers and environmentalists in the state would not help water flow in water-starved California.
“Everybody is running around saying, ‘Build a dam here, eliminate an endangered species there,'” Brown said. “It’s not going to produce any more water this year. The only person who can produce water is Mother Nature.”
“We have to use water more efficiently,” Brown continued. “We can’t waste, we have to recycle, we have to store and save and deliver our water very carefully.”
Water has been a point of contention between environmentalists and growers in the state. Last month, the Supreme Court declined to hear two appeals filed by California nut growers over access to water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
Research into ending the state’s drought is already underway; this weekend, a team of scientists from federal agencies and universities measured an atmospheric river headed toward Northern California in an attempt to discover how the phenomenon are responsible for ending long-term droughts.
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