Justin Sullivan / Getty Images Farmer Joe Del Bosque stands next to a row of newly planted organic tomatoes on April 23, 2015 in Firebaugh, California. As the state was entering its fourth year of severe drought, farmers in the Central Valley struggled to keep their crops watered. Many opted to leave acres of fields fallow.

David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images Sisters Amanda Perez, left, and Miranda Perez dry their faces after taking showers at portable units available to use for free in Porterville, California on April 13, 2015. In drought-plagued communities that aren't part of the State Water Project, water scarcity has forced many changes.

The Drought Quiz California wells are now using water that began filling underground aquifers when … Elvis walked the earth Giant Sloths walked the earth T. Rex walked the earth Deeper and deeper wells are being drilled to find water. Groundwater accumulates when water from rain, lakes, and streams seeps into the earth. Today's wells are so deep, they are tapping water that percolated into aquifers 20,000 years ago—during the last Ice Age, when woolly mammoths and giant sloths were extant. (More on the long journey to ancient water.) 1California's record-breaking drought brought many things long submerged back to light when the water line dropped. Long-abandoned cars were discovered in shallow rivers, ghost towns emerged at the bottoms of lake beds, and glints of gold in the near-dry streams sent amateur prospectors hotfooting it back into the hills. What also re-surfaced were the old and ugly battles over who can claim rights to what has historically been California's most precious resource: Water.

Click for manual ↔ control Click to show animation Aqua - MODIS / NASA Earth Observatory These two images, captured five years apart by NASA’s Aqua satellite, show greatly depleted Sierra Nevada snow cover. Snowfall is critical to freshwater supplies in California. The Central Valley also shows significant change of color. (Most of the white in 2015 is cloud cover.) Terra - ASTER / NASA Earth Observatory Vegetation is red buildings, roads are gray water is blue dry, barren land is tan In these two false-color views captured by NASA’s Terra spacecraft, the Central Valley landscape has browned and lakes have shrunken after three years of drought.

2 On April 1, 2015, Governor Jerry Brown announced California’s first-ever mandatory statewide water restrictions, calling for a 25% reduction in urban water use from 2013 levels. Standing on dry grass where there should have been five feet of snow, the governor said, “We are in a historic drought—and that demands unprecedented action.” Notably absent from the restrictions are any cutbacks in water use by the agriculture industry which accounts for 80% of California’s annual water usage.

Jim Wilson / The New York Times The Sacramento and the San Joaquin Rivers meet in the Delta in Northern California, April 20, 2015.

Data sources: National Atlas of United States; U.S. Geological Survey

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images Water is pumped into an irrigation canal at a Central Valley almond orchard on April 24, 2015 in Firebaugh, California.

The Drought Quiz The Bay-Delta watershed provides drinking water for … no one; it's only used for farming San Francisco Bay Area most of California The Bay-Delta's watershed not only fulfills critical economic and ecological needs, it also provides drinking water for 25 million Californians: two-thirds of the state's population. 3At the heart of California's water politics is the Sacramento-San Joaquin Rivers Delta, which flows into the San Francisco Bay, forming the largest estuary on the west coast of the Americas. The Delta supplies water to farmland that produces almost half the nation's fruits and vegetables. It is also home to hundreds of species of plants and animals, some found nowhere else on Earth. Governor Brown has been championing a massive tunneling proposal that would divert water directly from the Sacramento River, bypassing the Delta and sending it south, primarily to Kern County and the Westlands Water Districts, two water agencies that currently receive the majority of the freshwater exported from the Delta. (Related Story: Two Tunnels Too Many) The shortfall of fresh water flowing through the Delta would further degrade an already taxed ecosystem, jeopardizing both native species and the local economy. Brown, who was also governor during the 1977 drought, proposed a similar water funneling plan at that time. That project, dubbed the Peripheral Canal, was rejected by voters in a 1982 ballot measure, but became the focus of a north-south battle over water.

Scott Smith / Associated Press

4The historic drought has reignited old water rights tensions as politicians and corporate interests seize upon the scarcity of water as a political tool. Standing in a parched field in California's Central Valley in January 2014, then-U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) referred to the catastrophe as a “man-made drought” and called for more freshwater to be pumped from the Delta to corporate agriculture. “How you can favor fish over people is something people in my part of the world would never understand,” Rep. Boehner said. Had he looked around, he would have seen the faces of many other farmers, fishermen and countless other water-users whose lives would be disrupted by a mega-water grab. The Drought Quiz California's water rights system dates to the days of … the first iPhone Gov. Schwarzenegger Model T Ford assembly line The Water Commission Act took effect in 1914, the year after Henry Ford introduced the assembly line. It established the state's surface water rights permit process and is a predecessor to today's water code. The system gives priority to rights holders with the earliest documented claims, known as the "First in Time, First in Right" doctrine. The most senior water rights date to the 1800s.

Brad Zweerink for Earthjustice Baker, tending to a tree in his pear orchard.

Brad Zweerink for Earthjustice A farmhouse on Steamboat Slough in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Brett Baker Courtland, CA Delta Farmer 5 Steamboat Slough is the shortest water route between Sacramento and San Francisco. A century ago, Delta farmers used to board the steamships and load up their crates of pears, plums, peaches and other goods to sell downstream. Though the ships don't pass through as often these days, Delta farming is still a significant industry with estimated agricultural revenues of nearly $800 million in 2009. The Drought Quiz The Bay-Delta watershed is about the size of … Vermont New York Nebraska More than 75,000 square miles, the Bay-Delta watershed is nearly as large as Nebraska (76,824 miles 2 ), and dwarfs the states of Vermont and New York (9,216 and 47,126 miles 2 , respectively). Nearly half of the surface water in the state begins as rain or snow that falls within the watershed. Brett Baker, a sixth generation farmer in the Delta, says plans like any congressional bill which threatens to roll back the Endangered Species Act or Governor Brown's Twin Tunnel proposal will only lead to a saltier Delta. A saltier Delta is a sicker Delta, he says, with saline water poisoning crops and killing off or displacing native species—meaning such water grabs will not just erode the ecosystem but an entire way of life. Baker explains that riparian users—people whose property borders the waterways—have contracts with the state that promise a certain quantity of water, but makes few guarantees about its quality. “The state has a contract with us but if they want to break it, they may just do that and owe us money,” he says, explaining that the state would make some reparations to people if tainted water forced them to leave their land. “But when you've been some place for 150 years you don't really want to pick up and move. You kind of grow fond of a place.” (Read more about Brett in A Pear Farm On The Frontlines of California’s Water Wars)

Brad Zweerink for Earthjustice Baker, by the Delta.

Brad Zweerink for Earthjustice A fly fisherman in the American River casts for salmon near the Nimbus Dam on February 5, 2014.

It makes you wonder, what are you defending after all? Brett Baker Delta Farmer 6 Over the course of his lifetime, Baker reckons he's already witnessed decline in the biodiversity of the region due to mismanagement of water. "I had a lot of buddies that went over to Afghanistan and Iraq and something we always used to do together was salmon fish,” Baker says. “They went away to this foreign land and did unspeakable things and they did them because they believed they were from this place that was wonderful and deserved protecting." "Then they came back and they couldn't go salmon fishing because the environment was so degraded. It makes you wonder, what are you defending after all?"

Brad Zweerink for Earthjustice Cunningham, on the Delta's Bradford Island.

Karen Cunningham Oakley, CA Delta Rancher 7 Karen Cunningham is a Delta cattle rancher for a longtime ranching family that has had to sell off a third of its herd due to the lack of grazing land caused by the drought. She says the ranchers in the Central Valley face the same problems as she does in the Delta, but fears that any water grab could further threaten her ability to keep her cattle healthy. “They have the same problems as the ranchers up here as far as the hill ground not having any water on it, and not growing any feed,” she says. “My ranch is in the Delta and I see every day the way the ecosystem is changing, and it just makes me sick that they are going to try to take all that water. We're sub-irrigated so when they take fresh water out of the Delta, the water that comes under my ground is most likely going to be extremely salty and going to have more of the selenium and pesticides. So now we're going to get all the garbage … tainting our feed.” “Every 10 to 12 years, you have a dry period in California. That's where we live and you have to deal with it,” Cunningham says, commenting on the politicization of the drought. “To use it as a platform to get these tunnels through, it's unbelievable to me because the water still isn't there. Tunnels or not, the water is not there to take. If they go in and build these things, they will take what little remains.”

Brad Zweerink for Earthjustice Simpkin, at the South Fork of the American River.

Brad Zweerink for Earthjustice “Most people don't kayak when the water is this low.”

John Simpkin El Dorado County, CA American River Kayaker 8According to a 2009 state report, non-motorized boating is a $1.7 billion industry in California. John Simpkin, a kayaker who has lived along the American River since he was seven, said before the past year, he'd never seen the water so low in the wintertime. Kayakers and rafters rely on scheduled dam releases to increase the flow for their runs. Because it is a critically dry year, the scheduled releases have been reduced. “Most people don't kayak when the water is this low,” he said. “There's a number of rafting companies up here and those guys will be out of business if they can't put people in the river.” Simpkin, who kayaks in the American River about 150 times a year, knows some people who are feeling the burn. One such person is Keith Miller, who owns California Canoe and Kayak in Oakland. “Normally, this time of the year, hundreds of paddlers would be out on the coastal streams and in the beautiful wild and scenic rivers. But there's no water right now,” Miller said of the 2014 whitewater season.

Brad Zweerink for Earthjustice Jones, near a side channel of the American River.

Brad Zweerink for Earthjustice A fisherman holds a steelhead on Feburary 5, 2014, shortly before the American River closed for recreational fishing until the spawning season ended.

Jim Jones Gold River, CA Delta Fisherman 9Jim Jones, who serves on the Advisory Council of the Save the American River Association, has lived along the Sacramento River tributary for 40 years. He said in 2014 that many of the local fishing groups, and even the tackle shops and river guides, whose very livelihoods depend on recreational fishing, asked the Department of Fish & Game to close the American River and other streams and rivers to sport fishermen. With water levels too low, the fishermen feared the eggs laid by the spawning Chinook and steelhead were at risk of dying in the shallow water. When a salmon spawns, it lays its eggs in shallow gravelly areas called redds. Typically, the riffling water flowing through the shallows supplies oxygen to the developing fish, but with such low water levels many of the redds are either receiving low oxygen flow or are completely dewatered, killing the eggs. “There are thousands of people who depend on the salmon and the steelhead for their living, whether it's the commercial fishermen, the recreational fishermen, the fly shops, the bait shops,” Jones says. “These are not subsidized people. They have to make a living. They are members of the true free market system, not like the welfare farmers, people in the San Joaquin Valley and the billionaires from Beverly Hills who get millions of dollars of subsidies every year.”

Chris Jordan-Bloch / Earthjustice Jose Chi holds up an impressively large king salmon caught in the Pacific Ocean near Ft. Bragg, California.

Fishermen Ft. Bragg, CA Commercial Salmon Fishermen 10 Commercial fishermen are just now beginning to feel the effects of the drought in the form of restrictions on the water. If the salmon can’t spawn in the rivers this year—due to the drought or water transfers or both—fishermen will feel the pain in the coming seasons. John McManus, head of the Golden Gate Salmon Association, says commercial fishermen better be saving their money. “There is fear developing among the fishermen about the future, because they know the drought will catch up with them and bite them in the butt,” he says. “Their wealth is typically tied up in their boats and their permit to fish salmon, which can be transferred. After good years, the value of those permits goes up due to the limited number of them. But the converse is also true … If you cashed out after last year, you would've done OK. But in the next few years, things could get a lot harder.”

Brad Zweerink for Earthjustice Minton, by the American River.

Jonas Minton Sacramento, CA Water Policy Expert 11Jonas Minton is a water policy advisor for the Planning and Conservation League, an environmental non-profit in Sacramento. “This drought is bringing into focus an even more harsh reality,” Minton says. “For decades, California has been using more water than Mother Nature has provided. Each year we have overspent on the order of 3–4 million acre feet of water. Much of this has been unsustainable overdrafting from groundwater that was accumulated literally over centuries." "In addition, we have stolen water from our rivers and bays with the tragic consequence of ecosystem destruction." With 1,400 reservoirs in California, Minton says that in 2014, the agencies provided much of the available water to corporate agricultural interests in the Central Valley primarily to feed the almond and pistachios farms, water intensive crops planted in the middle of a desert.

Chris Jordan-Bloch / Earthjustice Frantz, at his home in Shafter, California. He has witnessed a watershed of changes from the days his grandfathers cultivated the land with mules.