As wildfires rage across Northern California, with the Park Fire growing to more than 350,000 acres over the weekend, the recent U.S. Drought Monitor has shown areas of the state returning to “abnormally dry” or “moderate drought” conditions.

Food & Water Watch’s Northern California Organizer Isabel Penman said, “It is devastating, but no surprise, that we’re seeing a return to drought conditions, and, sadly, this could very well be the start of further drought across the state. Californians are already dealing with extreme wildfires, dangerous air quality because of the smoke and alarming rates of their wells going dry, and we’re still not through the hot months. Our nine months out of drought conditions were clearly not enough to turn our water crisis around and we must stop acting like those brief periods of rain will save us from a climate change driven future of extreme heat and drought. Gov. Newsom must act to realign our water policy and move us to a sustainable water future. This means stopping new fossil fuel permits and taking on the big corporate agriculture’s misuse of California’s water.” 

Extremely dry weather, which creates the perfect conditions for wildfires, is in many ways due to the overuse of water by the Big Oil and Big Ag industries. Food & Water Watch research has shown that poor water management has led to these industries, which are some of the main contributors to our climate crisis, using an exorbitant amount of California’s precious freshwater resources. For example, California’s mega-dairies use more than 142 million gallons per day, while oil and gas operators devoured 3 billion gallons of freshwater between 2018 and 2021.

Governor Newsom must direct his agencies to take on the root causes of our devastating drought by preventing the planting of new thirsty crops like almond and alfalfa, banning new mega-dairies, and ending new oil and gas drilling.