A reminder of the scope of the drought as not even America’s 10th largest city is safe.
Juan Bautista de Anza named the river for the Virgin of Guadalupe during his trek between Monterrey and San Francisco in 1776.
More recently, the river had become a source of pride for the city, as conservation and restoration efforts had seen fish and wildlife rebound.
But after a historic summer of drought, the river is nothing but a cracked, gray riverbed. The soil, bone-dry to a degree that has prevented the upstream reservoirs from water releases. Such a routine release would deplete the strained reservoirs more and the water would now just get absorbed by the desiccated soil and be dry again within a month.
Leslee Hamilton, executive director of the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy, described the situation saying, “We’ve been seeing a great increase in the number of birds and wildlife in the area, the timing of this is just devastating.”
The drought really cannot end fast enough.
For the full story on San Jose’s Guadalupe River can be found here.
Image Credit: Flickr User acordova, https://www.flickr.com/photos/acordova/5428629271/ via (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)