The San Joaquin Valley's natural water supply, always suibject to flood/drought fluctuations, has been plundered for a century by reckless and unaccountable agriculture that treats land, after the paradigm of the cotton industry, as a sterile medium to which one adds fertilizer and water to make money, until it all runs out. South of the Tehachapis, they add houses to what was once the richest agricultural county in the state, and beyond that county, they add houses to the desert.