California farmers dig deeper as wells run dry

San Francisco

NEAR California's Success Lake, more than 1,000 water wells have failed. Farmers are spending US$750,000 to drill 1,800 feet (about 550 metres) down to keep fields from going fallow. Makeshift showers have sprouted near the church parking lot.

"The conditions are like a third-world country," said Andrew Lockman at the Office of Emergency Services in Tulare County, in the heart of the state's agricultural Central Valley about 282 km north of Los Angeles.