By Scott Smith | ABC News – Associated Press 

Farmers in California’s fertile San Joaquin Valley are bracing to receive no irrigation water from a federal system of reservoirs and canals for a third consecutive year and looking to El Nino to produce the very wet winter they need….

Westlands is the nation’s largest supplier of irrigation water, and for the last two years, the bureau’s initial allocation was for zero percent of the district’s contracted amount. It remained at zero throughout both years.

Lester Snow, executive director of the California Water Foundation, said the drought has exposed a weakness in the state’s water management system built 60 or more years ago.

The amount of land farmers now cultivate and the number of people living in the state have both dramatically increased since state and federal officials built California’s massive water system.

Yet Snow said the state hasn’t adequately invested in modernizing it, such as finding ways to capture storm water runoff, recycle water, store and recharge depleted groundwater.

“We’re not going back to the good old days,” said Snow, a former secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency. “We’ve reached a new normal in volatility, and we need to adapt to that.”

Despite El Niño, California Food Producers Brace For No Irrigation Water In 2016: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/california-farmers-brace-water-shortage-el-nino-36344244