A shallow sales pitch

CALIFORNIA’S SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY is one of the richest agricultural regions in the world, but growers there have a problem: Unfettered groundwater pumping has caused the land to sink and the regional canal system to break.

If the agencies in charge of the canals don’t fix them, water deliveries to thousands of farms and some cities across the valley’s $25 billion agricultural economy will continue to be affected, impacting everyone from farm owners to low-wage farmworkers. But repairs are complicated and expensive.

The Friant-Kern Canal—the waterway that is furthest along in repairs — will eventually cost nearly $1 billion to fix. The 152-mile-long canal pulls water from the distant San Joaquin River through mono-cropped acres of vines, trees and vegetables. It is an essential artery for agribusiness, and so growers and their irrigation districts — and the politicians who represent them — want the expenses to be partially covered with taxpayer money.

But there’s an