A tiny town in the Central Valley prepares for ‘Armageddon’

…The farmers who will be slammed the hardest are those who depend on the Central Valley Project, the massive federal system of dams, reservoirs, pumps and canals that helped spawn California’s $36 billion farming industry


Across the Central Valley, warns a new University of California-Davis study, 80,000 jobs could be lost this year.

In Firebaugh, a historic town of 7,000, one of the first casualties could be the Silver Creek Almond Co., which Coburn co-founded five years ago to pack and market the almonds he grows on 1,500 acres.

All of the water used to nourish Coburn’s orchards comes from the Central Valley Project. And on Feb. 20, federal water officials announced a “zero allocation” to farmers