[widebody911]

Originally Posted by Evans, Marv

I wonder if in the future, the water table would be sufficiently depleted to cause that economy to collapse. In the San Joaquin Valley of California, they're sucking the water out of the ground so fast the ground level has dropped ten inches in places.

It has dropped way more than that. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/89761/san-joaquin-valley-is-still-sinking

And this is from 2016

Since the 1920s, excessive pumping of groundwater at thousands of wells has caused land to subside, or sink, by as much as 8.5 meters (28 feet) in sections of California’s San Joaquin Valley

Several trouble spots that were identified in 2015 have continued to subside at rates as high as 0.6 meters (2 feet) per year.