Water Use
From: Carolee Krieger, Ventura
County Star
The recent deluge
notwithstanding, California remains gripped by the worst drought in decades.
Farms and some cities already are feeling the impact.
But while drought is a natural
phenomenon, the state's water crisis is a fabricated event. We have enough
water in California to serve our urban populations and support sustainable
farming. But we have no water to waste and we certainly can't allow the
privatization of our most essential public resource.
Coalition response... Ms. Krieger's column is more fiction than fact. While California
farmers produce food and fiber enjoyed locally and internationally, they cannot
do it without water. Honest, open conversations about how water is used and
managed in California are far more productive than repeating myths and
propaganda.
•
It is a commonly repeated
myth that California's water rights permits are many times the actual available
water in California. The reality is that California's water rights include
provisions for the reuse of water. Permitted and unused or underused water
often returns to the supply where another water user with a permit may divert
it for use.
•
The re-institution of
urban preference for water rights over others users including the environment
and agriculture may threaten endangered species, wild and scenic rivers, and
agricultural open spaces that produce locally grown food and fiber. Urban water
users are the best-protected water users in the state, as State regulators are
attuned to the needs of health and safety uses.
•
The Kern Water Bank was
developed by local public agencies after the State of California was unable to
get the project beyond an initial pilot project. The Kern Water Bank has become
an indispensable regional water resource as a direct result of local water
agencies working cooperatively to build a modern water management tool. The
Kern Water Bank is controlled by local, public water agencies through the Kern
Water Bank Authority, not by individuals.
•
Estimates on the supply
yield from other sources such as marine desalination vary greatly, but
California agriculture has already stepped up on conservation and improved
efficiency. In the last 10 years farmers have spent almost $3 billion upgrading
irrigation systems on more than 2.4 million acres. These and other improvements
have nearly doubled production while applied water use has declined by 14.5
percent. Investments in efficiency have resulted in leading irrigation researchers
at the Center for Irrigation Technology and CSU Fresno to determine the actual
amount of conservation potential from California agriculture is about 300,000
acre feet, or about 1 percent of typical applied water.
•
Drainage contamination
issues began to be resolved over 20 years ago. Today the San Joaquin Valley
Drainage Program is working to improve not only the farmland in the area but
also prevent the drainage problems associated with the environment in the
1980s. Modern projects to reduce salinity in agricultural discharge, such as
the Panoche Water District's solar desalination stills, promise opportunities
to reduce discharge and reuse and recycle water.
•
Agricultural economists
say this year's idling of 800,000 acres or more of farmland in California will
cost 20,000 jobs and roughly a $7.5 billion hit to the economy.
Water Supply
From: J.N. Sbranti, Modesto
Bee
Numerous billion-dollar proposals
to create more water storage in California are competing for attention and
funding during this third year of drought.
But there may be a less-expensive
way to increase water flows into the Central Valley: Start thinning out the
overgrown Sierra Nevada forests.
Coalition response... California's forestry management practices may indeed have had an impact
on runoff and water supply in the preceding decades. It will be interesting to
see the results of the UC Merced study and whether sensible thinning of
forestland will improve conditions in our rivers and streams.
Another factor that has likely
had an effect on runoff is the urbanization of California's foothill counties.
Since 1960 the population of the eight counties from Plumas to Mariposa
increased 580 percent from about 114,500 to almost 694,000. El Dorado County's
population is up over nine times its 1960 level.
This information is vitally
important as the State Water Resources Control Board undertakes a process to
require a 35 percent unimpaired flow mandate for the Merced, Tuolumne and
Stanislaus rivers. Other waterways will undoubtedly follow. Once again it will
be farmers that bear the brunt of a majority of the water supply cuts when in
reality many other factors need to be considered.
Levees
From: Matt Weiser, Sacramento
Bee
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
has decided it will no longer force local levee agencies to choose between
keeping trees on their levees and losing federal money for disaster assistance.
On Monday, the Army Corps
announced in a new "interim" policy that it will not disqualify
levees that fail to meet its maintenance criteria from receiving disaster
relief funding, essentially granting a reprieve to thousands of miles of
California riverside habitat. The move appears to resolve, for now, a
long-running policy dispute that pitted the state of California against the
powerful federal flood-control agency.
Drought
From: Cary Blake, Western Farm
Press
California's epic drought - its
rainless skies and snow covered-less mountains - continues to block a rainbow
from appearing over agriculture's horizon. Growers continue to fallow prime
farm land - possibly up to 800,000 acres this year - and make very difficult
decisions for their businesses.
Growers of permanent crops - tree
nuts, vines, and others - are feeling the heat from the lack of surface water.
Some tree nut growers in especially water-short areas are focused primarily on
keeping orchards alive; much less producing a crop.
From: Paul Rogers, San Jose
Mercury News
In the latest sign that
California's historic drought is having a worsening impact on Silicon Valley,
the region's largest water provider is putting in place unprecedented cutbacks
this spring on cities, farmers and its own efforts to recharge groundwater
supplies.
Because of the lack of rain, the
Santa Clara Valley Water District last week alerted seven cities and companies
that provide water to about 1.5 million people that it will provide only 80
percent of the treated drinking water they have requested through the rest of
the year.
Water Use
From: Antoine Abou-Diwan,
Imperial Valley Press
The Imperial Irrigation
District's board of Directors has called a special meeting for this afternoon.
A guideline modification to the district's on-farm water conservation program
is at the top of the agenda.
Some farmers feared that their
historical water-use baseline could be compromised by participating in the
IID's voluntary program and installing water conservation measures in their
fields.
From: Jane Wells, NBC News
The Golden State's current
drought could be one for the history books, as farmers in the Central Valley
drill deeper wells and deal with a complete cutoff in contracted water from the
state.
But at the southeastern corner of
California, farmers have plenty of water.
"We are very blessed with
the water we have," said Linsey Dale of the Imperial County Farm Bureau.
She estimates the value of all the winter vegetables and alfalfa hay grown in
this area north of the Mexican border are worth about $2 billion.
Fisheries
From: Damon Arthur, Redding
Record-Searchlight
Three tanker trucks were loaded
this morning with more than 400,000 fingerling Chinook salmon to haul to the
Bay Area from the Coleman National Fish Hatchery in Anderson.
The fall-run salmon usually swim
the nearly 300 mile trek down Sacramento River from Anderson to the Pacific
Ocean, but this year the drought forced wildlife officials to give the fish a
ride.
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