Water Management
From: Wade Graham, Los Angeles
Times
The state must follow Australia's
example and fundamentally change the way water and water rights are managed.
"This year's drought has
thrown California into a sudden tizzy, a crisis of snowpack measurements,
fish-versus-people arguments and controversial cuts in water deliveries. But in
reality, crisis is the permanent state of water affairs in the Golden State -
by design, because our institutions keep it that way.
California has 1,400 major dams,
thousands of miles of aqueducts and pumps so powerful they lift water nearly
2,000 feet over the Tehachapis. The state uses enough water in an average year
to support, in theory, 318 million Californians (and their lawns and
dishwashers), more than eight times the actual population of 38 million.
Coalition response... The Australian "Basin Plan" was a high-level political
document signed into law in 2012, and much of the detail has yet to be worked
out. Australian officials arrived at the plan as part of a triple priorities
approach that seeks to balance social, environmental, and economic factors- a
balance that many water managers and planners believe to be elusive.
Participants in the basin plan dispute the concept that planners and scientists
look first to how much water is needed to sustain stream ecosystems and cap
diversions to maintain them. The arrival at 2,750 gigaliters as a sustainable
diversion limit was a political, not ecosystem-driven conclusion.
While Australia and California do
have some similarities, we should be careful not to over-generalize the situations
confronting us.
The opportunity for agriculture
to conserve up to 9 million acre-feet of water through improved irrigation
systems is wildly inaccurate. This myth persists despite leading irrigation
researchers disputing it. According to the Center for Irrigation Technology at
CSU Fresno the actual conservation potential from California agriculture is
about 300,000 acre feet, or about 1 percent of typical applied water.
California farmers have invested
more than $3 billion on 2.4 million acres to improve the efficiency of their
irrigation systems. Between 1967 and 2007 California farmers have almost
doubled their productive yield, improving quality, while using 14% less water
to do it. That benefits American consumers who pay just 6.2 percent of their
disposable income on food and non-alcoholic beverages compared to 10.2 percent
on average in 28 other high-income countries. This represents an additional
$3,820 in food costs per year if they paid the same 10.2 percent as families do
in other countries. Public investments in irrigation infrastructure play a
valuable role in that cost savings.
Water Supply
From: Todd Fitchette, Western
Farm Press
With some late-season rain and
snow forecast in the coming week for California a bipartisan call by key
federal lawmakers is welcome and appreciated.
A letter signed Thursday by U.S.
Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representatives Jim Costa, Kevin McCarthy, David
Valadao, Ken Calvert, Jeff Denham and Devin Nunes urges Interior Secretary
Sally Jewell and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker to immediately evaluate
operating criteria on the Central Valley Project and State Water Project to
capture as much water as falls on California over the next week.
Water Storage
From: Heather Hacking, Chico
Enterprise-Record
This month, another step forward
was taken for plans to build Sites Reservoir near Maxwell. Congressmen John
Garamendi, D-Fairfield, and Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale, have introduced federal
legislation to authorize and complete the feasibility study for the proposed
new water storage.
One could call the progress slow
and steady, understanding that the timeline is decades. State water leaders
have been talking about the location for water storage since the 1960s, and
local water districts have been working to gather support for the past dozen
years.
Drought
From: Bill Jones, Fresno Bee
In California, managing water
resources requires managing volatility. We know we're going to have wet cycles,
and we know we're going to have droughts. The challenge is preparing ourselves
for those inevitable events. Our forefathers did a great job in this respect.
Fifty years ago, President
Kennedy and Gov. Edward "Pat" Brown flew over my farm on their way to
dedicate the San Luis Dam. I remember seeing the helicopters and my father
saying they're bringing water to the best farmland in the world. This February,
I saw another presidential helicopter fly over my farm bringing welfare checks
instead of water to farms and farm workers.
From: Jason Stverak, Dailycaller.com
Blog
California's historic drought is
getting worse by the day, as water providers are now levying unprecedented
cutbacks on municipalities and farmers. The federal Bureau of Reclamation had
already announced that there's a 50 percent chance that parts of California
will face water rationing at some point next year, and the state government has
cut off over 1 million acres of farmland from the state's reservoirs. Although
many Californians have never before experienced water shortages of this
magnitude, water scarcity has long been a reality for the state's farmers, who
find it more difficult to make a living each year thanks to green policies
crafted by politicians and activist judges clueless to the value of this scarce
resource.
California's most valuable land
may be in Pebble Beach and Brentwood, but its most indispensable land lies in
the Central Valley. It's the farmland that feeds our nation of over 300 million
and produces billions of dollars in exports each year, and if we stay on the
path we're on, it's going to dry up. Rural areas throughout the nation are
shedding jobs, losing crops, and rationing an increasingly tight water supply,
but Valley farmers are facing environmental roadblocks unique to the Golden
State.
From: Seth Nidever, Hanford
Sentinel
San Joaquin Valley agriculture
needs to link up with Silicon Valley - and will do so as the food-production
industry accelerates into a higher-tech era to deal with water shortages, an
environmentally-friendly regulatory environment and groundwater pumping issues.
Welcome to the new normal.
That was the underlying message
of a West Hills Community College District forum Thursday at Harris Ranch that
brought together growers, government officials, businesses, educators and
analysts to envision what 21st-century agriculture is going to look like in
California.
From: Rob Roth, KTVU 2
Potamocorbula Amurensis, a big
name for a tiny clam. Biologists say there are likely hundreds of millions of
them living in San Francisco Bay. But the on-going drought is creating a
problem.
"There is a potential
problem," says Robin Stewart, a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey
in Menlo Park. Biologists say in rainy years, fresh water flushes or at least
dilutes most toxins that end up the Bay.
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