Water Supply
From: Steve Mawhinney,
Sacramento Bee
The weather pattern appears to
have changed. February was wet and rainfall was average. March is starting out
wet. Not exactly drought busting rainfall but we'll take anything we can get.
On to the more pressing question.
Residential users of water who
use 4 percent of the water in California have been told to reduce their
consumption by 20 percent. The other 96 percent of the water is consumed by
agriculture and commercial users, but they have not been asked to reduce
consumption. Some farms continue the use of gravity irrigation or flooding, not
exactly the the most efficient uses of water.
Coalition response... It's true that not all Californians are being asked to reduce their water
use - some are being told they'll be getting no water at all. This is
what is happening in areas of the state where water allocations have been set
at zero percent by state and federal authorities. The real users of California
agricultural water, consumers here at home and across the world have benefited
from the efforts of farmers to grow responsibly. Favored by a seasonally dry,
sunny climate that helps reduce the threat to crops from pest and disease,
California farmers are able to grow more food under the most strident
regulatory constraints of anywhere in the world.
California's growers consistently
invest in irrigation systems that are appropriate for the physical needs of
their crops. In fact, farmers have invested almost $3 billion upgrading
irrigation systems on almost 2.5 million acres to improve not only the per drop
productivity of water, but consistently improving the quality of the food and
fiber we demand from them.
Delta
From: G. Arthur Cort,
Sacramento Bee
Re "Ignoring water rights imperils Delta's farmers"
(Forum, March 2): Al Medvitz' article does not answer one important fact. How
did Delta farmers irrigate before the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Central Valley
project was put into operation in 1945?
The Sacramento and American
Rivers had floods in the winter and very low flows in the late summer. I
remember floods in the Sacramento area and the flood gates on Folsom Boulevard,
H street, and 12th and 16th streets being closed because of uncontrolled flows
in the rivers."
Water Supply
From: Staff, YourCentralValley.com
Terra Bella citrus growers are
desperate for water. They depend on surface water from the sate but water
allocations are set to zero. On top of that, there are no wells in the area.
Some trees have already been abandoned and are slowly wilting away. Farmers say
if something doesn't change soon, next season's crop will be lost and it could
take years to recover.
From: Bob Moffitt, Capitol
Public Radio
Several days of rain and snow
have raised water levels in most major California reservoirs in the past month.
But, Doug Carlson with the California Department of Water Resources says the
state is nowhere near even a normal year for rain and snow.
"That would take
considerable precipitation -very heavy rain and snow- from now til perhaps the
end of April to achieve the normal readings that we would expect in the snow
pack for this time of year," he says. "That's just not in the
forecast."
From: Andrew Creasey,
Marysville Appeal-Democrat
Until the federal government
fulfills water obligations in the north, don't send it south.
That was the message from
Sacramento River settlement contractors, through an attorney, to the Bureau of
Reclamation, which recently forecast the water deliveries to the districts and
water companies along the river would be cut by 60 percent.
The contractors, however, claim
their water right only allows the bureau to reduce deliveries by a maximum of
25 percent.
From: Dan Walters, Sacramento
Bee
Once in a while, a line of movie
dialogue becomes a cultural icon, and it happened in 1996's "Jerry
Maguire" when actor Cuba Gooding Jr., playing a talented athlete, told his
agent (Tom Cruise) to "show me the money."
It neatly captures the financial
squeeze facing two big public works projects that Gov. Jerry Brown wants -
drilling twin water tunnels beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and
building a bullet train, together likely well over $100 billion. Brown needs
enforceable pledges from big water agencies to pay for tunnel construction,
plus federal funds and a multibillion-dollar state bond for habitat restoration
and other aspects.
From: John Holland, Modesto
Bee
Late-winter rain has prompted the
Oakdale and South San Joaquin irrigation districts to postpone the start of
their 2014 deliveries to next week.
Both had planned to begin filling
canals Monday, which was somewhat early because of the mostly dry conditions
this year, but the recent storms brought a change. OID now plans to start next
Monday, and SSJID will follow March 12.
From: Staff, Bakersfield
Californian
Conservation is never going to
solve California's drought problem. You can conserve all you want, but in the
end, you have to have conveyance systems, storage, and the ability to move
water around the state to the people who need it.
That is what Water Association of
Kern County Executive Director Beth Brookhart Pandol said Monday on "First
Look with Scott Cox." Pandol advocates for water conservation -- but said
conservation alone won't solve California's critical drought.
Technology
From: Staff, Western Farm
Press
The drought was very much on the
mind of persons attending the 2014 World Ag Expo. But drought has almost become
a way of life for farmers all across the American West, says Netafim USA's John
Vikupitz.
While the focus has been on the
situation in California, Vikupitz, president and CEO of Netafim, said people
should know the drought is extending across most of the western United States
in some form or another.
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