Growers to meet with regulators over flooded Salinas River
On May 5, growers in the agriculturally rich Salinas Valley plan to sit down with a bevy of regulators to formulate a channel maintenance program for the Salinas River that they hope will prevent the kind of losses experienced from the second catastrophic flood in less than 40 years. Norm Groot, the executive director of the Monterey County Farm Bureau, is leading the effort to reach out to five different state and federal government agencies to try and reach a compromise that will allow growers to clear brush and sediment out of the river channel to increase water capacity and lessen the impact of flood waters on cropland.