California has been the nation’s
leading agricultural and dairy state for the past 50 years. The
state’s 80,500 farms and ranches produce more than 400 different
agricultural products. These products generated a record $44.7
billion in sales value in 2012, accounting for 11.3 percent of
the US total.
Breaking down the state’s agricultural role in the country,
California produces 21 percent of the nation’s milk supply, 23
percent of its cheese and 92 percent of all grapes. The state
also produces half of all domestically-grown fruits, nuts and
vegetables, including some products, such as almonds, walnuts,
artichokes, persimmons and pomegranates, of which 99 percent are
grown in California.
Overall, about 3 percent of employment in the state is directly
or indirectly related to agriculture.
Restoring marsh and wetland habitat can have significant
benefits for dozens of species throughout the Bay and
Delta—that’s beyond dispute. But when it comes to saving the
Estuary’s most imperiled fish, how much habitat improvements
can help in the absence of dramatically increased freshwater
flows is a question that has dogged and divided scientists and
policy makers for years. As the State Water Resources Control
Board considers the latest proposal from the State and water
agencies for a flows agreement that would restore thousands of
riparian and wetland acres—while dedicating less water to the
environment than proposed under an alternative regulatory
framework—critics argue that science doesn’t support its
underlying assumptions.
Most of the country’s lettuce and other leafy greens come from
California’s Salinas Valley, where 13 atmospheric rivers this
winter have obliterated local drought conditions. Farmers have
welcomed the water and also sometimes struggled with the
deluge. Reporter Amy Mayer has this look at what it all means
for spring salads. AMY MAYER, BYLINE: Andrew Regalado and his
father trudge through sticky mud on the edge of a field at
World’s Finest Farm in Hollister, Calif. They’ve owned the
organic vegetable and herb farm for about 17 years. In a creek
bed just beyond the field, cloudy brown water leaps at the
banks, and that’s days after floodwaters have mostly receded.
Another storm is coming. ANDREW REGALADO: If this water’s still
here, there’s a good chance we might get flooded again. Yeah,
so it’ll be a tough year.
New research experimentally confirms that nitrate can help
transport naturally occurring uranium from the underground to
groundwater, according to a press release from the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The new research backs a
2015 study led by Karrie Weber of the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln. The 2015 showed that aquifers contaminated
with high levels of nitrate — including the High Plains Aquifer
residing beneath Nebraska — also contain uranium concentrations
far exceeding a threshold set by the U.S. EPA. Uranium
concentrations above that EPA threshold have been shown to
cause kidney damage in humans, especially when regularly
consumed via drinking water.
The Bureau of Reclamation said Tuesday water allocations to the
Central Valley Project will increase thanks to the incredible
amount of rain and snow the state has received. The initial
allocation issued Feb. 22 was conservative due to below-average
precipitation in February, according to the Bureau of
Reclamation. The increase is due to the persistent wet
weather that dominated the end of February and almost all of
March. The atmospheric river events have greatly boosted
reservoir levels, including the two main reservoirs in the
state north and south of the delta – Shasta and San Luis,
respectively. … The latest allocations raised
irrigation water service to 80% from 35% of their contract
total, and municipal and industrial water service to 100% from
75% of their historic use.
[A]gricultural practices, especially in California, must be
updated to survive the future. One powerful change that is
growing momentum is strategic cropland repurposing. Doing
cropland repurposing right can benefit many, including
landowners. … Cropland retirement has direct
negative effects on agricultural revenues and farmworker
employment, with ripple effects in other sectors that depend on
agriculture (such as transportation and agricultural services).
But cropland retirement also means a decrease in pesticide,
synthetic fertilizers, and water use that can bring significant
environmental and local public health benefits. How do we
weigh these scenarios and decide if cropland repurposing makes
sense?
To understand the virtual water trade, let’s start with cows.
In recent years, public attention and anger has grown over the
way water in the rapidly drying Colorado River Basin is used to
grow food for cattle, whose emissions are driving climate
change, which is exacerbating this drought in the first place.
And part of why people are irritated is that some of the water
isn’t even going to American cows, but rather Saudi dairy cows.
… In the 17 Western States, 7 percent of water is used
in people’s homes according to a recent study
in Nature; commercial and industrial use account for
another 5 percent. But a whopping 86 percent of water is
consumed by crop irrigation, including the 32 percent of water
used to grow crops that humans don’t even eat directly, such as
alfalfa, hay, and corn silage for livestock. -Written by Noah J. Gordon, acting co-director of
the Sustainability, Climate, and Geopolitics Program at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Tuesday, the House Committee on Natural Resources discussed the
increased need for water storage in California and the rest of
the western United States given the highly above average
precipitation after years of drought. The Subcommittee on
Water, Wildlife and Fisheries held a hearing on long-term
drought and the water storage issues throughout the reasons to
discuss the situation and possible solutions.
… Bourdeau, the Vice Chair of the San Luis and
Delta-Mendota Water Authority … [and] a director for
Westlands Water District … noted that farmers throughout
the Central Valley have spent billions of dollars to put drip
irrigation systems in place, among other water-saving measures,
to go along with the conservation efforts from municipal water
users. But without proper water storage solutions, the
nation’s future could be imperil if the Valley’s food
production wanes.
As the rain year continues to look promising, rice farmers are
happy to expect most if not all of their water allocations will
be delivered. This week the Department of Water Resources
announced a 75% water allocation to the irrigation districts
served by the State Water Project. Farmers on the east side of
the valley served by Lake Oroville are expected to receive 100%
of their water rights, according to Louis Espino, rice farming
systems adviser and director at the University of California
Butte County Cooperative Extension. Butte County Ag
Commissioner Louie Mendoza said he expects 100% of the rice
acreage to be planted — about 100,000 acres. Mendoza said
in 2022, around 80-85% of rice acreage was planted.
Ideas flowed at a recent forum on how to manage Napa Valley
water, which is the lifeblood for local cities, world-famous
wine country and the environment. Save Napa Valley Foundation —
formerly Growers/Vintners for Responsible Agriculture — and
other groups put on the Napa Water Forum. It took place Friday,
March 24 in the Native Sons of the Golden West building in
downtown Napa. … [W]ater runs from local mountains in
streams to the Napa River, giving life to fish and other
aquatic life. The Napa River runs for about 50 miles from Mount
St. Helena through the Napa Valley to San Pablo Bay. Some
water is captured behind dams that form reservoirs for local
cities. Some water seeps into the aquifer, becoming groundwater
that feeds streams and the Napa River during the hot summers
and provides well water for vineyards, wineries and homes.
A field that has long grown tomatoes, peppers and onions now
looks like a wind-whipped ocean as farmer Don Cameron seeks to
capture the runoff from a freakishly wet year in California to
replenish the groundwater basin that is his only source to
water his crops. Taking some tomatoes out of production for a
year is an easy choice if it means boosting future water
supplies for his farm about 35 miles (56 kilometers) southwest
of Fresno. He’s pumping 300 acre-feet a day — enough to supply
hundreds of households for a year — from the gushing North Fork
of the Kings River onto former vegetable fields and others
dotted with pistachio trees, which can withstand heavy
flooding.
While environmentally-conscious wine producers like Shannon are
making a difference in California, so is the state which
recently announced its long-range commitment to promoting
ecosystem resilience. The sustainable pest management roadmap
for California was released by the Department of Pesticide
Regulation, the California Environmental Protection Agency, and
the California Department of Food and Agriculture. It charts a
course for California’s elimination of high-risk pesticides by
2050. Yet, wine producers like Sam Coturri of Enterprise
Vineyards in Sonoma County, whose family oversees 35 estate
vineyards, and produces their own label, Winery Sixteen 600,
have been farming organically since 1979.
On a recent morning on a snow-covered farm in Western Nevada,
Lucy Rechel had a spring in her step. Rechel, who manages the
cattle operation at Snyder Livestock Company, said the cows in
the feedlot were feeling good, too, because it was clear-skied
and sunny. … Nice weather has been in short supply in Mason
Valley this winter. Many days have been filled with wind, rain
or snowstorms. And when that happens here? In fact, Snyder
Livestock has spent about $75,000 – and counting – just dealing
with mud. That includes renting large mining equipment to haul
it out and paying for the labor and fuel to run it. In a normal
winter, the company will spend maybe $10,000 on mud removal,
Rechel said.
When Don Cameron first intentionally flooded his central
California farm in 2011, pumping excess stormwater onto his
fields, fellow growers told him he was crazy. Today, California
water experts see Cameron as a pioneer. His experiment to
control flooding and replenish the ground water has become a
model that policy makers say others should emulate. With the
drought-stricken state suddenly inundated by a series of
rainstorms, California’s outdated infrastructure has let much
of the stormwater drain into the Pacific Ocean. Cameron
estimated his operation is returning 8,000 to 9,000 acre-feet
of water back to the ground monthly during this exceptionally
wet year, from both rainwater and melted snowpack. That would
be enough water for 16,000 to 18,000 urban households in a
year.
Situated in the Sonoran Desert near the Arizona-California
border is the tiny rural town of Cibola — home to roughly 300
people, depending on the season. Life here depends almost
entirely on the Colorado River, which
nourishes thirsty crops like cotton and alfalfa, sustains
a nearby wildlife refuge and allows visitors to enjoy boating
and other recreation. It’s a place few Americans are likely to
have heard of, which made it all the more surprising when
investment firm Greenstone Management Partners
bought nearly 500 acres of land here. On its
website, Greenstone says its “goal is to advance
water transactions that benefit both the public good and
private enterprise.” But critics accuse Greenstone — a
subsidiary of the East Coast financial services conglomerate
MassMutual — of trying to profit off Cibola’s most precious and
limited resource: water.
A modest proposal for western water: Turn off the spigot to the
Imperial Valley and let the farms go fallow. In return, provide
a water future for Arizona, Nevada and Southern California.
Sure, there would be a price to pay. California’s Imperial
Valley, which sits in the southeastern corner of the state,
bordered by Arizona and Mexico, produces alfalfa, lettuce, corn
and sugar beets, among other crops. It’s home to more than
300,000 head of cattle. Cutting off the water would end all of
that, along with the livelihoods of the farmers and ranchers
who produce it and the communities that depend on it. But let’s
face it, the whole valley defies nature. It’s a desert that
became an agricultural area when the All-American Canal was
built just over 100 years ago. -Written by Jim Newton, a veteran journalist,
best-selling author and teacher.
The feast or famine nature of California water has never been
more apparent than now. After three years of punishing drought,
the state has been slammed by a dozen atmospheric rivers. On
our Central
Valley Tour next month, you will see the
ramifications of this nature in action. Focusing on the San
Joaquin Valley, the tour will bring you up close to farmers,
cities and disadvantaged communities as well
as managers trying to capture flood waters to augment
overpumped groundwater basins while also protecting communities
from damaging flood impacts. Despite the recent rains, the San
Joaquin Valley most years deals with little to no water
deliveries for agricultural irrigation and wetland habitat
management.
During a winter of blizzards, floods and drought-ending
downpours, it’s easy to forget that California suffers
from chronic water scarcity — the long-term decline
of the state’s total available fresh water. This rainy season’s
inundation isn’t going to change that. … It’s all about
groundwater. It is the long-term disappearance of
groundwater that is the major driver behind the state’s steady
decline in total available fresh water, which hydrologists
define as snowpack, surface water, soil moisture and
groundwater combined. … The gains made during wet years
simply can’t offset the over-pumping during the dry years in
between. In fact, the state’s groundwater deficit is now so
large that it will never be fully replenished. -Written by Jay Famiglietti, a global futures
professor at Arizona State University.
You may have heard it repeatedly through local and national
news outlets or from organizations critical of California’s
agricultural water use. At the height of a historic drought in
2015, for example, The Washington Post published a report
titled “Agriculture is 80% of water use in California.” And a
2022 report by Food and Water Watch, titled “These industries
are sucking up California’s water and worsening drought,” again
noted that, “in California, 80% of our water goes toward
agriculture.” Really? Before we explain just how much that 80%
figure is taken out of context, this fact is worth noting:
Water for farmers in California produces by far America’s
largest food supply, including staples that are affordable,
safe, nutritious and essential for our daily lives.
As the latest storm associated with a strong atmospheric river
sweeps through California, already strained farmworkers across
the state are bracing for yet another setback. The big picture:
The rounds of atmospheric river events have decimated crops and
reduced work opportunities for many of the state’s farmworkers,
who lack access to social safety nets. What they’re saying:
Hernan Hernandez, executive director of the nonprofit
California Farmworker Foundation, tells Axios that lasting
structural damages from the rounds of storms are compounding
with the loss of work for farmworkers, particularly in
Monterey, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.
The Westlands Water District board of directors has elected its
newest general manager — also the organization’s first woman to
serve in the role. Allison Febbo comes to Westlands by way of
the Mojave Water Agency north of San Bernardino, where she is
currently general manager. Before that, she was the deputy
operations manager for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Central
Valley operations office. She has nearly 25 years of experience
in natural resources, hydrology and water operations. Febbo
took the position with Mojave Water Agency on Dec. 1, 2021,
according to the Victorville Daily Press.
In furtherance of its efforts to address the considerable
challenges related to water scarcity in the West, the U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA) unveiled the Western Water and
Working Lands Framework for Conservation Action (Framework) on
February 13, 2023, a blueprint designed to help individuals and
entities navigate the complexities of resource conservation and
climate change resilience. Developed by the Natural Resources
Conservation Service (NRCS), the Framework provides guidance
and strategic support for programs that address impacts from
drought and climate change, and defines clear goals and
strategies that communities can use to respond to threats to
agricultural productivity and environmental quality.
Not long ago, California dairy producer Ryan Junio prayed for
rain. The ongoing water scarcity challenges that faced the
Golden State was the No. 1 concern for this Tulare County dairy
farmer. “As a dairy producer, water scarcity is an
ever-growing challenge and is my top concern,” Junio said last
summer. Junio wouldn’t have thought that nine months later he
would be dealing with a different water crisis, as massive
flooding has wreaked havoc on California’s largest dairy hub,
Tulare County, home to 330,000-plus dairy cows. Recently
Junio’s farm, Four J Jerseys, which consists of two dairies
located in Pixley and home to 4,200 cows, had to evacuate one
dairy that sits south of the Tule River.
For Brenda Eskenazi, what once seemed merely a rich vein of
epidemiological knowledge has turned out to be a mother lode.
Eskenazi, who runs the Center for the Health Assessment of
Mothers and Children of Salinas study (known as CHAMACOS,
Mexican Spanish slang for “little kids”), has tracked pairs of
mothers and their children for more than 20 years. She’s
collected hundreds of thousands of samples of blood, urine and
saliva, along with exposure and health records. … So
when Charles Limbach, a doctor at a Salinas health clinic, saw
an explosion of fatty liver disease in his young patients and
found a study linking the condition in adults to the
weed killer glyphosate, he contacted Eskenazi.
California is finally seeing a break from the rain. That is
giving people time to take stock of the damage in flooded
areas, areas including the town of Pajaro in the state’s
central coast. A levee broke there last weekend and forced
thousands of residents, many of them farm workers, to evacuate.
Farida Jhabvala Romero from member station KQED went there
yesterday. And, Farida, what did you see? … The first thing
is that the water has receded a lot in the main parts of town.
And so I was able to drive through Main Street, which was
impossible just a couple of days ago, when everything was
underwater. And you could really tell the water mark about two
to three feet up on building walls. You could tell the damage
is going to be really extensive. I saw a beauty salon, for
example, that was missing part of its front wall.
The winter of 2022-23 has been devastating for California’s
strawberry industry. After storms in December and January
caused over $200 million in crop damage from wind, rain and
floods, damage from recent flooding from the Pajaro and Salinas
rivers in Monterey County has caused hundreds of millions of
dollars more in losses, the California Strawberry Commission
reports. The latest disaster comes as farmers had borrowed
money to prepare the fields and were weeks away from beginning
to harvest, said Rick Tomlinson, the commission’s president. As
soon as the cleanup is complete, farmers will begin the process
of preparing the fields and starting over, he said.
Despite its arid climate, California’s Imperial Valley produces
most of the U.S. winter vegetables, providing the lettuce,
celery, cilantro, spinach, cabbage, broccoli, carrots and other
crops that allow people from Seattle to Boston to eat salads
and cook fresh produce year-round. Unlike most agricultural
regions, the Imperial Valley—with little rain and no
groundwater—depends on a single source of water: the Colorado
River. … Now, that lifeblood may be threatened, as
competing interests battle over supplies from the depleted
river and federal officials threaten to intervene. Despite
holding senior water rights, which give them priority in times
of scarcity, [farmer Mark] Osterkamp and other Imperial Valley
growers face an uncertain future.
Last summer Governor Newsom released California’s Water Supply
Strategy–which calls for the modernization of our water
management system. We know that the Sacramento Valley continues
to modernize everything we do, from our farms, communities and
businesses, to the way we approach water. These improvements
include adopting improved water efficiency, irrigation systems,
and tools to measure water use. We are planting new varieties
that are more productive and produce more crop per drop. We are
investing millions to improve water delivery systems for the
environment as well as for farms, cities, and disadvantaged
communities.
It was late Friday morning when muddy, brown water started
rushing onto Michelle Hackett’s Salinas Valley farms. On one
side of her family’s Riverview Farms cannabis business, a
county-mandated retention pond overflowed. Next door, a farm
abandoned by another grower — one of dozens of cannabis
businesses to shut down in Monterey County in recent years —
spawned another small river headed straight for Hackett and her
skeleton crew. … Cannabis businesses like Hackett’s —
along with thousands of undocumented farmworkers and the area’s
unhoused residents — fear they’ll be left to fend for
themselves as yet another winter storm batters California’s
Central Coast, local officials and advocates say.
The U.S. government has yet to uphold its end of a deal struck
over 60 years ago, in which the Navajo Nation traded some of
its water rights to divert San Juan River water, a major
tributary to the Colorado River, to the growing urban areas
along the Rio Grande in exchange for irrigation infrastructure
for NAPI. Sixty years later, and as water resources dwindle,
the remaining 40,000 acres of irrigation originally promised to
the farm remain undeveloped….later this month, the Supreme
Court will hear a high-profile case in which the federal
government has decided to push back on its responsibility to
provide tribes with an adequate water supply.
The San Joaquin Valley in California (southern Central Valley)
is the most profitable agricultural region in the United States
by far with a revenue of $37.1 billion in 2020. The San
Joaquin Valley itself generates more agricultural revenue than
any other state, and more than countries like Canada,
Germany, or Peru. Other agricultural regions of California are
also very profitable, such as the Sacramento Valley (northern
Central Valley), the Salinas Valley, and the Imperial
Valley. However, this economic profit has a steep health
and environmental toll, and that toll is paid for by the
residents of rural communities in California. The three regions
with the worst air quality (by year-round particle
pollution) in the United States are in the San Joaquin Valley,
corresponding to five of its eight counties.
Fresno County’s newest large-scale water storage project is
happening below ground. With California inundated by rain and
snow, state and federal water regulators hatched a plan to help
replenish underground aquifers further depleted by heavy
agriculture pumping during the recent drought. In an agreement
announced last week, more than 600,000 acre-feet of floodwater
from the San Joaquin River system will be diverted and allowed
to soak back into the earth in areas with permeable soils and
wildlife refuges. How much water is 600,000 acre-feet? Enough
to overflow Millerton Lake, which stores 520,000 acre-feet at
capacity. Or enough to meet the annual needs of more than 1
million average households.
The atmospheric rivers that flowed over California in January
dumped about a foot of rain — equal to an entire year’s average
— in many parts of the state’s parched Central Valley, which
encompasses only 1% of U.S. farmland but produces 40% of the
nation’s table fruits, vegetables, and nuts. With February,
ordinarily the second wettest month, still to be counted, talks
of all the land that will have to fallowed as a result of the
drought have quieted for now. But most Golden State growers
have come to realize that droughts will simply be a part of
farming going forward, and the safety net is gone. That
safety net was groundwater pumping. For more than a
half-century, farmers in the Central Valley, the multi-faceted
state’s chief production area, have been pumping more water
from aquifers than can be replenished, causing wells to be
drilled deeper and deeper.
Ask any of the wine grape growers planting own-rooted stock why
they’re farming these massively risky grapevines and they’ll
all tell you the same thing: They just want to make really
great wine. But there’s another benefit to the gamble,
too—unlike most American wine grapes, which are overwhelmingly
grown on grafted rootstock, own-rooted vines are especially
drought-tolerant, produce a more predictable crop and use
significantly fewer resources. There’s a huge downside to
using own-rooted vines, though. If they get attacked
by phylloxera, the entire crop will die. It won’t be a
loss of just one season’s grapes—the entire vineyard itself
will be totally destroyed. And the invasive species is present
in the soil in vineyards throughout America.
Regenerative agriculture is a holistic land management approach
with principles that date back to Indigenous
farmers. Instead of letting the land fallow or repeating a
cycle of planting water-intensive crops that cannot survive the
harsh conditions along the lower Gila River, Hansen has worked
to develop strategies to make less water go further. He has
successfully introduced arid-adapted crops, integrated
livestock on his land and used non-traditional farming methods
to improve soil health and biodiversity. While
regenerative agriculture has been a way to conserve water and
grow healthier crops for centuries, the alternate farming
method has seen a resurgence in popularity in recent years as a
way to potentially reverse the effects of climate change by
rebuilding soil organic matter and restoring degraded soil
biodiversity, resulting in both carbon drawdown and
improvements to the water cycle.
The levee breach that left an entire California town underwater
this weekend is putting a spotlight on how the state’s vital
flood control infrastructure is being weakened by age, drought,
climate change, rodents and neglect — leaving scores of
communities at risk. On Friday night, the swollen
Pajaro River burst through the worn-down levee, flooding the
entire town of Pajaro and sending its roughly 3,000 residents
into what officials are now estimating to be a multi-month-long
exile. A second breach was reported on Monday…. Experts say
similar weaknesses plague levee systems across California and
the nation. As climate change threatens to intensify and
exacerbate extreme weather events — such as flooding and even
drought — the unease and desperation of residents and emergency
responders in communities near these crumbling systems is
growing.
The Biden administration’s move to throw out the Trump-era
biological opinions that govern California’s water flow is
nothing more than a political move to Rep. David Valadao
(R–Hanford). In an upcoming interview on Sunrise FM,
Valadao discussed the history of the biological opinions and
the Congressional investigation into the Biden administration’s
decision. The backstory: The latest biological opinions
which govern the State Water Project and the Central Valley
Project were signed by President Donald Trump in 2019, capping
the process of formulating the new opinions that started under
President Barack Obama. When President Joe Biden took
office two years ago, his administration quickly began the
process of removing the 2019 biological opinions to revert back
to the previous opinions issued in 2008 and 2009.
In January, water policy analysts hoped that the Legislature
would take action on Arizona’s shrinking groundwater supplies.
But it appears that lawmakers will back burner the issue once
more. Groundwater in most of rural Arizona is largely
unregulated. In some counties, large feedlots or farms have
taken advantage of the lack of oversight and sunk deep wells.
But a number of bills that would help manage rural water
supplies have stalled, not on the House or Senate floor but in
committee.
Winter storms this year have created hope for many Californians
suffering from years of drought but for agriculture, it’s more
complicated. More water means crops will be well provided for,
but additional weather trends create new hazards for orchards,
especially during this year’s almond bloom which requires some
consistency in temperature and sunlight. Colleen Cecil,
executive director for the Butte County Farm Bureau, said
almonds have likely been impacted the most by the weather
events, especially since the trees are still in bloom.
Water is one of the most basic elements of any type of
agriculture production system, and this precious resource is
under more stress than at any time in our history. From a
changing climate and drought to regulation and increasing
expectations for sustainability efforts, the development and
adoption of technologies to use water more efficiently and
effectively is paramount. The new “Water, Technology, and
Sustainability” digital report from the editors at Meister
Media Worldwide, part of the 2023 Global Insight Series, dives
deep into topics such as the California Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act, technologies to address drought, digital
modeling for weather, and worldwide market views from companies
on the front lines.
National and regional media love a good fight, and lately a day
doesn’t pass without a major news story or op-ed focused on
Colorado River disagreements, particularly amongst the seven
states of the Colorado River Basin (Arizona, California,
Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming). Which state
must bear the brunt of shortages needed as Colorado River flows
decline? Which sector of water users takes the hit as climate
change continues to diminish the river? Should urban water
supplies be protected because that’s where all the people are?
(Municipal water supply representatives will quickly remind us
that if all urban uses of Colorado River water were cut off,
there would still be a shortage). Should agricultural water
supplies be protected because we all need to eat?
Neil McIsaac has something many other dairy farmers here don’t:
a storm-runoff capture system that can provide backup water for
his herd when local reservoirs go dry, as they did last year.
Already, he and others involved in the project say it has
proven its worth. It has captured 670,000 gallons so far this
winter, enough to slake the thirst of his 700 cows for a month,
Mr. McIsaac said.
To capitalize on strong flows resulting from
higher-than-average snowpack, the State Water Resources Control
Board approved a petition by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to
divert over 600,000 acre-feet of San Joaquin River flood waters
for wildlife refuges, underground storage and recharge. With
this approval, the State Water Board has authorized nearly
790,000 acre-feet in diversions for groundwater recharge and
other purposes since late December 2022 – the amount of water
used by at least 1.5 million households in a single year.
In Sarge Green’s 40-plus year career, he’s worn an astonishing
number of hats. Now a water management specialist with
California State University, Fresno, Sarge has worked on water
quality issues at the regional water board, served as general
manager of an irrigation district, and managed two resource
conservation districts (RCDs). He’s also a director for the
Tule Basin Land and Water Conservation Trust and the Fresno
Metropolitan Flood Control District. He’s been a long-time
partner with the PPIC Water Policy Center in our San Joaquin
Valley work as a trusted member of our research network. Sarge
remains deeply involved in efforts to help San Joaquin Valley
farms and communities cope with the challenges of implementing
the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. We spoke with him
about a pressing issue in the valley: how to manage farmland
that will be transitioning out of intensive irrigation.
Yuma, Ariz. may be well known for its unforgiving summer heat,
but did you know that 90% of North America’s leafy greens and
vegetables available from November through April of each year
comes from here? Yuma’s climate, its rich soil birthed from
sediments deposited by the Colorado River for millennia, and
over 300 cloudless days per year coalesce to create one of the
best places in the world to grow such a diverse mix of crops.
… At the crux of this production is water. The Colorado
River ends its U.S. run at Morelos Dam, just a few hundred
yards from the University of Arizona’s Extension research farm
at Yuma. That water no longer makes it to the Sea of Cortez as
Mexico consumes it for urban and agricultural uses. -Written by Todd Fitchette, associate editor
with Western Farm Press.
Explore the epicenter of groundwater sustainability on
our Central Valley Tour
April 26-28 and engage directly with some of
the most important leaders and experts in water storage,
management and delivery, agriculture, habitat, land use policy
and water equity. The tour focuses on the San Joaquin Valley,
which has struggled with consistently little to no
surface water deliveries and increasing pressure to reduce
groundwater usage to sustainable levels while also facing water
quality and access challenges for disadvantaged
communities. Led by Foundation staff and
groundwater expert Thomas Harter, Chair for Water
Resources Management and Policy at the University of
California, Davis, the tour explores topics such as subsidence,
water supply and drought, flood management, groundwater
banking and recharge, surface water storage, agricultural
supply and drainage, wetlands and more. Register
here!
A few weeks ago, federally threatened coho salmon swam up the
Klamath River, spawned and laid egg nests. But some of these
nests, or redds, holding as many as 4,000 eggs, may never
hatch, owing to reduced water levels in the river. It’s the
result of a severe water management bungling, say critics, by
the Bureau of Reclamation, which controls how much water flows
from Upper Klamath Lake into the river. … Tribal nations and
commercial fishing groups argue the agency violated the
Endangered Species Act when it reduced river flows in mid-March
below a minimum level set in a National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration biological opinion, a series of recommendations
and requirements meant to help the salmon recover and ensure
river management decisions don’t push the species to the brink
of extinction…. The Bureau of Reclamation, which controls
flows and water allocation on the Klamath, says it is caught
between competing priorities.
In light of last week’s decisions regarding the groundwater
sustainability plans, groundwater managers in Fresno County are
celebrating. The backstory: The California Department of
Water Resources announced its decisions for the groundwater
sustainability plans for 10 basins in the Central Valley,
giving the green light to the Kings Subbasin and Westside
Subbasin, both of which are anchored in Fresno
County. Groundwater sustainability plans are required by
2014’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act and govern how
agencies in critically overdrafted areas achieve groundwater
sustainability. The big picture: The basins that received
approval from the state will move forward to the implementation
phase while those that were deemed inadequate will face direct
oversight from the State Water Board.
The Western United States is currently battling the most severe
drought in thousands of years. A mix of bad water management
policies and manmade climate change has created a situation
where water supplies in Western reservoirs are so low, states
are being forced to cut their water use. It’s not hard to
find media coverage that focuses on the excesses of residential
water use: long showers, swimming pools, lawn watering, at-home
car washes. Or in the business sector, like irrigating golf
courses or pumping water into hotel fountains in Las
Vegas. But when a team of researchers looked at water
use in the West, they uncovered a very different
story about where most Western water goes. Only 14 percent
of all water consumption in the Western US goes to residential,
commercial, and industrial water use.
In 1910, the Los Angeles real estate developer J. Harvey
McCarthy decided that this small agricultural town in the
Central Valley would be his “city beautiful,” a model community
and an automobile stop along the road to Yosemite. An infusion
of money brought Planada a bank, hotel, school, church and its
own newspaper, the Planada Enterprise, by the following year. A
celebration for the town’s first anniversary drew an estimated
10,000 people (though Planada had only several hundred
residents) as the city had become the best-known place in
Merced County. But McCarthy eventually abandoned the community,
located nine miles east of Merced, leaving its settlers to pick
up the pieces. It remained a farming town and is now home to
4,000 mostly low-income and Spanish-speaking residents who work
at nearby orchards.
This winter will be one for the record-books in California. It
looks like the winter I spent playing on 40-feet of snow in
Mammoth Lakes in the mid-1990s will be topped by this year’s
epic snowfall. So where will all that water go when it melts?
Living in Bishop at the time, we had flooding in August as the
runoff came off the mountains and made it to the Owens River –
or as some might call it: the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Here’s my
thought on this. Follow along. Los Angeles gets much of its
water from the Sierra Nevada and runoff in various places in
California. Yes, it gets water too from the State Water
Project, but the mismanagement of that system tends to push
more water out to sea than for human use.
The Department of Water Resources (DWR) today kicked
off National Groundwater Awareness Week 2023 with an
engaging educational event held at the California Natural
Resources Agency headquarters in Sacramento. The event featured
an array of groundwater partners who
provided presentations describing their work in
groundwater and why groundwater is such an important water
resource in California. After the presentations, the in-person
audience visited educational stations where they engaged with
the day’s speakers and other groundwater professionals.
From the Ag Information Network, I’m Bob Larson with your
Agribusiness Update. **California farmers are expected to see
increased federal water allocations this year, as winter storms
bolster the Sierra Nevada snowpack and water levels rise in
reservoirs. The Bureau of Reclamation has announced an initial
allocation of 35% of contracted water supplies for agricultural
customers south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The
February 22 announcement was welcome news after officials
provided zero allocations for agriculture in both 2021 and 22.
**The National Association of Conservation Districts released
policy recommendations for the upcoming 2023 Farm Bill.
Jennifer Peters signed on to have her Madera ranch become the
site of an experiment in replenishing groundwater in
California’s Central Valley. Though this pilot program led by a
subdivision of the United States Department of Agriculture is
far from the first effort to address the depletion of
groundwater stores, it offers farmers like Peters hope for the
future of agriculture in the region. … Peters is a
fourth-generation farmer who operates Markarian Family LP with
her father and son. They cultivate wine grapes and almonds,
crops that require irrigation to grow in the Central Valley.
… The search for water has led growers to dig deep into
underground water supplies. Many aquifers, geological
structures that hold groundwater, are so depleted in the
Central Valley that they are considered at an “all time low” or
“much below normal,” …
It’s going to be a bad year for Sacramento River chinook
salmon. That was the message from this year’s annual Salmon
Information Meeting attended by state and federal fisheries
scientists. State and federal officials announced one of the
lowest adult fall-run chinook salmon population estimates since
2008, according to the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife. The fall-run chinook is considered the predominant
species of salmon in freshwater and ocean fisheries, the state
said. This year, the state forecast 169,767 adults in the
population.
Tom Brundy, an alfalfa grower in California’s Imperial Valley,
thinks farmers reliant on the shrinking Colorado River can do
more to save water and use it more efficiently. That’s why he’s
installed water sensors and monitors to prevent waste on nearly
two-thirds of his 3,000 acres. But one practice that’s
off-limits for Brundy is fallowing — leaving fields unplanted
to spare the water that would otherwise irrigate crops. It
would save plenty of water, Brundy said, but threatens both
farmers and rural communities economically. … Many Western
farmers feel the same, even as a growing sense is emerging that
some fallowing will have to be part of the solution to the
increasingly desperate drought in the West, where the Colorado
River serves 40 million people.
The megadrought that’s plagued the US West for years has
impacted everything from the food Americans eat to their
electricity supply. And while extreme weather can sometimes
trigger wet winters like this one, in California and the rest
of the region, the long-term future remains a very dry one. In
this episode of Getting Warmer With Kal Penn, we
explore what the future of water in the West may look
like. In Nevada, Penn investigates the lasting impacts of the
Colorado River Compact, the 1922 agreement that doles out water
rights to the seven states along its path. Overly optimistic
from the start, the system is now on the verge of collapse as
water levels in key reservoirs approach dead pool-status.
David Schmalz here, thinking about water. More specifically,
I’m thinking about the water supply in the northern Salinas
Valley, which has long been in a critical state of
overdraft. In last week’s issue of the Weekly, I wrote a
story about how seawater intrusion continues to worsen in the
northern part of the valley, which is a result of that
overdraft. In natural conditions, without any pumping, the
water in the aquifers moves downward, toward the Monterey Bay,
but when over-pumping occurs, that pressure differential
reverses as groundwater levels decline—seawater starts to
intrude inland into the aquifers, eventually reaching a point
of salinity to where it can’t be used to irrigate crops. -Written by Weekly columnist David Schmalz.
Winter storms that bolstered the Sierra Nevada snowpack and
added to California reservoirs prompted federal and state water
managers to announce increases in anticipated water allocations
for the 2023 growing season. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
last week announced an initial allocation of 35% of contracted
water supplies for agricultural customers south of the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The announcement brought a
measure of certainty for farmers, ranchers and agricultural
water contractors, after officials provided zero water
allocations for agriculture from the federal Central Valley
Project in 2021 and 2022.
Despite the continued heavy winter rain and snow throughout
California, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently extended his executive
orders from 2022 that declared a drought emergency statewide.
He also asked the state water board to waive water flow
regulations intended to protect salmon and other endangered
fish species, as well as San Francisco Bay and Delta estuary
overall. Some viewed these moves as pragmatic steps to
avoid “wasting” the bounty of California’s rains out to
sea. Others saw them as a declaration of war against
the health of the bay. In fact, a war against the bay has
been going on for decades. Newsom’s order was merely the latest
skirmish. The war’s primary aggressors are agricultural
interests in the Central Valley. -Written by Howard V. Hendrix, the author of six
novels as well as many essays, poems and short
stories.
California commercial and sports fishers are bracing for the
possibility of no salmon season this year after the fish
population along the Pacific Coast dropped to its lowest point
in 15 years. On Wednesday, wildlife officials announced a low
forecast for the number of the wild adult Chinook (or “king”)
salmon that will be in the ocean during the fishing season that
typically starts in May. The final plan for the commercial and
recreational salmon season will be announced in April.
…Salmon are highly dependent on how much water is available
in their native rivers and streams, especially when they are
very young. Even though the state has gotten a lot of rain and
snow this winter, the population that is now in the ocean was
born in 2020, in the beginning of the state’s current
record-breaking drought. … This year, there will be
about 170,000 adult salmon in the ocean from the Sacramento
River fall run Chinook population, the main group that is
fished commercially in the state and the lowest number since
2008.
A break in Yountville’s recycled-water main serving the
Vintner’s Golf Club and various vineyard ponds east and west of
the Napa River has led to an emergency $1 million repair
project, approved by the Town Council last week. The main
in question is a 6-inch PVC pipe, first installed in 1977, that
runs across the floor of the Napa Valley from the Yountville
wastewater treatment plant west of Highway 29. It reaches as
far as the Clos du Val Winery pond past the Silverado Trail, to
the east, Yountville’s public works director John Ferons said
at the council meeting. As such, the water line also runs below
the Napa River, which is where the leak was discovered about
two weeks ago. Yountville town staff discovered the leak at
noon Feb. 15 because a low-flow alarm went off, and workers
shut off the pumps to investigate the pipes, according to a
staff report.
In communities across California, a Napa winery is implementing
a strategy to save water and fight against drought
conditions. Reid family winery uses mounds of rice straw
under their grapevines, which they said not only helped double
their yield from the year before, but also produced some of the
winery’s best quality grapes yet. … The owners said that
they were able to water significantly less last year compared
to years prior. Since laying the rice straw, they haven’t seen
rivulets or erosion in their sloping vineyard. They
predict that they will have to replace the rice straw every 4
to 5 years.
Clean water is California’s most vital need. Our lives and the
lives of future generations depend on it. Yet when it comes to
protecting the state’s supply, Gov. Gavin Newsom is failing
California. The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta provides
drinking water to 27 million Californians, or roughly 70% of
the state’s residents. On Feb. 15, the governor signed an
executive order allowing the State Water Resources Control
Board to ignore the state requirement of how much water needs
to flow through the Delta to protect its health. It’s an
outrageous move right out of Donald Trump’s playbook. Big Ag
and its wealthy landowners, including some of Newsom’s
political financial backers, will reap the benefits while the
Delta suffers.
A conversation with UCCE Viticulture Advisor Dr. Chris Chen
(Sonoma, Lake, Mendocino Counties) and soil scientist Noelymar
Gonzalez-Maldonado (UC Davis) about regenerative viticulture,
soils, and climate resilience in vineyards. Released February
24, 2023.
The Department of Industrial Relations’ Occupational Safety and
Health Appeals Board (OSHAB) has issued a precedential decision
regarding the provision of water at outdoor worksites,
affirming that it must be as close as practicable to the areas
where employees are working to encourage frequent consumption.
… Cal/OSHA opened a complaint-initiated safety
inspection at the Rios Farming Co. vineyard in St. Helena on
August 6, 2018. Inspectors found some workers had to climb
through multiple grape trellises to access drinking water. On
January 7, 2019, Cal/OSHA cited Rios Farming Co. for a
repeat-serious violation for not having water as close as
practicable for their employees. Rios Farming Co. appealed
the citation and an administrative law judge affirmed the
citation on October 12, 2022, with a modified penalty of
$27,000.
A judge has extended a temporary settlement of a long-running
dispute over California water rights and how the Central Valley
Project and State Water Project manage the Sacramento River
flows. … The opinions address how the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and California Department of Water Resources’ plan
for operating the Central Valley and State Water Projects
affects fish species. The opinions make it possible to send
more water to 20 million farms, businesses and homes in
Southern and Central California via the massive federal and
state water diversion projects, and eliminate requirements such
as mandating extra flows to keep water temperatures from rising
high enough to damage salmon eggs. … A federal
judge approved plans to allow the biological opinions
to remain in effect over the next three years with added
safeguards.
Generations of Californians have taken for granted how water is
engineered to enable the grand agricultural nature of this
state. Now our water system suffers from severe drought and
reduced snowpacks. The Colorado River is in peril. Wells are
going dry. Water is getting contaminated. Land is losing value.
People are losing livelihoods. Such dilemmas are exacerbated in
disadvantaged communities. Large Central Valley growers
overpump water from wells in direct violation of the state’s
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. Meanwhile, families in
farmworker towns go without clean and affordable water. They
still pay high water bills while resorting to bottled water to
cook, bathe and drink provided by government, nonprofits and
labor unions. -Written by Victor Griego, founder of Water Education
for Latino Leaders.
The drought crisis on the Colorado River looms large in
California’s Imperial Valley, which produces much of the
nation’s lettuce, broccoli and other crops, and now faces water
cuts. But those cuts will also be bad news for the
environmental and ecological disaster unfolding just to the
north, at the shallow, shimmering and long-suffering Salton
Sea. “There’s going to be collateral damage everywhere,” said
Frank Ruiz, a program director with California Audubon. To
irrigate their fields, the valley’s farmers rely completely on
Colorado River water, which arrives by an 80-mile-long canal.
And the Salton Sea, the state’s largest lake, relies on water
draining from those fields to stay full. But it’s been
shrinking for decades, killing off fish species that attract
migratory birds and exposing lake bed that generates dust that
is harmful to human health.
While the lack of groundwater regulation plagues rural Arizona,
there are proposed ways to create a larger supply in the region
without depending on dwindling amounts from the Colorado River
and groundwater. The Colorado River and local groundwater
supplies around 40% of Arizona’s water. Lake Powell in northern
Arizona and southern Utah is at record-low levels, as of Feb.
18. It is the lowest level it has been measured at since its
construction in the 1960s. Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl
Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University, called the
Colorado River crisis Arizona’s most imminent water
problem.
An updated report on the San Joaquin Valley’s water crisis
shows the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act is not enough
and additional water trading measures will need to be taken in
order to stabilize local agricultural economies. The Public
Policy Institute of California put out a policy brief on the
future of agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley. Its analysis
of the next 20 years indicates that annual water supplies for
the Valley could decline by 10 to 20%. The Valley has been long
understood to be the breadbasket of the United States and is
home to the nation’s top three agricultural counties. However,
without more innovative solutions, the Valley will likely have
to fallow 900,000 acres of farmland and and cost 50,000 jobs
leading to a major loss in the local economies The report
indicates that the loss of almost a million acres is
unavoidable…
Gov. Gavin Newsom bills himself as a protector of wildlife, so
you wouldn’t think he’d take water from baby salmon and give it
to almonds. Or to pistachios, or cotton or alfalfa. Especially
when California was just drenched with the wettest three-week
series of storms on record and was headed into another powerful
soaking of snow and rain. But Newsom and his water officials
still contend we’re suffering a drought — apparently it’s a
never-ending drought. So, they used that as a reason last week
to drastically cut river flows needed by migrating little
salmon in case the water is needed to irrigate San Joaquin
Valley crops in summer. -Written by columnist George Skelton.
Utah’s Great Salt Lake doesn’t look so “great” these days. This
place where tourists once bobbed up and down like corks in
water far saltier than the ocean is now quite literally turning
to dust. … Climate change and the West’s historic
megadrought certainly haven’t done the lake any favors, but
it’s the diversion of water away from the lake that Romney says
is less than divine: “The water in this area helped us bloom
like a rose, as the Scripture says. And yeah, we’ve got trees
and beautiful lawns. But some of that’s gonna have to
change.” Most of the lake’s water is spoken for long
before it gets there. It’s not just those green lawns for
Utah’s exploding population; 70% of the water goes to
agriculture. And then there’s the billion-dollar-a-year mineral
extraction industry. It uses the lake’s water, too.
California’s water authorities will spend $15 million in three
crucial water management zones within the drought-ravaged
southern Central Valley. The hub of agricultural
production in the Golden State, the Central Valley has also
faced the most dire impacts from another historic drought, as
thousands of wells went dry last year and many communities
faced a total lack of safe drinking water. The state’s
authorities say they are releasing funds to begin projects to
prevent such hardship in future droughts. The Department of
Water Resources along with California Natural Resources
Secretary Wade Crowfoot came to the small city of Parlier on
Thursday to announce three grants totaling $15 million to
improve water infrastructure in the region.
What do Bordeaux, Loire, Mosel, Rhine, Rhône, Douro, Napa,
Rioja, Ribera del Duero, Tokaj and the Wachau all have in
common? If you said they are all major wine regions split by
rivers or laced with tributaries, pour yourself a glass of
wine. It may seem obvious, but wine wouldn’t exist without
water. And rivers deliver it. For centuries that has meant
soil, sediment, nutrients, warming and cooling influences and,
of course, water, all traveling along riverbanks. According to
the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), today the United
States alone has more than 3 million miles of rivers and
streams—and many of those miles have historically made
agriculture, including viticulture, possible. … Running
around 50 miles from Mt. St. Helena in the north and
spilling into the San Pablo Bay, the Napa River is home to
plants, endangered critters and some of the most valuable
acreage of grapevines in the country.
With the Colorado River teetering on the brink of disaster,
farmers who rely on its life-giving water are preparing to make
significant cuts to their operations. Near the U.S.-Mexico
border, fourth-generation farmer Amanda Brooks grows broccoli,
lettuce, dates, citrus and alfalfa on 6,000 acres. Her family’s
farm in Yuma, Arizona, nearly touches the banks of the troubled
river. … Last year, a top government official warned
Congress the river was running dangerously low. Speaking before
a Senate committee, Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille
Touton said the seven Colorado River Basin would need to make
drastic cuts to their water use to keep the reservoirs stable.
As a series of deadly storms whipped through California’s wine
country, liquefying fields and turning vineyards into wading
pools, thousands of farm workers in the region were forced to
stay home. Though the power has been long since restored and
roads reopened – many of them are still confronting an economic
catastrophe. For Isidro Rodriguez, the storms caused him to
lose half his monthly income – about $1,100. For nearly two
weeks, it was too wet and windy to safely prune the pinot noir
vines at the estate vineyard where he worked. Even still, he
risked the roads to drive over there during lulls in the
storms, just in case.
California farms and cities that get their water from the
Central Valley Project are due to receive a large increase in
water allocations this year after snowpack and reservoirs were
replenished in winter storms, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
announced Wednesday. Most recipients of the Central Valley
Projects are irrigation districts that supply farms, and some
are cities, including those served by the East Bay Municipal
Utility District and Contra Costa Water District in the Bay
Area. Farms that received zero initial water allocations last
year, in the third year of the state’s historic drought, are
due to receive 35% of their allocation this year, the most
they’ve gotten since 2019. Others, including the
Sacramento River Settlement Contractors, large shareholders
with senior water rights, will receive 100% of their contracted
water supply.
A shortage on the Colorado River has put tremendous pressure on
the water supply that serves more than 40-million people in the
Western United States. But a punishing drought and the over
allocation of the river have also created an urgent problem for
California’s Salton Sea. The 340-square-mile lake was formed in
1905 when a canal carrying river water to farmers in the
Imperial Valley ruptured. The flood created a desert oasis that
lured tourists and migratory birds to its shore. A century
later, the Salton Sea — California’s largest lake — is
spiraling into an ecological disaster. At 223 feet below
sea level, Bombay Beach occupies a low spot on the
map. Many of the shoreline community’s trailer homes are
rusting into the earth and tagged with graffiti. Artists have
created large pieces of public sculpture, including a vintage
phone booth that stands on the shoreline as a tribute to a
bygone era.
California’s water board decided Tuesday to temporarily allow
more storage in Central Valley reservoirs, waiving state rules
that require water to be released to protect salmon and other
endangered fish. The waiver means more water can be sent to the
cities and growers that receive supplies from the San
Joaquin-Sacramento Delta through the State Water Project and
the federal Central Valley Project. The state aqueduct delivers
water to 27 million people, mostly in Southern California, and
750,000 acres of farmland, while the Central Valley Project
mostly serves farms. The flow rules will remain suspended until
March 31. Environmentalists reacted with frustration and
concern that the move will jeopardize chinook salmon and other
native fish in the Delta that are already struggling to
survive…. But water suppliers applauded the decision,
saying the water is needed to help provide enough water to
cities and farms.
Not issuing the drought permits could have a significant impact
on agriculture in the region if farmers don’t have access to
irrigation water. …The department usually issues 40 to 50
drought permits per year. A spokesperson for the Klamath Water
Users Association, which lobbies for the basin’s agriculture
community, did not respond to an interview request. Groundwater
levels in the Klamath Basin have declined significantly in
recent years. OWRD said the water level dropped by 20 to 30
feet over the last three years alone, so additional access is
unsustainable. Emergency drought declarations have been made in
Klamath County in 16 of the past 31 years.
The future is now. Governor Newsom’s February 13, 2023
Executive Order ordering the State Water Board to
consider modifying flow and storage requirements for the State
Water Project (SWP) and the Central Valley Project (CVP) is his
blueprint for the Bay-Delta estuary and every river that feeds
it. When requirements to protect water quality, fish, and
wildlife are inconvenient, water managers can ignore them. It’s
all voluntary. For ten-odd years, California’s water managers
have promised “Voluntary Agreements” to replace the Bay-Delta
Water Quality Control Plan. They could never figure out
the details of what to propose.
Honeybees are essential pollinators for our local and global
food supply, and after years of drought and other threats, a
local beekeeper is optimistic about the coming season. Jeremy
Rose teaches beekeeping at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He also
owns a local bee business. He said honeybee colonies managed by
beekeepers live in wooden boxes that stack on top of one
another. The boxes have small openings so the worker bees can
go in and out.
Downpours or drought, California’s farm belt will need to
tighten up in the next two decades and grow fewer crops. There
simply won’t be enough water to sustain present irrigation in
the San Joaquin Valley. Groundwater is dangerously depleted.
Wells are drying up and the land is sinking in many places,
cracking canals. Surface water supplies have been cut back
because of drought, and future deliveries are uncertain due to
climate change and environmental
regulations. … Agriculture is water intensive. And
water is becoming increasingly worrisome in the West,
particularly with overuse of the Colorado River. There’s plenty
of water off our coast, but we’ve only begun to dip our toe
into desalination. -Written by columnist George Skelton.
As Prudy Foxx walked through rows of ripening fruit at several
vineyards nestled among the Santa Cruz Mountains last
September, she cringed at the spindly shoots rising from the
stocky grapevine trunks. … A similar scene played out
last fall at many vineyards around the Bay Area: years of
drought taking a destructive toll on the vines, threatening a
billion-dollar industry and putting more stress on California’s
scant stored water resources. Then, like a “godsend,” the
rains came. Over several weeks in December and January,
storms dropped more than a foot of rain on Northern California,
smashing historic records and leaving a wide swath of
devastation in their wake.
When atmospheric rivers drenched the North Bay in December and
January, the Lockharts greeted those heavy rains with open arms
and undisguised relief. Daunting and destructive as those
storms were — causing widespread flooding, downed trees and
mudslides — they brought a bounty that soaked a parched
landscape, easing stress and strain on a wide range of flora
and fauna. Joining the Lockharts’ chorus of hallelujahs were
farmers and ranchers, anxious water supply experts and — if
they could sing — coho salmon and steelhead trout now migrating
up the recharged Russian River and its now-swollen tributaries,
to spawn.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation … announced last week that it
will cut flows on the [Klamath] river to historic lows, drying
out the river and likely killing salmon farther downstream.
… The basin has more than 200,000 acres of irrigated
farmland, between 10,000 and 14,000 of which are dedicated to
potatoes, an Indigenous food originally engineered from a
toxic wild root by Andean horticulturists. Roughly three
quarters of the basin’s potato yield go to companies like Frito
Lay for potato chips, and In-N-Out Burger for fries, according
to the Klamath Water Users Association.
The fierce storms and heavy rain that have pounded California
in recent weeks could be the lifeline that one industry — and
the communities that rely on it for their own survival —
desperately needs. After years of drought, California has
received an epic amount of rain already in 2023. While it was
much-needed, the back-to-back heavy storms also ravaged the
state for weeks, creating dangerous flooding and mudslides that
led to at least 20 deaths and billions of dollars in economic
losses, by some estimates. But in one part of the state,
anxious communities are ready to embrace more rain.
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape while learning about the issues
associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of
California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State
Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
Water Education Foundation
2151 River Plaza Drive, Suite 205
Sacramento, CA 95833
This tour traveled along the San Joaquin River to learn firsthand
about one of the nation’s largest and most expensive river
restoration projects.
The San Joaquin River was the focus of one of the most
contentious legal battles in California water history,
ending in a 2006 settlement between the federal government,
Friant Water Users Authority and a coalition of environmental
groups.
Hampton Inn & Suites Fresno
327 E Fir Ave
Fresno, CA 93720
This tour explored the lower Colorado River firsthand where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to some 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
This tour ventured through California’s Central Valley, known as the nation’s breadbasket thanks to an imported supply of surface water and local groundwater. Covering about 20,000 square miles through the heart of the state, the valley provides 25 percent of the nation’s food, including 40 percent of all fruits, nuts and vegetables consumed throughout the country.
The lower Colorado River has virtually every drop allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
This tour guided participants on a virtual exploration of the Sacramento River and its tributaries and learn about the issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
This tour guided participants on a virtual journey deep into California’s most crucial water and ecological resource – the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The 720,000-acre network of islands and canals support the state’s two major water systems – the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project. The Delta and the connecting San Francisco Bay form the largest freshwater tidal estuary of its kind on the West coast.
This event explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs is the focus of this tour.
Silverton Hotel
3333 Blue Diamond Road
Las Vegas, NV 89139
This 2-day, 1-night tour offered participants the opportunity to
learn about water issues affecting California’s scenic Central
Coast and efforts to solve some of the challenges of a region
struggling to be sustainable with limited local supplies that
have potential applications statewide.
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape as participants learned about the
issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of
California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State
Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. Tour
participants got an on-site update of Oroville Dam spillway
repairs.
We explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop
of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad
sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and
climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in
the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin
states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this
water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial
needs was the focus of this tour.
Hampton Inn Tropicana
4975 Dean Martin Drive, Las Vegas, NV 89118
This three-day, two-night tour explored the lower Colorado River
where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand
is growing from myriad sources — increasing population,
declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in
the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin
states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this
water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial
needs is the focus of this tour.
Best Western McCarran Inn
4970 Paradise Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape as participants learned about the
issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of
California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State
Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. Tour
participants got an on-site update of repair efforts on the
Oroville Dam spillway.
Participants of this tour snaked along the San Joaquin River to
learn firsthand about one of the nation’s largest and most
expensive river restoration projects.
The San Joaquin River was the focus of one of the most
contentious legal battles in California water history,
ending in a 2006 settlement between the federal government,
Friant Water Users Authority and a coalition of environmental
groups.
Groundwater replenishment happens
through direct recharge and in-lieu recharge. Water used for
direct recharge most often comes from flood flows, water
conservation, recycled water, desalination and water
transfers.
Water is expensive – and securing enough money to ensure
reliability and efficiency of the state’s water systems and
ecosystems is a constant challenge.
In 2014, California voters approved Proposition 1, authorizing a
$7.5 billion bond to fund water projects throughout the state.
This included investments in water storage, watershed protection
and restoration, groundwater sustainability and drinking water
protection.
California agriculture is going to have to learn to live with the
impacts of climate change and work toward reducing its
contributions of greenhouse gas emissions, a Yolo County walnut
grower said at the Jan. 26 California Climate Change Symposium in
Sacramento.
“I don’t believe we are going to be able to adapt our way out of
climate change,” said Russ Lester, co-owner of Dixon Ridge Farms
in Winters. “We need to mitigate for it. It won’t solve the
problem but it can slow it down.”
From the Greek “xeros” and Middle Dutch “scap,”
xeriscape was coined
in 1978 and literally translates to “dry scene.”
Xeriscaping, by extension, is making an environment which can
tolerate dryness. This involves installing drought-resistant and
slow-growing plants to reduce water use.
Irrigation is the artificial supply
of water to grow crops or plants. Obtained from either surface or groundwater, it optimizes
agricultural production when the amount of rain and where it
falls is insufficient. Different irrigation
systems are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but in
practical use are often combined. Much of the agriculture in
California and the West relies on irrigation.
Excess salinity poses a growing
threat to food production, drinking water quality and public
health. Salts increase the cost of urban drinking water and
wastewater treatment, which are paid for by residents and
businesses. Increasing salinity is likely the largest long-term
chronic water quality impairment to surface and groundwater in California’s Central
Valley.
California’s severe drought has put its water rights system under
scrutiny, raising the question whether a complete overhaul is
necessary to better allocate water use.
(Read the excerpt below from the July/August 2015 issue along
with the editor’s note. Click here
to subscribe to Western Water and get full access.)
Introduction
California’s severe drought has put its water rights system under
scrutiny, raising the question whether a complete overhaul is
necessary to better allocate water use.
This issue looks at remote sensing applications and how satellite
information enables analysts to get a better understanding of
snowpack, how much water a plant actually uses, groundwater
levels, levee stability and more.
This 3-day, 2-night tour, which we do every spring,
travels the length of the San Joaquin Valley, giving participants
a clear understanding of the State Water Project and Central
Valley Project.
Located just north of Fresno, the
Friant Dam helps deliver water as it runs towards the Merced River, though its
environmental impacts have caused controversy.
This printed issue of Western Water examines
agricultural water use – its successes, the planned state
regulation to quantify its efficiency and the potential for
greater savings.
This Western Water looks at proposed new measures to deal with
the century-old problem of salinity with a special focus on San
Joaquin Valley farms and cities.
The Reclamation Act of 1902, which could arguably be described as
a progression of the credo, Manifest Destiny, transformed the
West. This issue of Western Water provides a glimpse of the past
100 years of the Reclamation Act, from the early visionaries who
sought to turn the arid West into productive farmland, to the
modern day task of providing a limited amount of water to homes,
farms and the environment. Included are discussions of various
Bureau projects and what the next century may bring in terms of
challenges and success.
30-minute DVD that traces the history of the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and its role in the development of the West. Includes
extensive historic footage of farming and the construction of
dams and other water projects, and discusses historic and modern
day issues.
A new look for our most popular product! And it’s the perfect
gift for the water wonk in your life.
Our 24×36 inch California Water Map is widely known for being the
definitive poster that shows the integral role water plays in the
state. On this updated version, it is easier to see California’s
natural waterways and man-made reservoirs and aqueducts
– including federally, state and locally funded
projects – the wild and scenic rivers system, and
natural lakes. The map features beautiful photos of
California’s natural environment, rivers, water projects,
wildlife, and urban and agricultural uses and the
text focuses on key issues: water supply, water use, water
projects, the Delta, wild and scenic rivers and the Colorado
River.
This beautiful 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, features
a map of the San Joaquin River. The map text focuses on the San
Joaquin River Restoration Program, which aims to restore flows
and populations of Chinook salmon to the river below Friant Dam
to its confluence with the Merced River. The text discusses the
history of the program, its goals and ongoing challenges with
implementation.
This beautiful 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, displays
the rivers, lakes and reservoirs, irrigated farmland, urban areas
and Indian reservations within the Klamath River Watershed. The
map text explains the many issues facing this vast,
15,000-square-mile watershed, including fish restoration;
agricultural water use; and wetlands. Also included are
descriptions of the separate, but linked, Klamath Basin
Restoration Agreement and the Klamath Hydroelectric Agreement,
and the next steps associated with those agreements. Development
of the map was funded by a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service.
This beautiful 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, displays
the rivers, lakes and reservoirs, irrigated farmland, urban areas
and Indian reservations within the Truckee River Basin, including
the Newlands Project, Pyramid Lake and Lake Tahoe. Map text
explains the issues surrounding the use of the Truckee-Carson
rivers, Lake Tahoe water quality improvement efforts, fishery
restoration and the effort to reach compromise solutions to many
of these issues.
This 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, illustrates the
water resources available for Nevada cities, agriculture and the
environment. It features natural and manmade water resources
throughout the state, including the Truckee and Carson rivers,
Lake Tahoe, Pyramid Lake and the course of the Colorado River
that forms the state’s eastern boundary.
Water as a renewable resource is depicted in this 18×24 inch
poster. Water is renewed again and again by the natural
hydrologic cycle where water evaporates, transpires from plants,
rises to form clouds, and returns to the earth as precipitation.
Excellent for elementary school classroom use.
With irrigation projects that import water, farmers have
transformed millions of acres of land into highly productive
fields and orchards. But the dry climate that provides an almost
year-round farming season can hasten salt build up in soils. The
build-up of salts in poorly drained soils can decrease crop
productivity, and there are links between drainage water from
irrigated fields and harmful impacts on fish and wildlife.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the Central Valley Project
explores the history and development of the federal Central
Valley Project (CVP), California’s largest surface water delivery
system. In addition to the project’s history, the guide describes
the various CVP facilities, CVP operations, the benefits the CVP
brought to the state and the CVP Improvement Act (CVPIA).
The 28-page Layperson’s Guide to Groundwater is an in-depth,
easy-to-understand publication that provides background and
perspective on groundwater. The guide explains what groundwater
is – not an underground network of rivers and lakes! – and the
history of its use in California.
The 28-page Layperson’s Guide to
Water Rights Law, recognized as the most thorough explanation of
California water rights law available to non-lawyers, traces the
authority for water flowing in a stream or reservoir, from a
faucet or into an irrigation ditch through the complex web of
California water rights.
The 20-page Layperson’s Guide to Water Marketing provides
background information on water rights, types of transfers and
critical policy issues surrounding this topic. First published in
1996, the 2005 version offers expanded information on
groundwater banking and conjunctive use, Colorado River
transfers and the role of private companies in California’s
developing water market.
Order in bulk (25 or more copies of the same guide) for a reduced
fee. Contact the Foundation, 916-444-6240, for details.
There are two constants regarding agricultural water use –
growers will continue to come up with ever more efficient and
innovative ways to use water and they will always be pressed to
do more.
It’s safe to say the matter will not be settled anytime soon,
given all the complexities that are a part of the water use
picture today. While officials and stakeholders grapple to find a
lasting solution to California’s water problems that balances
environmental and economic needs, those who grow food and fiber
for a living do so amid a host of challenges.
Land retirement is a practice that takes agricultural lands out
of production due to poor drainage and soils containing high
levels of salt and selenium (a mineral found in soil).
Typically, landowners are paid to retire land. The purchaser,
often a local water district, then places a deed restriction on
the land to prevent growing crops with irrigation water (a source
of salt). Growers in some cases may continue to farm using rain
water, a method known as dry farming.
Evaporation ponds contain agricultural drainage water and are
used when agricultural growers do not have access to rivers for
drainage disposal.
Drainage water is the only source of water in many of these
ponds, resulting in extremely high concentrations of salts.
Concentrations of other trace elements such as selenium are also
elevated in evaporation basins, with a wide degree of variability
among basins.
Such ponds resemble wetland areas that birds use for nesting and
feeding grounds and may pose risks to waterfowl and shorebirds.
The Coachella Valley in Southern California’s Inland Empire is
one of several valleys throughout the state with a water district
established to support agriculture.
Like the others, the Coachella Valley Water District in Riverside
County delivers water to arid agricultural lands and constructs,
operates and maintains a regional agricultural drainage system.
These systems collect drainage water from individual farm drain
outlets and convey the water to a point of reuse, disposal or
dilution.
