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.
As farmers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley struggle
to irrigate crops and weather an ever-worsening historic
drought, a bit of relief could be on the horizon courtesy of
farmers in the north Valley. But it could be all for naught if
Federal water managers don’t sign-off. What’s at stake? A
proposed transfer of 100,000 acre-feet of water from the
Southern San Joaquin Irrigation District (SSJID) and Oakdale
Irrigation District to farmers utilizing water from the San
Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority.
Severe water restrictions like these are not merely a serious
economic threat to farming operations; they are also a
contributor to rising food prices. Without adequate water
supplies, many farmers simply refrain from farming. And that’s
not a good thing in a state like California, which grows nearly
half the country’s fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Almost all
agriculture is thirsty, of course, but California agriculture
is especially thirsty. Growing a single almond requires more
than one gallon of water, while growing a single avocado
requires 60 gallons! Obviously, a major drought is not helpful.
Drought may be the sneakiest of natural disasters. Although
human history teems with people engulfed by abrupt aridity —
the Akkadians of four millenniums ago, the Maya in the ninth
and 10th centuries A.D., the Great Plains farmers of the 1930s
— even today drought is a poorly appreciated phenomenon. …
The American West is once again facing drought, one of the
worst on record. Across a vast region encompassing nine states
and home to nearly 60 million people, the earth is being wrung
dry. -Written by Farhad Manjoo, NY Times opinion columnist.
The California priority water rights system is being put to the
test, as state regulators impose emergency regulations and send
notices of water unavailability to farmers who are trying to
negotiate their crops through another drought year. Reacting to
worsening dry conditions, the State Water Resources Control
Board adopted emergency regulations last week to curtail water
diversions in the Russian River watershed in Mendocino and
Sonoma counties.
Growers are dealing with severe cutbacks in the surface water
deliveries they normally receive from reservoirs. The lack of
steady irrigation has already impacted spring cropping
decisions made by farmers. … A bill introduced by
Republican Congressman David Valadao would allow more water to
be moved south from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta while
keeping protections in place for fish such as the delta smelt
and salmon.
Forty two percent of shallow wells supplying water to community
water systems in California’s San Joaquin Valley are vulnerable
to going partially or fully dry under the state’s minimum
thresholds, finds a new report from the Pacific Institute. Most
impacted wells are shallower, and tend to be in disadvantaged
communities.
While California is known for its world-famous entertainment
industry and ever-transforming tech sector, agriculture is
the often-overlooked backbone of our diverse state
and one of its earliest economic engines.
Our state’s multigenerational farmers and ranchers
not only feed Californians, but also supply one-third of our
country’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts,
while also leading the nation in milk production. -Written by Karen Ross, secretary of the
California Department of Food and Agriculture; and David
Shabazian, director of the California Department of
Conservation.
Rich with promise and potential, the grapes that create the
Russian River Valley’s famed wines are ripening in the intense
midday heat. But soon they’ll face the fight of their lives,
deprived of water as the state diverts scarce supplies from
agriculture to the region’s thirsty cities and
subdivisions. … [Last] week, in a contentious step, the
State Water Resources Control Board unanimously approved an
emergency regulation to halt agricultural diversions for up to
2,400 of the region’s water rights holders. Citing state law,
the regulation prioritizes “health and safety,” saying
agricultural use is “an unreasonable use of water and is
prohibited.”
When Donald Trump referred to the COVID pandemic as a “plague,”
he was implying that it was an act of God that couldn’t be
blamed on the government. We are now told that the acute water
shortage in California is the result of a “drought” that has,
once again, lead to water restrictions. This biblical term
obscures the responsibility that our local governments bear for
this crisis. Countries facing far harsher climates and much
scarcer water supply, like Israel, have adopted straightforward
policies to avoid such crises. We should learn from their
example. -Written by Ron E. Hassner, the Helen Diller
Family chair in Israel Studies and the co-director of the Helen
Diller Institute for Israel Studies at U.C. Berkeley.
As much as 100,000 acre-feet of water — enough to meet the
annual demand of more than 40,000 Tuolumne County residents for
at least five years — that’s currently stored in New Melones
Reservoir could soon be sent south to aid drought-stricken
farmers under an agreement between the Oakdale and South San
Joaquin irrigation districts.
[T]he problem goes way beyond grazing. Dozens of tributaries
and hundreds of springs feed Upper Klamath Lake, supplying
plenty of good, clean water. A century of mismanagement has
caused erosion of high phosphorus soils that accumulate in the
bottom of Upper Klamath Lake. Now, annual algae blooms kill
entire generations of young endangered fish every year.
… All the problems in the Upper Klamath Lake flow
downstream, affecting endangered salmon in the Klamath River as
it runs to the Pacific Ocean. The Karuk, a Klamath River tribe,
are worried that this could be another year marked by a
historic fish kill.
Water in a key California reservoir will fall so low this
summer that its hydroelectric power plant will be forced to
shut down for the first time, officials said Thursday,
straining the state’s already-taxed electric
grid. An unrelenting drought and record
heat, both worsened by the changing climate, have pushed the
water supply at Northern California’s Lake Oroville to deplete
rapidly. As a result of the “alarming levels,” officials will
likely be forced to close the Edward Hyatt Power Plant for the
first time since it opened in 1967…
In this blistering year in California, drinking water wells are
going dry in increasing numbers, rekindling memories of the
historic drought of 2012 to 2016, when more than 2,600 wells
across the state stopped producing water. So many wells went
dry in 2014 in the town of East Porterville that Tulare County
supplied portable public showers. California is not yet to that
level of emergency…. But because the trend lines do not look
promising, government agencies and nonprofit groups are
preparing for a difficult summer in which thousands of wells
could fail.
Congressman John Garamendi (D-CA), a senior member of the House
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, voted to pass
the “Water Quality Protection and Job Creation Act of 2021”
(H.R.1915) in the Committee. This legislation reauthorizes the
Clean Water Act’s State Revolving Funds and related U.S. EPA
water programs. The legislation passed the Committee on a
bipartisan vote of 42 to 25 and is expected to be passed by the
U.S. House of Representatives in the coming weeks.
Salvador Parra, the manager of Burford Ranch in California’s
Central Valley agricultural breadbasket, is worried about the
lack of water. California’s worst drought since 1977 has forced
Parra to leave fallow 2,000 of his 6,000 acres and dig deep for
water to save the crops already planted.
Kou Her’s family has run the 12-acre Herr Family Farms in
Sanger, just east of Fresno, for the last 20 years, raising a
variety of vegetables for Bay Area produce and farmer’s
markets. In those 20 years, Kou and his parents haven’t seen
anything like the heat wave gripping the Central Valley this
week. “I am terrified,” Her said by phone Wednesday evening.
“I’ve never experienced three days of 110 before. I hope we
don’t have significant damage by the end of the weekend.”
Central Valley cattle ranchers are gearing up for a fight
against what they see as groundwater rustling. Their fear is
that newly formed groundwater agencies in some areas could
devalue their land by not giving them a fair share of their own
groundwater. Ranchers believe those fears were realized on June
8 when the Madera County Board of Supervisors approved a
groundwater allocation that will partially exclude rangeland.
Ranchers who own rangeland that has never been irrigated won’t
receive a share of the county’s “transitional water” allotment.
Severe drought highlights the need for greater investment to
improve aging California water facilities, and increases calls
for allocation of federal and state resources to tackle the
problem. A national coalition that includes the California Farm
Bureau urged U.S. Senate leaders last week to take action to
address the shortcomings of aging water infrastructure, and to
include “a broad range of water uses” in any federal
infrastructure legislation.
The drought facing the Western United States is
bad. Really bad. It’s become worse faster than the last
one. As more of the United States suffers from drought
conditions and water supplies are diminishing, water
demands are rising. Smaller water supplies combined with
increasingly unpredictable weather patterns and other effects
of climate change pose an enormous threat by creating a
feedback loop that exacerbates drought conditions and
increases wildfire risk across the United States.
The seriousness of California’s drought is being driven home to
thousands of farmers in the Central Valley. State regulators
warned 6,600 farmers in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
watershed on Tuesday that they’re about to lose the right to
pull water from the estuary’s rivers at some point this summer.
The watershed covers a major swath of the Central Valley.
As the Southwest prepares for what’s forecast to be another
mercilessly hot and dry summer, tensions over water scarcity
are rising like the mercury. Farmers are facing bleak growing
seasons and the possibility of farm failures in several areas
due to cutbacks in water allocations for irrigation, creating
friction between the ag community and cities on the dwindling
water supply in the region. Rural communities in Nevada and
elsewhere, already wary of incursions by urban areas into their
water supplies, are on high alert as the water crisis deepens.
At Crocker Amazon Park in the Excelsior, six acres of formerly
underutilized land owned by the San Francisco Public Utilities
Commission has been turned into an urban farm through the
efforts of People Organizing to Demand Environmental and
Economic Rights, known as PODER. The urban community
agriculture project, dubbed Hummingbird Farm, provides organic
food as well as medicinal plants, and serves as a community and
education hub in particular for young people.
The Sonoma County water agency received permission Monday to
immediately cut stream flows in the lower Russian River by more
than half in an effort to conserve water stored in Lake
Sonoma. Instream flows in the upper river, above Dry
Creek, which is fed by releases from Lake Sonoma, already are
being maintained at a very low threshold to keep as much water
as possible in Lake Mendocino, the smaller of the two
reservoirs.
Much of California’s $50 billion agricultural industry depends
on groundwater. We typically see only what this water makes
possible above the soil: almond and pistachio groves, citrus
orchards, rows of lettuce and grapevines and cattle herds in a
valley that supplies a quarter of the nation’s food even when
surface water is scarce. But a lot is happening below the
surface. Deep underground, intricate channels of sand and
gravel weave through tightly packed clays and silts, allowing
Earth to hold water like a sponge.
Severe drought is gripping most of California, but its misery
isn’t spread equally. While most of the state compares today’s
extreme conditions to previous droughts, people in Tulare
County speak of drought — in the singular, as in a continuous
state of being. … Tulare County’s never-ending drought
brings dried up wells and plenty of misery The entire West is
suffering from extreme dryness, heat and fire risk, and the
small, rural towns of northern Tulare County, outside of
Visalia, are caught in its vortex.
The California water board has approved a plan for water
releases into the Sacramento River that could kill off an
entire run of endangered chinook salmon and put at risk another
population that is part of the commercial salmon fishery. …
Because the [Bureau of Reclamation’s] plan involves releasing
water to irrigation districts earlier in the season, the river
will be lower and warmer during salmon spawning season and
could result in killing as many as 88% of endangered winter-run
chinook eggs and young fish.
California never has enough water to meet all demands and even
when supplies are relatively robust there’s a triangular
competition over their allocation. Farmers, municipal users and
environmental advocates vie for shares of water that has been
captured by California’s extensive network of dams and
reservoirs. … When California experiences one of its
periodic droughts and reservoirs shrink from scant rain and
snowfall, its perpetual conflict becomes even sharper. -Written by Dan Walters, a CalMatters columnist
Humboldt County gave the public two chances to air concerns
this week surrounding Nordic Aquafarms’ proposed onshore fish
farm on the Samoa Peninsula. County planners held two public
scoping meetings Thursday to gather input from the public and
affected governmental agencies on areas that should be covered
in the project’s environmental impact report (EIR). The
Humboldt County Planning and Building Department had released a
mitigated negative declaration (MND) for the project in April
but a coalition of environmental groups argued that the
assessment didn’t go far enough.
Farmers are concerned for their crops as dry conditions has
worsen throughout the Central Coast. Earlier this year, it
started off a major storm. Ever since, farmers have not seen
much rainfall. According to the National Weather Service, the
‘extreme drought’ conditions has expanded throughout Santa
Barbara and San Luis Obispo County.
The term buy-and-dry plays to the fears of farm and ranch
communities. Wealthy urban water providers buy up water rights,
dry out farms and ranches, encourage people to retire to Hawaii
or other locales, and export the purchased water out of basin
to growing cities. As more farmers and ranchers sell their
water rights, local businesses—irrigation, farm
equipment, seed, and other agricultural firms—contract. Those
contractions encourage more farmers and ranchers to sell their
water rights and farms. And a negative feedback loop gains
momentum and propels a tragedy where the commons—a functioning
local agricultural community—disappears.
Tricia Hill tears up when she talks about the emotional toll
the water shut-off in southern Oregon has had on her family.
Amid historic, climate change-driven drought, the federal
government in May shut down the water supply from the Upper
Klamath Basin on the California-Oregon border to protect native
fish species on the verge of extinction. As a result, Hill and
other farmers like her in the region have been cut off from
water they have used for decades.
A Central Valley pistachio processing plant whose wastewater
ponds triggered numerous odor complaints from nearby residents
will pay a $221,440 fine, a portion of which will fund improved
ventilation at two public schools in the area. The Central
Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board (Central Valley
Water Board) fined Setton Pistachio after determining the
company had violated the terms of an August 2020 cease and
desist order (CDO) directing it to immediately eliminate
objectionable odors coming from ponds at its plant in Terra
Bella in Tulare County.
The first assessments of groundwater sustainability
plans have been released by the California Department of
Water Resources (DWR). In lieu of waiting until the end of the
two-year review period, DWR has decided to release assessments
as they are completed. Assessments have been completed for the
Santa Cruz Mid-County Basin in Santa Cruz County and 180/400
Foot Aquifer Subbasin in Monterey County. Assessments
for the Cuyama Valley Basin and Paso Robles Subbasin have also
been completed.
With the harshest dry year in recent memory, the Sacramento
River Settlement Contractors (Settlement Contractors) are
working closely with federal and state agencies, as well as our
conservation partners, to continually improve our operations
and serve water for multiple benefits, including water for
cities and rural communities, farms, birds, fish, and
recreation.
Susan Tipton likes to talk about her award-winning wines
produced at Acquiesce Winery in Acampo just outside Lodi, but
these days she keeps a close watch on the current drought
conditions as well. Tipton took a big hit last year when
winter rains didn’t materialize. … Coming into 2021, the
vines were watered early with well water, and groundcover crops
are used to retain water. But the water table in the area
is dropping, adding to Tipton’s concern.
Even as a federal infrastructure bill teeters on the brink of
failure, more than 200 Western farm and water organizations
pushing for canal and reservoir repairs are proposing nearly
$49 billion for projects improving water conveyance, dam
safety and forest health. In a letter June 9 to Chairman
Joe Manchin and Ranking Member John Barrasso of the U.S. Senate
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, organizations
ranging from Western Growers to the Idaho Potato Commission
cited an “acute and critical need” magnified by another
all-too-familiar drought.
California’s drought highlights the importance of an
appointment sitting on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk – filling the
final seat on the State Water Resources Control
Board. This is a critical agency appointment at a
critical time. The drought highlights many inequities in
California water policy. Disadvantaged communities in Stockton
face the prospect of a drought summer plagued by harmful algae
blooms in Delta rivers. Those algae outbreaks, which can
harm children and kill pets, are caused by excessive nutrients
and inadequate freshwater flow. -Written by Belinda Faustina, a strategic advisor
with Los Angeles Waterkeeper, and Barbara
Barrigan-Parilla, the executive director of Restore the
Delta.
At the Kern County Water Summit held last week, hosted by the
Water Association of Kern County, Acting Deputy Director of the
Department of Water Resources Statewide Groundwater Management
Program Steven Springhorn provided an update on the
Department’s progress on SGMA implementation, including the
Department’s review of the submitted Groundwater Sustainability
Plans and the existing and proposed SGMA-related assistance.
Imperial Valley grower, landowner and former elected official
Michael Abatti has responded to the Imperial Irrigation
District’s official filing in his U.S. Supreme Court
petition. The official response was filed sometime Monday,
June 7. In March, Abatti filed for a “writ of certiorari” with
the U.S. Supreme Court seeking review of the California Court
of Appeal, Fourth Appellate District’s decision in Abatti v.
Imperial Irrigation District, to which the district was ordered
by the High Court to provide a formal response last month.
Against the backdrop of what’s shaping up as a devastating
drought year, the California Department of Water Resources has
released its first assessments of groundwater sustainability
plans developed by local agencies to meet the requirements of
the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. The department
released reviews of four local plans, approving two but sending
the other two back to local groundwater sustainability
agencies, saying the plans need more work.
Normally, the biggest vegetable grower in Sonoma County,
Humberto Castañeda Produce, grows heirloom tomatoes, cucumbers,
corn, watermelons and other crops on 180 acres outside of Santa
Rosa. But this year, Humberto Castañeda and his son, Gabriel,
are farming only 17 acres after receiving a fraction of their
normal allotment of water from the city of Santa Rosa.
… The Castañedas are among countless farmers across the
state taking drastic measures to deal with the drought…
Among the nearly one hundred development projects pending on
the county of Napa Current Projects website comes a sleeper of
a project likely to go unnoticed by Napa city residents and
businesses who will be most negatively impacted. The remote
vineyard development project, proposed deep in the
headwaters above Lake Hennessey, seeks to clear 156.8 acres of
existing vegetation including oak woodlands, foothill pine
communities, and grasslands in order to construct a vineyard in
the Conn Creek/Lake Hennessey watershed. -Written by Kellie Anderson, resident of Angwin.
The Klamath Basin is suffering the worst drought in the state.
Competing need for the water by local tribes seeking to sustain
endangered fish populations, farmers and ranchers, and
commercial and tribal fisheries has been a persistent issue,
and has led to conflicts in the past. The Klamath Basin
Restoration Agreement, which took 10 years to plan, was a
turning point and a compromise for the parties needing access
to the water.
Ateam led by UC Riverside engineers has developed a catalyst to
remove a dangerous chemical from water on Earth that could also
make Martian soil safer for agriculture and help produce oxygen
for human Mars explorers. Perchlorate, a negative ion
consisting of one chlorine atom bonded to four oxygen atoms,
occurs naturally in some soils on Earth, and is especially
abundant in Martian soil. As a powerful oxidizer, perchlorate
is also manufactured and used in solid rocket fuel, fireworks,
munitions, airbag initiators for vehicles, matches and signal
flares. It is a byproduct in some disinfectants and
herbicides.
Not all farmland in the San Joaquin Valley will survive in a
post-SGMA world. Estimates are that the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act will force between 500,000 to one million acres
of land that’s currently farmed to be taken out of production
to save groundwater. Which lands and what will become of those
lands are major question marks at this point. If Gov. Newsom’s
revised budget is approved as is, those questions could have an
extra $500 million to help find answers.
Fears of a confrontation between law enforcement and rightwing
militia supporters over the control of water in the
drought-stricken American west have been sparked by protests at
Klamath Falls in Oregon. Protesters affiliated with rightwing
anti-government activist Ammon Bundy’s People’s Rights Network
are threatening to break a deadlock over water management in
the area by unilaterally opening the headgates of a reservoir.
Tribes and environmental advocates fear flows along the Klamath
River could be reduced to a trickle if the State Water
Resources Control Board doesn’t take action on water use
upstream on the Scott and Shasta rivers. Andy Marx, board
president of Friends of the Shasta River, said the river
“virtually dried up” over Memorial Day weekend as a result of
excessive irrigation diversions.
California has seen its share of droughts, but the one
happening now is so severe that a longtime dairy farmer has
called it quits. … Bob McClure, a 60-year-old
fourth-generation rancher of McClure Dairy, which was founded
in 1889 and remains on the Point Reyes Peninsula in Marin
County, … was already thinking about when he would wrap up
operations at the dairy, but his decision to close at the end
of May was “truly, truly driven by the threat of running out of
water,” he said.
The wait is over for some Groundwater Sustainability Agencies
(GSAs). The California Department of Water Resources (DWR)
released the first Groundwater Sustainability Plan (GSP)
assessments for four basins yesterday, June 3, 2021. DWR
approved the 180/400 Foot Aquifer Subbasin in Salinas Valley
and the Santa Cruz Mid-County Basin. DWR determined both GSPs
“satisf[y] the objectives of the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act (SGMA) and substantially compl[y] with the GSP
Regulations.”
During droughts organizations and stakeholders look for ways of
getting the most from every water drop. This is not an
exception in California where roughly 40 percent of all water
use (on average) is agricultural, 10 percent to cities and the
rest is uncaptured or environmental uses (mostly on the North
Coast). … Yet the notion that applied water in agriculture is
often wasteful is common in media drought coverage.
A megadrought in California is threatening to push food prices
even higher. The state is already facing its worst water
shortage in four years and the its driest season has only just
begun, according to data from the National Integrated Drought
Information System (NIDIS). As water levels continue to
fall, farmers and ranchers will be unable to maintain key crops
and feed livestock. As of Tuesday, nearly 75% of California was
classified as in “extreme drought,” meaning the land does not
have adequate water supplies to sustain agriculture and
wildlife, according to the NIDIS.
California’s water wars are legendary, complex and
ongoing. To avoid getting too far in the weeds, media often
boil it down to a dispute over who should have priority to a
limited supply of water — people or fish. The real beauty
of aerial snow surveys is that it’s one thing that farmers and
environmentalists can agree on. -Written by Garth Stapley, The Modesto Bee’s Opinions Page
editor.
Why do Pinal County farmers keep growing alfalfa and cotton,
two relatively water-intensive crops, particularly when their
water supply is being so heavily cut? It’s a common
question. Most farmers know they need to grow more
drought-adapted crops as their Colorado River water evaporates
and growing seasons become even hotter and drier. But
farmers can’t plant lower water use crops that they can’t
sell. Any crop they grow needs a market. And there are
well-established markets for cotton and alfalfa – crops that
produce higher yields in central Arizona than in most other
places in the world. -Written by Joanna Allhands.
Yosemite National Park and the Stanislaus National Forest are
seeking commentary from the public on their plan to restore
wetlands in the Ackerson Meadow, which they said have been
drained as a result of a century of domestic water
diversion. The plans include a complete fill of the
gullies developed over the last century by ranchers and
agriculturalists who utilized water flow, or the the
installation of manmade beaver dams to partially restore the
wetlands.
In the two decades since the SLEWS program began, high school
students, farmers and conservation volunteers have planted 142
miles of riparian hedgerow habitat. That is the equivalent of
driving from Sacramento to Reno. From the moment you left
downtown until you pulled into the Biggest Little City in the
World, accompanying you along the way would be a seemingly
infinite line of native trees, grasses, shrubs, and flowering
forbs all in a single row.
Drought conditions in California remain at record highs, with
most of the state now classified in “extreme” or “exceptional”
drought, reflecting conditions across the Southwest, according
to a new report from climate scientists. Much of the Bay
Area and the northern Central Valley have been included in the
most severe “exceptional drought” zone, along with much of
southeast California, the U.S. Drought Monitor reported.
A water war is under way in Sacramento right now that could
have far-reaching impacts on families in the Central Valley.
… Hearings got under way Wednesday, as Semitropic Water
Storage District in Kern County makes its administrative appeal
to the State Water Resources Control Board for water rights to
the Kings River. It filed its first petition in 2017, asking
for access to 1.6 million acre feet of floodwater from the
Kings River.
On Thursday, Senator Melissa Hurtado (D-Sanger) issued the
following statement regarding a
bi-partisan letter she sent that urges the California
Water Commission to prioritize water storage projects in the
Central Valley when assessing how to reallocate funds from
Proposition 1: … California is currently in a state of
emergency due to drought. As a result, the amount of water
allocated to Central Valley farmers has been greatly
reduced.
Water Audit California is suing to make Napa County increase
oversight of groundwater pumping for vineyards, wineries, and
other uses, claiming that the pumping affects the Napa River.
The lawsuit said the county has a “public trust” duty to care
for the river. The idea is that too much groundwater pumping
from wells can keep groundwater from seeping into the river
during dry months, to the detriment of fish and other aquatic
life.
This May, while collecting live fish for their annual aquatic
pathogen assessment on the Klamath River in Northern
California, Yurok Tribe biologists made a shocking discovery:
over 70 percent of the young, ocean-bound Chinook salmon
captured in their traps were dead. Almost all of the fish
tested upstream were infected with Ceratonova shasta, a
parasite that relies on both fish and annelid worms as hosts.
Barry McCovey, senior fisheries biologist for the Yurok Tribe,
expects most of the infected fish to die.
After farming squash, corn, melons, peppers and tomatoes by his
father’s side since childhood, Gabriel Castañeda is stepping
out largely on his own this year. With water in such short
supply, his dad, Humberto, thought he might forgo raising
summer fruits and vegetables this season and focus only on the
15 acres of wine grapes he grows near Fulton instead. But Gabe
Castañeda, who had helped his father build Humberto Castañeda
Produce into Sonoma County’s largest produce grower, wanted to
see what he could do to keep the family’s 40-year farming
tradition alive — even if on a very reduced scale.
I am now working through my third drought as the Director of
Water Quality for Northern California Water Association (NCWA),
where I have learned the importance of broadening my
perspective beyond my own tap in Roseville that brings
delicious American River water into my home. A pillar in NCWA’s
Strategic Plan and 2021 Priorities is to advance
multi-benefit water management that supports nature-based
solutions, which provide essential benefits for our economy,
health and quality of life …
Groundwater is one of the hottest ticket items in California’s
water world these days. But much about it is a mystery. Where
is it? How does it move? Which are the best spots to percolate
water into the ground for storage? At least two technologies
hope to answer some of those questions: airborne
electromagnetic surveys and interferometric synthetic aperture
radar. That’s AEM and InSAR for short.
There is dry, and then there is desiccated. As any movie
fan knows from the classic film Chinatown, California is
an infamously thirsty place. But this year, even by its own
standards, the state is shockingly, scarily parched. So far in
2021, the state has received half of its expected
precipitation; that makes it the third driest year on record
according to California’s Department of Water Resources.
Rising tensions in the Klamath Basin could come to a boil soon,
as two Klamath Project farmers plan to breach the fenced
headgates of the federal irrigation project’s main canal and
try to release water, likely triggering a standoff with the
federal government. Farmers Grant Knoll and Dan Nielsen bought
property next to the headgates in April for $30,000 and have
set up camp on the site. They are staffing a large canvas tent
with volunteers from the local branch of People’s Rights, a
national organization formed in 2020 by militant activist Ammon
Bundy, and they’re trying to rally support.
Cynthia Beltran moved to Sunizona with her seven-year-old son
last autumn even though the area lacks functional drinking
water wells, because it was all she could afford. She cannot
afford the $15,000 cost of deepening her well, which dried
up last year, and had been paying for a local firm to deliver
water in a tanker. But at $100 a week it became too expensive,
so now she will be relying on a friend to help her fetch water
from her mother’s well. … Nearly 20 wells in Sunizona
alone were deepened between 2015 and 2019, after they dried
up.
California farmers and ranchers are preparing for a difficult
growing season as the state faces drought conditions. The
California Board of Food and Agriculture met on Tuesday to
discuss ways to help farmers and ranchers, as well as to
discuss the proposed $5.1 billion included in the governor’s
budget to address drought challenges and water infrastructure.
After back-to-back dry years, the state’s water supply is
strained, forcing farmers like Joe Martinez in Solano County to
figure out ways to get the most out of their water.
Driving into Southern California’s Palo Verde Valley from the
Arizona border, fields of vibrant green appear out of the
desert like a mirage. Near the town of Blythe, water from the
Colorado River turns the dry earth into verdant farmland, much
of it to grow a single crop — alfalfa, a type of plant used
mainly to feed dairy cows. For decades, a significant portion
of alfalfa grown here and elsewhere in the western United
States — as much as 17 percent in 2017 — has been loaded onto
trucks, driven hundreds of miles to ports on the west coast,
and shipped around the world, mainly to China, Japan, and Saudi
Arabia.
On Tuesday, the Imperial Irrigation District Board of Directors
will consider the future of IID in the Coachella Valley with a
direct question — should IID stay or should IID go? In my short
tenure on the IID Board, I personally have enjoyed working to
improve our service, responsiveness and outreach to our
Coachella Valley communities and customers. But Assembly Bill
1021 by Assemblyman Chad Mayes, I-La Quinta, threatens the
continued presence of IID in the Coachella Valley … -Written by JB Hamby, vice president of the
Imperial Irrigation District Board of Directors.
The driest year California has experienced since the 1970s will
have wide-ranging impacts in the West. In the Sacramento
Valley, a reduced water supply will lead to about a 20 percent
reduction in rice plantings. The loss of about 100,000 acres of
rice fields has implications well beyond the farm level. The
reduced plantings will impact rural communities that depend on
agriculture as their foundation. It’s also a concern for
wildlife, which greatly depend on rice fields for their
habitat.
Tensions have been building in Klamath Falls in recent weeks
over a drought that is devastating farmland, fish deemed sacred
to native tribes, and wildlife. The Klamath Basin, along the
Oregon-California border, has a complex history. Drought and
fights over water aren’t new. Here are five things to know
about the unfolding Klamath water crisis:
A bill aimed at improving the Valley’s two largest canal
systems from continued subsidence-driven damage advanced
through one house of the California State Legislature on
Friday. Senate Bill 559, a top priority for legislators on both
side of the aisle in the San Joaquin Valley and led by Sen.
Melissa Hurtado (D–Sanger), seeks to dedicate $785 million in
spending for improvements to four sets of waterways,
spearheaded by two canals servicing the Central Valley Project:
the Delta-Mendota Canal and the Friant-Kern Canal.
According to a flyer put out by the California Water Boards,
anyone who diverts water from a surface stream, lake or pond
into a water hauling truck must have a valid water right and
any unauthorized drafting or hauling of water is subject to
prosecution and fines—up to $500 a day, as high as $1,000 a day
during a drought year, and $2,500 per acre-foot of water
diverted—by the State Water Boards and the Department of Fish &
Wildlife.
Joe Del Bosque is leaving a third of his 2,000-acre farm near
Firebaugh, California, unseeded this year due to extreme
drought. Yet, he hopes to access enough water to produce a
marketable melon crop. Farmers across California say they
expect to receive little water from state and federal agencies
that regulate the state’s reservoirs and canals, leading many
to leave fields barren, plant more drought-tolerant crops or
seek new income sources all-together. … Stuart Woolf,
who operates 30,000 acres, most of it in Western Fresno County
… may fallow 30% of his land.
Can California regions regulate groundwater without destroying
their businesses and communities? That’s the question being
posed as regions and localities implement the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), the historic 2014 state law
that brought regulation to California’s diminishing groundwater
supplies. –Written by columnist Joe Matthews
The brewing battle over the century-old Klamath Project is an
early window into the water shortfalls that are likely to
spread across the West as a widespread drought, associated with
a warming climate, parches watersheds throughout the
region. In Nevada, water levels have dropped so
drastically in Lake Mead that officials are preparing for a
serious shortage that could prompt major reductions in Colorado
River water deliveries next year. In California, Gov. Gavin
Newsom has placed 41 counties under a state of emergency.
The Imperial Irrigation District has filed its initial response
to Imperial Valley grower, landowner and former elected
official Michael Abatti’s U.S. Supreme Court case.
… Abatti is seeking to overturn a previous appellate
court ruling that asserts Imperial Irrigation District is the
“sole owner” of water rights in the Valley, and farmers do “not
(have) an appurtenant water right” but rather are entitled
merely to “water service” that is subject to modification by
the district at its discretion.
Two large reservoirs in our backyard are capable of holding
40,000 acre feet of water to recharge the underground table.
But federal rules prevent them from reaching capacity and it
will take an act of Congress to change the rules. Big Dry
Creek Reservoir in Clovis and Fancher Creek Reservoir east of
Clovis together can hold 40,000 acre feet of storm water.
That’s water that can eventually stream into the underground
water table.
Following recent ordinances from Siskiyou County Board of
Supervisors that prohibit the transfer of water along certain
county roads without a permit, ripple effects have been seen
throughout the community. The emergency ordinances were
passed in an effort to crack down on illegal marijuana grow
operations. … [The conflict] has fanned the flames of racism,
saying they are seeing community members racially profile Asian
Americans in the community because the Shasta Vista subdivision
is known to have a large Asian American population.
Two farmers with ties to anti-government activist Ammon Bundy
have purchased land by a shut-off irrigation canal in Oregon
that would normally deliver water to a massive federal
irrigation project along the California-Oregon border and have
set up a protest encampment there, Jefferson Public Radio
reports. The move comes after federal regulators shut off all
water deliveries from the project’s main “A Canal” due to
extreme drought and the need to balance the water demands of
farmers with threatened and endangered fish species …
The delta smelt could be declared endangered if Chris Mathys, a
Republican primary challenger to David Valadao, gets his way.
“Federal and state mandated rules related to the delta smelt in
California are severely restricting the releases of surface
water relied upon by California’s farmers and ranchers.
Agriculture products are vital to California’s economy and
farmers depend on an adequate water supply to grow nuts, fruits
and vegetables that provide food for Americans and the rest of
the world,” Mathys wrote in a statement.
Over the past decade, the farming town of Corcoran, California,
has been sinking two feet every year as agriculture firms pump
underground water to irrigate crops. The 7.47 square-mile area
in California’s San Joaquin Valley has 21,960 people and has
sunk 11.5 feet in the last 14 years. According to
the USGS California Water Science Center, the sinking is
the product of agriculture industries pumping underground water
to irrigate their crops for decades.
The impacts of California’s deepening drought hit home for
Central Valley farmers earlier this week, when federal
officials announced they didn’t have enough water to supply
many of their agricultural customers. Urban users south of San
Francisco in Santa Clara County saw their normal water
deliveries cut in half. California ships water to cities and
farms through a combination of state and federal programs that
oversee a complex network of hundreds of miles of dams,
reservoirs and aqueducts throughout the state.
In the summer of 2001, local farmers and other activists armed
with saws and blowtorches breached a chain-link fence and
opened the headgates of a federal canal that supplies farmland
in Oregon and far Northern California. Local farmer Grant Knoll
was among the activists there that year. The protesters forced
the gates open three times but were eventually blocked by U.S.
marshals. Now, with a drought just as severe as two decades ago
— and with farmers’ water again cut off — he’s prepared to
fight again.
A team of USDA agricultural scientists in the Golden State are
helping farmers make the most out of a natural resource that is
becoming ever more precious – water. California produces
two-thirds of the nation’s fruits and nuts and one-third of its
vegetables, but above average temperatures and long-term
drought have put a strain on the water resources it takes to
grow these crops. Most of California’s precipitation falls
during the winter, which means summertime irrigation is
required to produce many of the state’s crops. Higher
temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns increase water
demand and reduce supply.
The state’s extensive water system supplies cities and farms;
prevents pollution of lakes, rivers, and coastlines; protects
against floods; and supports freshwater ecosystems and the
forested headwaters that are a major source of water supply.
Many local, state, and federal agencies oversee this system and
raise revenues from a variety of sources. California spends
about $37 billion annually, with the lion’s share (84%) coming
from local water bills and taxes. The balance comes from state
(13%) and federal (3%) contributions.
In just a few weeks, California’s water conditions have gone
from bad to terrible. Sacramento residents have been asked to
cut water usage 10%. Their counterparts on the Russian River
are being told to reduce their consumption 20%. Farmers across
the Central Valley are letting fields lie fallow and
dismantling their orchards. Government agencies are warning of
massive fish kills on the Sacramento River. After
a warm spring dried up practically the entire Sierra
Nevada snowpack — and robbed California of enough water to fill
most of Folsom Lake — state and federal officials have been
forced to dramatically ramp up their drought response plans.
It has lost nearly 95% of its volume in the past two decades,
upending what was once a thriving resort economy, a healthy
brine shrimp population, crucial wildlife and bird habitat, and
critical mineral extraction industries. The miles of stark,
exposed lakebed threaten the millions of people who live nearby
due to wind-whipped dust settling in their lungs. It’s Lake
Urmia, nearly 6,900 miles away from the Great Salt Lake. But
the two are now connected as efforts to save this lake deliver
unique lessons as Utah grapples with a way to preserve and save
its salty landmark from a similar fate.
In terms of sheer size, Nordic Aquafarms’ land-based
aquaculture facility, slated for construction on the Samoa
Peninsula, would be the largest development project Humboldt
County has seen for decades, maybe since the heyday of the
timber industry. The facility’s five buildings — including two
massive production modules where Atlantic salmon would be
raised inside fully-contained recirculating tanks — would total
766,530 square feet, nearly an acre larger than the footprint
of the Bayshore Mall. It’s been more than two years since the
Norwegian company announced its ambitious plans, and the
environmental review period was scheduled to wrap up this
week.
California’s water supply got cut again Wednesday, with the
federal government reducing allocations to cities and farms as
the drought intensified. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
announced that municipal water agencies that rely on the
Central Valley Project will have this year’s allocations
slashed from 55% down to 25% — a level not seen since the
drought of 2015. That could put additional pressure on the
municipalities around greater Sacramento that depend on
supplies from Folsom Lake, whose water levels have sunk
dramatically this spring. The reservoir is at 46% of its usual
capacity for late May.
Day after day, sheriff’s deputies drive up and down the road
outside Steve Griset’s 600-acre farm, pulling over anyone who
appears to be hauling water for the thousands of marijuana
greenhouses that have taken over the countryside here. Griset
has become a target, even though he grows alfalfa. Last year,
investigators with the Siskiyou County District Attorney’s
Office raided Griset’s house with a search warrant looking for
his business records, and the DA followed up with a lawsuit in
civil court. Griset’s alleged transgressions? He was selling
water from his well to his pot-farming neighbors, immigrants of
Hmong descent …
Twenty years after a shut-off of most irrigation water in the
parched Klamath Project brought the competing needs of farmers,
fishermen and tribes to a head, a new drought — and a fresh
federally-ordered water shut-off — is triggering a sense
of déjà vu. Now, two Klamath Project irrigators with
ties to radical activist Ammon Bundy have purchased private
property located next to the headgates of the “A” Canal in
Klamath Falls, which would normally deliver water to area
farms. And along with local members of the Oregon chapter of
People’s Rights, a group founded by Bundy in 2020, they’ve set
up an information center and gathering place to talk to the
public about the brewing water crisis in the Klamath Basin.
California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office, by way of written
communication, has notified Imperial Irrigation District Board
Vice President J.B. Hamby of his appointment to the state’s
Colorado River Board. … For the past 75 years the
Colorado River Board of California’s mission has been to
protect the interests and rights of the State of California,
its agencies and citizens, in the water and power resources of
the Colorado River system.
In California’s San Joaquin Valley, the farming town of
Corcoran has a multimillion-dollar problem. It is almost
impossible to see, yet so vast it takes NASA scientists using
satellite technology to fully grasp. Corcoran is sinking. Over
the past 14 years, the town has sunk as much as 11.5 feet in
some places — enough to swallow the entire first floor of a
two-story house and to at times make Corcoran one of the
fastest-sinking areas in the country, according to experts with
the United States Geological Survey.
Governor Newsom’s recent emergency declaration confirms what
California’s agriculture industry has known for months. Drought
has returned to California, in what has become a recurring
theme of growing food in our state. Farmers and ranchers accept
the risks that come with their way of life and have fought hard
to be productive in one of the most heavily regulated
industries in the state. Agriculture continues to adapt to meet
evolving challenges and now more than ever consumers need to
buy California grown produce. -Written by Ian LeMay, president of the California
Fresh Fruit Association.
A hopeful for a Fresno-area seat in Congress has initiated a
petition to have the embattled Delta smelt declared
extinct. Chris Mathys said Monday he took the first
step toward that petition, which is a letter of intent to the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state of California 30
days before filing the formal petition. The petition is
similar to a court document in that it needs to lay out the
argument and back it up with facts and science, Mathys said.
The water crisis along the California-Oregon border went from
dire to catastrophic this week as federal regulators shut off
irrigation water to farmers from a critical reservoir and said
they would not send extra water to dying salmon downstream or
to a half-dozen wildlife refuges that harbor millions of
migrating birds each year. In what is shaping up to be the
worst water crisis in generations, the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation said it will not release water this season into the
main canal that feeds the bulk of the massive Klamath
Reclamation Project, marking a first for the 114-year-old
irrigation system.
The Mendocino County Farm Bureau encourages local, state and
federal leadership to focus current drought relief measures on
multi-purpose projects that address agricultural, municipal,
environmental, recreational and fire suppression water needs.
… On-stream ponds are created by damning a water course and
off- stream ponds are created by diverting from a river, a well
or a flood control contract.
When Sierra snow seeps into the ground or evaporates before it
can flow downstream into reservoirs, you know California is
facing a severe drought. It’s happening this spring up and down
the mountain range that is a primary water source for the
state. Water from snowmelt that hydrologists had expected only
a few weeks ago to replenish foothill reservoirs is vanishing.
It’s being absorbed by the parched soil or dissipating into the
thin mountain air. -Written by George Skelton, a Los Angeles Times
columnist.
The infrastructure Californians rely on to move water
throughout the state is aging, deteriorating and in desperate
need of repair. The cost of doing nothing will be borne by all
water users — cities, towns, businesses, farms and the
environment. However, the negative impacts from further neglect
will land disproportionately on already disadvantaged
communities. -Written by Ian LeMay, president of the
California Fresh Fruit Association.
Yolo County Flood Control & Water Conservation District is
pleased to announce that Kristin Sicke has been selected to
become the new general manager of the irrigation
district. The District’s primary mission is to provide
surface water for agricultural purposes in western Yolo County,
and is integral to monitoring and maintaining sustainable
groundwater supplies within the county.
In wetter times, these feathery beds of asparagus would produce
generations of tender green spears, reaching for the vast San
Joaquin Valley sky. [Last] Monday they were disked into the dry
dirt, their long lives cut short by unreliable and expensive
water. … With no guarantee of irrigation water this
summer, Del Bosque and other California farmers are making
tough choices, sacrificing one crop to save another. The
strategy is part of a larger and longer agricultural shift here
in the heart of California’s $50 billion agriculture industry:
Low-value, high-water crops are disappearing from the Golden
State.
Sitting in a pickup truck on his almond farm 100 miles north of
San Francisco, Tom Butler pointed to a withered grove he has
been planning to bulldoze in order to save his little remaining
water for younger trees. … California is gripped in severe
drought just four years after emerging from the last one,
forcing many farmers to scramble to find enough water. The U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation has cut the water allocations for many to
zero this year. Last year, when the latest dry spell began, the
same farmers were allocated 20% of what they are
contracted to receive annually.
The swamp rat population in Central California is beginning to
diminish. But a state biologist says elimination is still a few
years away. FOX26 reporter Rich Rodriguez updates us on the
nutria… one of Valley agriculture’s biggest enemies. The
State Department of Fish and Wildlife has spent more than three
years trying to round up and euthanize nutria.
Growers in the Central Coast region of California produce most
of the cool-season vegetables for the U.S. from March to
mid-November. After several years of multi-cropping vegetables,
the groundwater in many of the coastal valleys has become
contaminated with nitrate. Some wells have concentrations of
nitrate several times the federal drinking water standard of 10
ppm (parts per million) nitrate-N. Rural communities that rely
on groundwater as their sole source of drinking water must
purchase bottled water or install small reverse osmosis
systems.
On May 18, 2021, deputies with the Humboldt County Sheriff’s
Office Marijuana Enforcement Team (MET) served one search
warrant to investigate illegal cannabis cultivation in the
Blake Mountain area of Eastern Humboldt County. The California
Department of Fish and Wildlife, Humboldt County Department of
Health and Human Services Environmental Health – HazMat Unit,
Humboldt County Code Enforcement and the California State Water
Resources Control Board assisted in the service of the warrant.
Following the announcement that one of the Klamath Basin’s main
irrigation canals won’t open this summer, the Klamath Water
Users Association is asking for peace. Last week, the Bureau of
Reclamation announced the shutoff the A Canal, the principal
irrigation canal for the Klamath Project, meaning thousands of
farmers are without water for the irrigation season. This past
Thursday, several dozen people took to the streets of Klamath
Falls to peacefully protest. Around 50 people gathered in front
of the Klamath Irrigation District office. They asked for more
water to be released from Upper Klamath Lake.
California is becoming ground zero for the climate crisis.
Intensifying drought and wildfire emergencies caused by climate
change are the harbingers of a great gamble that risk the loss
of California as we know it. The drought is not an anomaly but
part of a multi-decadal pattern caused by climate change,
threatening dust bowl-like impacts to California’s agricultural
heartland. It fueled the largest wildfires in state history.
More than 4.2 million acres burned last year, causing a toxic
smoke storm that smothered much of the state. -Written by Nayamin Martinez, the executive
director of the Central California Environmental Justice
Network, and Judith Mitchell, who served for seven years
on the California Air Resources Board, and 10 years on the
board of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.
With communities on the West Coast once again threatened by
extreme drought, Republicans on the House Committee on Natural
Resources held a hearing on Wednesday to discuss the
issue. Central Valley representatives Kevin McCarthy
(R–Bakersfield), Devin Nunes (R–Tulare) and David Valadao
(R–Hanford) joined the committee to address the drought.
The message was clear from all of the representatives and
witnesses: The drought is a product of poor policies over the
last several decades.
Today, modern Peruvians are redeploying that ancient knowledge
and protecting natural ecosystems such as high-altitude
wetlands to help the country adapt to climate change. It’s one
of the world’s first efforts to integrate nature into water
management on a national scale. … Several years ago,
desperate for water security, the country’s leaders did
something radical: they passed a series of national laws
requiring water utilities to invest a percentage of their
customers’ bills in “natural infrastructure”.
In the latest chapter of California’s unfolding drought, state
officials are planning to build a giant rock wall across a
river in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to save the
vital freshwater estuary from San Francisco Bay’s saltwater.
The emergency measure is a page from last decade’s drought when
the delta, a maze of sloughs and man-made channels east of the
Bay Area, was at risk of becoming too salty to provide water to
the nearly 30 million Californians who depend on it. As in
2015, the freshwater rivers that feed the 1,100-square-mile
delta have gotten so low that they no longer counter the
brackish flows that push in from the bay.
A growing number of drought stricken California farmers are
making the painful decision not to plant as much or anything at
all for fear of losing it all. It costs a lot of money to put
seeds or seedlings into the ground. But if a farmer cannot be
reasonably sure of a crop, why do it?
Last week, the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA)
held their spring conference virtually. Keynote speakers
included Wade Crowfoot, Secretary of Natural Resources, and
Karla Nemeth, Director of the Department of Water
Resources. In his speech, [Crowfoot] discussed the Newsom
Administration’s priorities, calling this the ‘decade of
resilience’, and giving three principles for going
forward. He also discussed the Voluntary
Agreements. Director Karla Nemeth gave the Thursday
morning keynote speech, touching on the Department’s response
to drought, SGMA implementation, the Delta Conveyance Project,
and the water use efficiency regulations.
Yuba Water Agency’s board of directors today approved a $2
million loan to the Three Rivers Levee Improvement Authority to
complete the construction of a new levee near the Yuba
Goldfields that will bring a 200-year level of urban flood
protection to southern Yuba County. The 2.5-mile-long levee,
which will be fully complete in June, runs parallel to
Hammonton-Smartsville Road and extends to high ground near
Beale Air Force Base. The 200-year level of protection means
there is a 1-in-200 chance in any given year that a storm could
come along that is bigger than the levee is designed to handle.
The Shasta-Klamath Region organizes work around protecting
California source water and volcanic aquifers, working with
family farms to improve water management, and protecting legacy
fly-fishing waters like the McCloud River, Hat Creek, and Fall
River. In 2021, we are heavily invested in conservation
projects in the Shasta and Scott watersheds. These key Klamath
tributaries will be critical for recovering salmon populations
in the Mid-Klamath Basin after dam removal.
What was already forecasted to be a historically bleak water
year in the Klamath Project has quickly become a living
nightmare for farms and ranches fighting for survival in the
drought-stricken basin. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation shut
down the Project’s A Canal for the entire irrigation season May
12 in response to worsening conditions — allotting zero surface
water from Upper Klamath Lake for thirsty crops and livestock.
It is the first time in more than a century the A Canal will
deliver no water. Meanwhile, irrigators are left to wonder how
they will pay the bills as fields turn to dust.
Severe drought — largely connected to climate change — is
ravaging … the entire Western half of the United States, from
the Pacific Coast, across the Great Basin and desert Southwest,
and up through the Rockies to the Northern Plains. In
California, wells are drying up, forcing some homeowners to
drill new ones that are deeper and costlier. Lake Mead, on the
border of Arizona and Nevada, is so drained of Colorado River
water that the two states are facing the eventual possibility
of cuts in their supply.
With very little water to spare this drought year, water
districts struggling with limited or no supplies look to their
counterparts in other districts to negotiate water transfers to
add whatever flexibility they can. Districts on the west side
of the Central Valley, both north and south of the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, face the prospect of receiving no
water from the Central Valley Project.
Lake Shasta this summer is facing possibly its lowest level in
at least 44 years, and that could be bad news for the people
who rely on it for drinking and irrigation water, as well as
endangered salmon that depend on it to survive. Dam
operators have to go all the way back to 1977 to compare how
bad this year’s water situation is shaping up to be, said Don
Bader, area manager for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which
manages the dam.
Delta smelt have nearly ceased to appear in “pelagic” fish
surveys carried out in their narrow geographic range in the
upper San Francisco Estuary. As trawl-generated index values
for delta smelt have declined over the past quarter century –
understand there is no reliable estimate of the size of the
delta smelt population — the chorus of voices advocating for
captive rearing and releases of the species has grown
louder.
A group of protesters gathered at Sugarman’s Corner in downtown
Klamath Falls on Saturday, preparing to welcome a 25-car
caravan of mostly Klamath Tribal members calling for solutions
to the Klamath Basin’s water crisis. A man walked by the
demonstrators, eyeing their signs with statements like “Peace
and Healing in the Klamath Basin,” “Water Justice is Social
Justice” and “Undam the Klamath.”
University of California scientists have discovered genetic
data that will help food crops like tomatoes and rice survive
longer, more intense periods of drought on our warming planet.
Field-grown rice roots sampled for research. Over the
course of the last decade, the research team sought to create a
molecular atlas of crop roots, where plants first detect the
effects of drought and other environmental threats. In so
doing, they uncovered genes that scientists can use to protect
the plants from these stresses.
The drought has some members of the Arizona Legislature
wondering if the state should look for a new source of water:
the Mississippi River. Conservationists wonder if lawmakers
should try a different approach. As Arizona braces for a
drought contingency plan to kick in, the Legislature has
floated the idea of damming the Mississippi and piping the
water here. The idea received overwhelming support among
lawmakers, though it is unclear if the project is viable. Sandy
Bahr, with the Sierra Club, told KJZZ’s The Show last month the
state needs to adjust its thinking about water, especially in
times of drought.
California — already in the clutches of another drought
emergency — is looking over its shoulder at what happened
last time, anticipating the worst and evaluating the strategies
that worked and those that failed. So is California in a
better position to weather this drought? Some things are
worse, some better: Groundwater is still being pumped with no
statewide limits, siphoning up drinking water that rural
communities rely on. In northern counties, residents are
reliving the last disaster as water restrictions kick in again,
but in the south, enough water is stored to avoid them for now.
… The upshot is California isn’t ready — again.
Three options for replacing non-reinforced concrete pipelines
will be reviewed by Solano Irrigation District directors when
they meet Tuesday. The recommended option calls for replacing
the entire pipeline over 28 years at a cost of $73 million,
using a combination of financing and $2.3 million in annual
Rehabilitation and Betterment funding. The proposed 2021-22
Suisun Solano Water Authority Capital Improvement Program is
also on the agenda, as is the Gibson Canyon Improvement
District Storage and Hardening Capital Improvement Plan for
bond funding.
Last year, for the first time, it became possible to trade
water on Wall Street through futures contracts. Normally
reserved for commodities like oil or precious metals, water
became the latest asset to join the financial market. But how
could this practice impact the planet? The trading in the
future prices of highly-prized commodities, where buyers agree
to purchase an asset at a set date in the future for an agreed
price, began in Japan in the seventeenth century with the
trading in rice futures. The latest commodity to begin trading
in futures is water supplied in American’s most populous state,
California.
As California descends deeper into drought, state regulators
are planning to do something they’ve done few times in modern
history: order thousands of people, farms, and even cities and
towns that hold historic water rights to stop drawing water
from the rivers, lakes and ponds they rely on. The move is
intended to make sure the dwindling flows in California’s
waterways are reserved for those with the most senior water
rights, as well as for fish and other wildlife. Many of those
with lesser rights would have to turn to storage, groundwater
or another source, if they have it.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Agricultural
Statistics Service (NASS) is forecasting another record almond
crop for California. The 2021 California Almond Subjective
Forecast estimates a three percent increase from last year’s
3.12-billion-pound crop. According to USDA-NASS, California
growers could be looking at a 2021 crop of 3.2 billion pounds.
If that number comes to fruition, it would be the largest
almond crop on record.
Less than a week after Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a drought
emergency for Northern California, Folsom Lake is standing at
one of its lowest levels ever. … Ryan Ojakian is
with the Regional Water Authority (RWA). Now, there’s a push
from the RWA for its 20 water providers that serve about 2
million people in the Sacramento region to shift to using more
groundwater than surface water to reduce reliance on Folsom
Lake and the Lower American River.
The water crisis along the California-Oregon border went from
dire to catastrophic as federal regulators shut off irrigation
water to farmers from a critical reservoir and said they would
not send extra water to dying salmon downstream or to a
half-dozen wildlife refuges that harbor millions of migrating
birds each year. In what is shaping up to be the worst water
crisis in generations, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said it
will not release water this season into the main canal that
feeds the bulk of the massive Klamath Reclamation Project,
marking a first for the 114-year-old irrigation system.
Rain has long signaled the end of a drought, but a new analysis
of Australia’s worst dry spell in a century reveals many water
reservoirs remained low nearly a decade after the rain
returned. Research published in the journal Science on Thursday
studies 15 years of data collected before, during and after the
Millennium Drought dried out Victoria, Australia, from 2001 to
2009 and reveals flaws in the long-held belief that reservoirs
naturally replenish after drought ends.
In 1980, Arizona began regulating groundwater in the state’s
largest cities and suburbs under a landmark law that
called for most of these areas to achieve an overarching
goal by 2025: a long-term balance between the amount of
water pumped from the ground and the amount seeping back
underground to replenish aquifers. Forty-one years
later … [g]roundwater is still overpumped in most of the
state’s “active-management areas,” or AMAs. And in many places,
aquifer levels continue to decline.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced Wednesday that
more than 1,000 farmers in the Klamath Basin will not receive
any reserved water from Upper Klamath Lake — a devastating
prospect for farmers who have already planted fields, hired
crews and made plans for the growing season ahead. … Farmers
in Klamath, Siskiyou and Modoc counties were already reeling
over the prospect of receiving less than 10% of their
allotment, or a total of 33,000 acre-feet of water. The
latest announcement feels “like a punch to the gut,” farmers
said …
California’s water supply is critical to the state’s
agriculture industry. Up to 80% of table olives come from
California, and while olive trees are more drought-tolerant
than other crops, that isn’t stopping Northern California olive
growers from making significant changes to conserve our most
precious resource. Olives are a passion for Dennis Burreson,
who says he’s held just about every job with Musco Family Olive
Company since joining Musco 43 years ago.
On its surface, the idea of banking water to bridge the
certainty of future rain-deficient periods seems like an
innovative and non-controversial planning procedure. In the
end, however, it all depends on who holds the keys to the bank.
The notion of water banking has grabbed local attention lately
following a controversial and divided 3-2 vote March 3 by San
Luis Obispo County supervisors, a vote which numerous North
County entities view as opening the door to selling and
exporting county water resources to the highest outside bidder.
At a time when California is facing severe drought conditions
that triggered Governor Gavin Newsom’s declaring a state of
emergency and providing more than $5 billion dollars for water
infrastructure and drought response funding, Congressman Jim
Costa (CA-16) introduced bipartisan legislation to address
California water supply and water quality goals…
Only one week remains to register for our May 20 virtual
Lower
Colorado River Tour where you can hear directly
from experts offering a range of perspectives on the most
contested and meticulously managed river in the United
States. Practically every drop of water in the
Colorado River is already allocated, but pressure on the
hard-working river continues to grow from myriad sources —
increasing population, declining habitat and climate
change.
With the uncertainty of water, some Central Valley farmers are
destroying their crops ahead of the summer season in order to
survive. It’s impacting jobs and soon possibly the grocery
shelves. Every crop at Del Bosque Farms is planted
meticulously, and every drop of water is a precious commodity.
Joe Del Bosque started the family farm in 1985. He grows
melons, asparagus, cherries, almonds, and corn, but the drought
brings a flood of concern.
An entire run of endangered winter-run chinook salmon, as well
as the fall-run salmon that make up the core of the California
fishery, are in danger of being wiped out this year if the U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation keeps diverting water to farmers at its
current rate. With state water resources constrained by the
extreme drought, that’s the alarm that environmental, fishing
and tribal groups are sounding after reports show the
Sacramento River will reach dangerous temperatures during
spawning season, based on federal scientific scenarios that
analyze the bureau’s planned water releases.
I am proud to be a part of California agriculture. Our state
has the impressive responsibility of feeding our country—and
even the world. We have led the nation in agricultural
production for the past 60 years due to our richly productive
land and climate. Yet, our agriculture industry now faces
serious and urgent challenges, from recovering from last year’s
multiple crises to the ever-increasing competition in the
global market. -Written by Robert Rivas, D-Hollister, chair of the
Assembly Agriculture Committee.
Don’t be fooled. Governor Gavin Newsom’s decision Monday to
declare drought in most of California, including here, is no
reason for most farmers in Stanislaus County to break out the
party hats. They know full well that words on a declaration
will not generate an extra drop of water for their orchards and
row crops. They also know that a drought declaration could take
some power over the water we do have from our locally elected
irrigation leaders — who represent institutions guiding us
through periodic droughts for more than 100 years — and hand it
to nonelected Sacramento bureaucrats.
The state is facing major water impacts, but for those reliant
on water wells — in mobile home parks, rural communities, and
areas where water district access is limited — the concern is
growing. The Department of Water Resources has created
a website that can help those who rely on well water
to figure out just how much at-risk they are of a water
shortage. The site was created after the last drought, but
with California’s drought only recently worsening, it had not
been widely used or needed until now. The interactive map
allows users to explore their area and keep tabs on their well
water situation.
A conflict over access to water in the Klamath Basin is
signaling the way climate change could play out across the
western United States. After a drier-than-normal spring,
farmers and indigenous tribes in the Klamath Basin are at odds
over water in Upper Klamath Lake. According to the U.S. Drought
Monitor, the Klamath Basin is experiencing “extreme drought,”
… Centuries ago, the area was wetlands; but in the early
20th century, the land was opened up to agriculture. Members of
the Klamath Tribes say tree removal and drainage hastened
drying as the climate warmed.
Newly released emails reveal that lawyers and lobbyists for
mining companies, developers and the agriculture industry had a
hand behind the scenes in shaping Arizona’s newly adopted law
on clean-water rules for rivers and streams. The emails
show the involvement of these influential groups went beyond
their public endorsements of the legislation. Their lawyers and
lobbyists were given access to offer input while the final
legislation was being drafted, and the emails show they
suggested specific language, offered “wordsmithing” tweaks and
requested significant changes that state officials incorporated
into the bill.
California’s water resources managers are proactively working
with our various partners through the harshest dry year we have
seen in recent memory…. We are encouraged that the
Governor’s drought proclamation will bring important focus on
our precious water resources and inspire balanced approaches
that will allow water resources managers (state, federal and
local) to creatively manage our limited water supplies this
year for multiple benefits.
California is now in its second year of drought, hard on the
heels of the last one in 2012-16. But drought is not an
equal-opportunity crisis; it can be more or less disruptive
depending on geography, storage, how water supplies are
managed—and, of course, precipitation. And some sectors—notably
rural water water systems and the environment—are more
vulnerable.
Arizona cities, towns, farmers and ranchers are preparing for
the first-ever cuts to the state’s allotment of Colorado River
water. The cuts are the result of a drought that’s lasted 26
years and will likely take effect in 2022. The so-called “Tier
1″ water shortage will affect some water users more severely
than others. … Farmers and ranchers in Pinal County are
already preparing, but it’s going to be a costly process.
On Friday, a coalition of conservation groups, fishing
organizations, stakeholders in the Delta, and the Winnemem
Wintu Tribe sent this letter to the Biden Administration,
urging the Administration not to endorse the so-called
“Voluntary Agreements” for the Bay-Delta watershed.
Unfortunately, the State of California continues to negotiate
backroom deals with the biggest water users in the State that
fail to protect and restore water quality in the
Bay-Delta, threatening thousands of fishing jobs, farms and
communities in the Delta, and the health of this watershed and
its native fish and wildlife.
A water district locked in a long-running legal battle over
residential rates with the city of Ventura recently agreed
to pay $1 million, but the fight does not appear to
be over. City Attorney Gregory Diaz said Friday he
expected the United Water Conservation District to
exercise its option to appeal. Ventura has filed lawsuits every
year against the water district since the agency implemented
increased charges in 2011-12. This settlement is for fiscal
year 2019-20. The district charged residential customers
three times more than agricultural customers for groundwater,
and the city challenged its methodology.
Along a hot, dusty stretch of freeway in California’s Coachella
Valley, a green rush is booming that not even the coronavirus
pandemic can slow. Desert Hot Springs, once a sleepy retirement
community overshadowed by its more glamorous neighbor, Palm
Springs, to the south, is transforming into a cannabis-growing
capital as businesses lured by tax incentives and a
420-friendly local government pour into the small city.
… With constant sun and almost no rain, growing cannabis
in the desert requires a mammoth water and power supply to keep
indoor operations going when outside temperatures soar.
Every spring, California farmers brace themselves for signs of
wriggling organisms destined to launch multigenerational
attacks on their crops. Many insect species survive the
winter as eggs or larvae and then emerge in early spring as the
first generation to feed and breed on millions of acres of
California vineyards, orchards and row crops. Climate change
will complicate farmers’ efforts to control these pests in
complex and unpredictable ways. The most alarming
consequence is apt to be ramping up pesticide applications,
with broad implications for the safety of California’s
waterways—just as the state gears up for a future filled with
drought.
In scale and ambition, California’s Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act (SGMA) has few parallels. And the work becomes
increasingly urgent as the climate crisis makes water shortages
increasingly severe. … This emphasis on local expertise
points to SGMA’s possibilities — and its potential pitfalls —
especially when it comes to deciding what “sustainable” water
management means. Each management body has wide discretion to
define “sustainability” — and the path to
sustainability by 2040 — for its particular basin.
California’s drought conditions have gone from bad to worse in
scarcely a month. In the weeks following April 1, the
traditional end of the rainy season, warm temperatures have
burned off most of the Sierra Nevada snowpack and left the
state’s water network gasping. Instead of delivering a generous
volume of melted snow into California’s rivers and reservoirs,
the snowpack has largely evaporated into the air or trickled
into the ground.
The Colorado River Basin appears to be out of miracles this
spring. Five years after a “Miracle May” of record rainfall
staved off what had appeared to be the river’s first imminent
shortage in water deliveries, the hope for another in 2021 “is
fading quickly,” says the Colorado Basin River Forecast
Center’s latest report, released Thursday. That’s one more
piece of bad news for the Central Arizona Project. A first-time
shortage is now likely to slash deliveries of river water to
Central Arizona farmers starting in 2022 but won’t affect
drinking water supplies for Tucson, Phoenix and other cities,
or for tribes and industries that get CAP water.
The dispute between Imperial Valley farmer Mike Abatti and the
Imperial Irrigation District over water rights entered a new
chapter last month. Mr. Abatti filed a petition for certiorari
to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the court to review last
year’s California appellate court’s ruling in the IID’s favor.
Our local Imperial County Farm Bureau and the California Farm
Bureau, along with some individual valley farmers, then filed
amicus briefs at the U.S. Supreme Court supporting Mr. Abatti’s
petition for review. Mr.
At a rare joint meeting between all three of their leadership
boards, Klamath, Siskiyou and Modoc Counties discussed ways to
support agricultural communities during the Klamath Basin’s
historic drought this year. Farmers and ranchers in the Klamath
Project will receive 33,000 acre-feet of water, less than 10%
of their normal allocation, more than a month later than
normal. Irrigators on tributaries to the Lower Klamath River,
like the Scott River, are also expecting water deliveries to be
curtailed during the summer.
At the April meeting of the California Water Commission, as
part of their continuing work on examining the state’s role in
financing conveyance projects that could help meet needs in a
changing climate, the Commissioners heard from a panel of
speakers about state policy considerations for conveyance and
the cross-cutting issues of flood-managed aquifer recharge
(flood-MAR), green infrastructure, collaborative partnerships
and governance, and innovation. … Michael George, Delta
Watermaster, … pointed out that it’s physically,
ecologically, and economically impossible to squeeze water out
of the Delta for export.
California’s drought is impacting more than how you water your
lawn, but also the way your food is grown on hundreds of
thousands of acres in the Sacramento Valley. Growing rice is a
multi-billion dollar industry that supports 25,00 jobs.
… This year, a third of normal rainfall combined with
hot weather and drying winds have [rice farmers] pumping more
groundwater than usual and fallowing half his rice fields –
meaning Durst won’t plant, and he’s not
alone. … Industry leaders say this is the third
time in forty years this kind of surface water supply reduction
has happened – and it’s happened twice in just the last decade.
The drought situation in the Bay Area has officially gone from
bad to worse. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, the entire
Bay Area is now in the “extreme” drought category, along with
nearly three-quarters of California. According to the latest
summary, precipitation in the state for the water year that
began Oct. 1 is well below normal, in the bottom 10th
percentile, and the greater Bay Area is “experiencing record or
near-record dryness.”
The federal government is strictly curtailing irrigation this
year in an attempt to protect endangered fish important to
Indigenous tribes. Farmers say this will make it all but
impossible to farm, while tribal groups say the plan doesn’t go
far enough to save their fisheries. In mid-April, a farming
region in southern Oregon began to release water from the
Klamath River into its irrigation canals. … [A]ccording to
the federal government, it was an illegal maneuver that could
further jeopardize the survival of multiple endangered species
and food sources important to Indigenous tribes and fisheries
in the region.
More than a month after announcing it was suspending water
deliveries to farmers on the west side of the San Joaquin
Valley, the Bureau of Reclamation delivered equally bad news to
farmers north of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Their water
supplies, tabbed at 5 percent of their contracted amount, were
not available for delivery via the Central Valley Project due
to limited supply.
A big change in drought conditions came out Thursday
morning for all of California. With an update from
the US Drought Monitor, 73% of California is now listed in
Extreme Drought, the second most severe classification the US
Drought Monitor utilizes. So far, 5% of California is
listed as being in Exceptional Drought, which is the US Drought
Monitor’s top-level drought designation. The increase to
73% is a significant jump from 53% in Extreme Drought from last
week. This news comes on the heels of other drought changes,
such as water restrictions for agriculture north of the
Delta.
Melting snow and flowing irrigation ditches mean spring has
finally arrived at the base of Grand Mesa in western
Colorado. Harts Basin Ranch, a 3,400-acre expanse of
hayfields and pasture just south of Cedaredge, in Delta County,
is coming back to life with the return of water. … The
ranch has the No. 1 priority water right — meaning the oldest,
which comes with the ability to use the creek’s water first —
dating to 1881. … [The ranch's owners] have been
accused of water speculation — which means buying up the ranch
just for its senior water rights and hoarding them for a future
profit.
If any doubt persisted over the first months of the year, it
has now become clear that this past winter’s dry conditions
will not be reversing anytime soon. With 88% of California
classified as experiencing severe drought and no less than 53%
classified as extreme, according to the California drought
monitor, there is no question that conditions have worsened,
confirming fears that another dangerously dry summer looms on
the horizon. In fact, so troubling is the situation that on
April 21, amid the barren backdrop of a greatly depleted Lake
Mendocino, Governor Newsom issued a state of emergency
declaration for Mendocino and Sonoma counties …
In our latest effort to ensure that our water management and
farming practices both protect and enhance environmental
benefits in our area, Garden Highway Mutual Water Company
(Garden Highway) recently completed a project to screen its
diversion on the Feather River. This project allows us to
protect Chinook salmon and other fish species from entrainment
while diverting water year-round to irrigate crops and to
provide Pacific Flyway habitat during the fall and winter
months. The project was a cooperative effort between Garden
Highway, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Bureau
of Reclamation U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Family
Water Alliance.
At the Water Education Foundation, we focus on telling the
complex story of water in California and the West because of
its critical role in sustaining our lives, growing our food and
nourishing our environment. As a nonprofit we rely on the
generosity of people who value what we do – enhancing
public understanding of our most important natural
resource and catalyzing critical conversations to inform
collaborative decision-making.
Donate here to help us keep doing what we do, and
join us for a virtual open house at 4:30 p.m. today.
California’s current drought is already off to a strong start,
with some major challenges already looming just two years in.
Compared to the drought of 2012‒16, the normally wetter
Sacramento and North Coast regions have been hit much harder
than the rest of the state. Beyond the local challenges this
poses, drought in the Sacramento region is already having
statewide implications, given its key role in supplying water
to farms and cities further south.
The Fresno County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday passed a
resolution proclaiming a local drought emergency. The vote on
the resolution during Tuesday’s special meeting was unanimous.
The resolution comes after Fresno leaders joined officials from
three other Central Valley counties on Friday to declare a
regional drought emergency and urge Gov. Gavin Newsom to do the
same statewide. Fresno County Chairman Steve Brandau said the
drought “is a crisis that we are putting upon ourselves.” He
said he’s not a water expert, but it has been “painful” for him
to watch “as water flows out into the ocean unused for human
resources.”
Experts say a statewide drought declaration … could bring
significant consequences for the regulatory structure governing
California’s complicated water-delivery system. Many farmers
believe an emergency order could loosen environmental
regulations and free up water supplies for them. Environmental
groups fear the very same thing – that more of California’s
dwindling water supply could be directed to farming at the
expense of fish and wildlife.
In today’s Home Grown, a local lawsuit over ownership of the
Colorado River water might be taken higher to the U.S. Supreme
Court. The Michael Abatti versus the Imperial Irrigation
District (IID) lawsuit has been ongoing in the valley,
disputing over whether water rights belong to the landowners or
if they are controlled by the IID. … Abatti won the lawsuit
in Imperial County Superior Court, but Katie Turner, attorney
with Sutherland and Gerber says it didn’t make it to the
California Supreme Court.
Regenerative farming practices integrate the entire ecosystem —
building upon the relationships of the natural world — to
simultaneously produce healthier, more abundant crops and
restore the Earth’s natural resources. … And
restoring soil health and fertility produces more abundant,
nutrient-dense crops that better resist pests and disease. It
increases soil’s ability to filter and store water, reduce
erosion and sequester carbon. And it builds a diversity and
abundance of microbes that drive every function of soil.
Seven years ago, after the fish died, Sarah Ryan decided she
couldn’t wait any longer for help. California at the time
was in the depths of its worst drought in the last millennium
and its ecosystems were gasping. For Ryan, the fish kill in
Clear Lake, the state’s second largest and the centerpiece of
Lake County, was the last straw. Ryan is the environmental
director for Big Valley Rancheria, a territory of the Big
Valley Band of Pomo Indians that sits on the ancient
lake’s western shore. She and others raised alarms for several
years about increasingly dire blooms of toxic
cyanobacteria.
According to reports collected by Cal DFW, a low amount of Coho
Salmon, age 0+ and 1+, have been trapped this spring while
exiting the Shasta River Basin and Scott
River. … Felice Pace, the Water Chair of the North
Group Redwood Chapter Sierra Club, says … the Shasta and
Scott Rivers should be top producers of Klamath River Coho
Salmon, but links that poor regulated irrigation is preventing
the salmon to reach the best spawning grounds and is killing
juvenile Coho Salmon before they can move out of the Klamath
River.
Climate change and water scarcity are front and center in the
western U.S. The region’s climate is warming, a severe
multi-year drought is underway and groundwater supplies are
being overpumped in many locations. … About 4,000
miles of canals transport water to some 35 million
Californians and 5.7 million acres of farmland across the
state. Covering these canals with solar panels would reduce
evaporation of precious water – one of California’s most
critical resources – and help meet the state’s renewable energy
goals, while also saving money.
On March 24, 2021, the Groundwater Resources Association of
California and California Groundwater Coalition hosted the
virtual 2021 Groundwater Law & Legislation Forum, featuring a
keynote address from California’s Natural Resources Secretary
Wade Crowfoot and updates on pending groundwater legislation,
DWR’s SGMA implementation, and ACWA’s position on potential
bond measures. One panel focused on the intersection of
environmental justice, groundwater management and the role the
legislative process can play…
Stop eating meat. Build interstate pipelines. Turn sea water
into drinking water. When our letter writers start making these
suggestions in earnest, that’s how I know we’re beginning to
feel the effects of another drought in California.
-Written and compiled by Paul Thornton, the Los Angeles
Times’ letters editor.
Following a winter with extremely low levels of rain, the
area’s main sources of irrigation water, Lake Mendocino and
Lake Sonoma, are in short supply. Drought conditions are not
new for local growers, unfortunately. Many continue to adjust
their viticultural practices to adapt to the ever-changing
climate. … New plantings will have more spacing between rows
to facilitate wider cross-arms, which will help promote shading
… drought-tolerant rootstocks that are more capable
of establishing deeper root systems quicker …
With the Colorado River’s largest reservoir just 38% full and
declining toward the threshold of a first-ever shortage,
Arizona water officials convened an online meeting this week to
outline how the state will deal with water cutbacks, saying the
reductions will be “painful” but plans are in place to lessen
the blow for affected farmers next year. Lake Mead’s decline is
expected to trigger substantial reductions in water deliveries
in 2022 for Arizona, Nevada and Mexico. The largest of those
cuts will affect Arizona, slashing its Colorado River supplies
by 512,000 acre-feet, about a fifth of its total entitlement.
Water talk will be a big part of Tuesday’s Tehama County Board
of Supervisors meeting as plans for a new groundwater
monitoring site in Corning are coming to fruition. Tehama
County Public Works plans to sign a Permit to Use Land
Agreement for a groundwater station in the Corning Public Works
yard on Gallagher Avenue, should the board approve the request.
Creating and maintaining the station will be a combined effort
of Tehama County Public Works, the Flood Control and Water
Conservation District and the California Department of Water
Resources. According to the related agenda report, the station
is expected to be in use for a minimum of 20 years.
President Biden’s pick this week to oversee the Army’s vast
natural resources operation would bring to the job decades of
water experience at the Interior Department and on Capitol
Hill. The president tapped Michael Connor to be the Department
of Defense’s assistant secretary of the Army for civil works,
which oversees the Army Corps of Engineers and its huge network
of dams and other projects. Connor would play a major role in
some of the most controversial projects facing the Biden
administration in the environmental arena, including the
Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, as well as Clean Water
Act permitting.
President Joe Biden nominated Jenny Lester Moffitt to serve as
undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs under
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. Moffit currently serves
as undersecretary at the California Department of Food and
Agriculture, where she previously served as deputy secretary
from 2015-18. Prior, Moffitt spent 10 years as managing
director at Dixon Ridge Farms, her family’s organic walnut farm
and processing operation.
More than a dozen Central Valley lawmakers and elected
officials met on Friday to declare a regional drought emergency
and urge Gov. Gavin Newsom to do the same statewide. Three
state senators and three Assembly members joined the chairs of
the boards of supervisors from Fresno, Madera, Tulare and Kings
counties in a bipartisan news conference at Harlan Ranch in
Clovis to call for action that the group said is necessary to
divert a crisis.
A North County water district representing irrigated
agriculture near Shandon is asking the state for allocations of
Lake Nacimiento and Santa Margarita Lake water, which it
proposes to pipe into the nearby Paso Robles Groundwater Basin.
While pitched as a potential solution to the Paso basin’s
overdraft, the proposal is already getting blowback from two
county supervisors.
While most irrigators in the Upper Klamath Basin are enduring a
spring without surface water, canals in Klamath Drainage
District have been flowing since the middle of April. And KDD
says no laws were broken to make deliveries to its customers.
KDD opened the Ady and North canals on April 15, diverting
water from the Klamath River to serve its patrons. The Bureau
of Reclamation, whose operations plan for 2021 emphasized that
no water deliveries be made to the Klamath Project prior to May
15, sent a letter to KDD asking them to immediately cease the
diversions.
Millions of people across our nation, and countless millions
throughout the world depend on California’s farms and ranches
for the food they eat every single day. California leads the
nation as the country’s largest agricultural producer and
exporter and serves as a vital link in the world’s food supply
chain. However, a resilient and reliable water supply is
essential to ensure that California farmers and ranchers can
continue to provide a safe and reliable food supply to our
nation and the world. The state’s water infrastructure is
getting older and stressed beyond its capabilities …
The Nevada Irrigation District (NID) Board of Directors is
pleased to announce it has unanimously appointed Jennifer
Hanson as its new General Manager during today’s Board of
Directors’ meeting. … Hanson will be NID’s 15th General
Manager and its first female in the District’s 100-year
history. Hanson comes to NID from the City of Lincoln, located
in South Placer County, where she served as its City
Manager. During her tenure as City Manager, Jennifer was
responsible for the daily operations of the full-service City
and for implementing the City Council’s strategic priorities.
The West Coast’s most important estuary is dying, and Gov.
Gavin Newsom has hastened its demise. As he took office two
years ago, Newsom promised to generate voluntary agreements
among farmers, environmentalists and government officials on
the rules for allocating water that flows through the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. … [C]onditions in the delta
have grown so dire that in March the National Marine Fisheries
Service estimated that high water temperatures could kill 90%
of endangered winter-run Chinook salmon in the Sacramento River
this year.
-Written by Jacques Leslie.
Federal dollars are on the table to help farmers and ranchers
during the drought. The U.S. Department of Agriculture declared
a drought disaster in 50 California counties last month.
Advertisement Grants are now available to help with costs
associated with the dry conditions. After a winter with little
rain and snow, California is dry. … Nicole Montna Van Vleck
walked between two rice fields on Wednesday. One was newly
planted and covered in water. The other was bone-dry.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday instructed the Imperial
Irrigation District to submit a response to California farmer
Michael Abatti’s request that their longstanding legal battle
be taken up by the nation’s highest court. Scott Harris, clerk
of the Supreme Court, wrote to Jennifer Meeker, an
attorney for the water and power district, to say that even
though IID didn’t feel the need to answer Abatti’s
petition, ”the Court nevertheless has directed this office
to request that a response be filed.” This comes two weeks
after Frank Oswalt, IID’s general counsel, said the district
didn’t need to submit a response …
Millions of drinking wells around the world may soon be at risk
of running dry. Overpumping, drought and the steady influence
of climate change are depleting groundwater resources all over
the globe, according to new research. As much as 20% of the
world’s groundwater wells may be facing imminent failure,
potentially depriving billions of people of fresh water.
… Residents of California’s Central Valley are preparing
for another arid summer and the rising risk of dry
wells, The Fresno Bee reported yesterday. It’s a
recurring pattern there.
Hunter Farms in Atwater is bracing for a second straight year
of drought. Scott Hunter grows almonds and pistachios but won’t
plant as many pumpkins this time around…. Hunter hopes his
surface water deliveries will be enough to keep the crops
going. During the last extended drought, he had to pump
groundwater as deliveries started to dry up. Scott is
frustrated by the state’s inability to establish a stable water
system for farmers and communities….
