A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
February 26, 2008
2. Supply
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA AG ISSUES:
Water cuts slicing into avocado groves; Some farmers are 'stumping' hundreds of healthy trees to keep others irrigated -
DEVELOPMENT ISSUES:
El Dorado County utility sharply hikes water fees for developers - Sacramento Bee
ALL
Canal lining angers Baja California governor - Imperial Valley Press
WATER SUPPLY POLICY REVIEW:
Editorial: Channeling Mulholland; The Times launches an editorial series on water and water policy in
KERN RIVER DIVERSIONS:
Letters to the Editor: Kern River rights not that simple - Bakersfield Californian
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA AG ISSUES:
Water cuts slicing into avocado groves; Some farmers are 'stumping' hundreds of healthy trees to keep others irrigated
By Deborah Schoch, staff writer
Here, in the heart of the nation's avocado industry, growers are beheading their avocado trees.
Less than two months after a mandatory 30% cutback in agricultural water deliveries, some Southern California growers have begun "stumping" hundreds of healthy, well-nurtured avocado trees, putting them out of production for the next one to three years to leave more water for the rest of their trees.
Their actions represent the downside of a water deal between area farmers and the region's water wholesaler, the Metropolitan Water District. Over the years, thousands of farmers signed up for a program that gave them discounted water in return for their willingness to be first in line for a water cutback.
This winter is payback time.
For the first time since the program started in 1995, farmers must reciprocate for years of discounts. The MWD cut their water deliveries by 30% on Jan. 1 because of the regional shortage caused by last year's record dry weather, an eight-year drought in the
Even though this season's rainfall to date is above normal, with the most recent storm dousing
Come the dry months of summer, they still will have 30% less water to nurture their crops.
>From
"There is a lot of anxiety and angst out there," said Rex Laird, chief executive of the Farm Bureau of Ventura County. "Water is not something you can skimp on. Plants either get what they need, or they die."
Most farmers in the six-county MWD service area are subject to the cutback, including 5,000 in
By idling parts of their groves, growers can fully irrigate remaining trees to produce the heavy, plump, well-nourished avocados prized by shoppers nationwide.
Avocados cost about $1.50 each, and though prices may increase in time, the more immediate effect will be fewer
Most farms flanking Fallbrook's winding roads are 10 acres or smaller. Many are owned by families whose finances are less stable than those of large corporate farms. Some probably will go under, farmers said. Maybe they bought overpriced land 10 years ago and already are struggling to meet their debt payments.
"You pray it's not going to be the case, but there are some that are on the edge," said Guy Whitney, industry affairs director at the California Avocado Commission.
Residents fear that the hillside orchards will be replaced by more residential projects like the ones closer to town, with agrarian names such as Sycamore Ranch and Shady Grove.
Farmers say they're protecting their investment when they stump their orchards. "The tree would be hurt more having water cut back than if you cut it down and shut the water off," said Charley Wolk , 71, a prominent farmer who has grown avocados here for half his life. He owns his own groves, and his management firm, the Bejoca Co., oversees hundreds of acres of other owners' avocado trees. So far, he's stumped 1,000 trees.
Wolk is matter-of-fact about the cutback, saying that the MWD gave farmers plenty of notice before reducing deliveries.
Still, he is grappling with tough decisions about how best to tend to his trees.
He pointed to the ceiling of his office. "Where do I go with a tree that's as high as that beam?"
He held his hand 4 feet off the floor. "What about trees this high, maybe 3 years old?" He has a number of 3-year-old trees growing on a hill, and he thinks he's figured out a fix: He'll irrigate less often at the bottom of the hill, since moisture from above should keep the soil damp.
The tree-cutting comes as residents in Los Angeles, San Diego and most other area cities are still getting 100% of the water they need, with most of it going for lawns and landscaping.
"People need to know that in
The state agriculture industry is often criticized by environmentalists, who say that it wastes water and raises moisture-hungry crops such as rice and cotton. Several Fallbrook-area farmers, however, say they have worked for years to reduce consumption.
Carl and Ed Kessel, who are tending 3,100 lemon trees on their Fallbrook farm, added water-stingy flow devices to their computerized irrigation system and installed 28 moisture sensors, hoping to reduce water use by 50%.
January meter readings showed that Fallbrook-area farmers reduced their use by 85% from the dry January last year. Still, Keith L. Lewinger, general manager of the Fallbrook Public Utility District, had to start making calls to customers using the most water.
"Some of them said, 'I had a broken pipe,' " he said. He warned they would be fined $2.51 per 1,000 gallons, or nearly twice the regular rate of $1.36.
If they fail to make a 30% cut two months in a row, the district will install a meter flow restricter, a washer-like device that reduces water delivery.
"If push comes to shove," Lewinger said, "we can shut the meter off."
Lewinger said he has no extra water to give them. If every farmer in town were to exceed the water limits by 10% for the year, the Fallbrook district would owe the MWD $609,000 in penalties, he said.
The MWD board of directors is expected to discuss the future of the 14-year-old agricultural water program at its May meeting, amid criticism from some urban water districts that farmers should not be receiving discounted water during a shortage.
Whatever the outcome, farmers must still grapple with water cutbacks that could grow more severe if the shortage worsens or if the courts further reduce delta deliveries. If the MWD were to cut water to its urban users by 15%, farmers' deliveries would be cut by 40% under a drought plan approved two weeks ago. If urban users see a 35% reduction, deliveries to farmers would be halted altogether.
Bob Polito, 57, who grows oranges in
"I think I'm waiting until the last minute," he said last week. "You have these trees you've been raising for 40 years, and now I'm going to lose both the crop and the trees."
Polito sells oranges, tangerines and lemons at the
That does not surprise him, since the water crunch is not being felt in the city, he said. "As long as they have enough water to put on their lawn and wash their dishes, they're happy." #
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-avocado26feb26,0,1257990,full.story
DEVELOPMENT ISSUES:
By Cathy Locke, staff writer
The water utility that serves about 100,000 residents in
El Dorado Irrigation District directors rejected developers' pleas for further analysis. Building industry representatives said the increase represents another blow to the struggling housing market.
The one-time fees, known as facility capacity charges, apply only to new construction. The increases range from 34 percent to 90 percent, depending upon location.
"We're always willing and want to make sure we're paying our fair share," Kirk Bone of Serrano Associates told the board Monday. But he said, "You need to understand that our industry is in a depression. We're not seeing any light at the end of the tunnel."
Everything that increases development costs pushes the sale of a house further into the future, Bone said.
District directors said they had struggled with the fee increase. They noted that staff members had worked with a task force made up of building industry representatives over the past year to update the fees.
"This is one of the few things I've actually lost sleep over since I've been on the board," said director Harry Norris.
But board members said their first duty was to ensure the district's fiscal welfare and protect ratepayers by making sure they don't bear the cost of serving new development.
"We have to reach some kind of balance," director John Fraser said. "I don't think we can take into account the best interest of the developer."
Under the new fee schedule, the total fee for a new single-family home on a potable water system will be $29,192 in El Dorado Hills, $25,200 in Cameron Park, $29,708 in the Mother Lode service area and $26,202 in the district's satellite areas.
For dual plumbed homes -- those using potable water indoors and recycled water for landscape irrigation -- the new hookup fee will be $24,625 in El Dorado Hills and $20,633 in Cameron Park. Recycled water is not available elsewhere in the district.
The new fees are slightly lower than those proposed in January. The board agreed to eliminate water lines 5 inches or smaller from its fixed-asset calculations because those lines typically provide service within subdivisions and are not part of the transmission system that would be used by new customers. The board rejected developers' requests to further reduce the fees by eliminating the value of lines 6 inches and smaller, or 8 inches and smaller.
Staff members said 6-inch and 8-inch lines are part of the larger transmission system in much of the district.
The value of the district's fixed assets are used to calculate the "buy-in" portion of the fee, which reflects the cost to reimburse existing customers for investments in current facilities that will serve new customers. The hookup fee also covers the cost of system expansions required to meet the needs of new development.
John Costa, legislative advocate for the North State Building Industry Association, urged the board to postpone adopting the new fees to allow discussion of options such as deferring fee payment until a house is ready for occupancy. He said industry representatives are pursuing similar talks with
District Counsel Tom Cumpston said deferring fees would require a change in board policy. Currently, he said, a builder must have a guaranteed water supply to obtain approval of a final map, and a guarantee of water comes with payment of the connection fee.
Camino resident Terry Kayes said he came to Monday's hearing to speak as a ratepayer. Kayes said he doubted that the fee increase would determine whether houses were built or sold in
"This isn't a water crisis," Kayes said. "This is a credit crisis at the national and international level."
Cumpston noted that no one had argued that the current hookup fees were high enough. "The longer we wait (to raise the fees)," he said, "the bigger the hole that we dig."
The hookup fees were last adjusted in 2005. Staff members said they now will be updated annually to keep pace with district costs and avoid sharp increases. #
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/740521.html
ALL
Canal lining angers
By Victor Morales, staff writer
During the Winter National Governor’s Association meeting here this weekend Gov. Jose Guadalupe Osuna Millán reportedly complained that the encasement is negatively impacting agricultural and economic activity in the
Osuna privately met with Department of Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne on Sunday and discussed “water issues along the U.S.-Mexico border,” confirmed Shane Wolfe, a spokesman for Kempthorne.
Details on that discussion were not being released as it is the department’s policy not to publicize details of the secretary’s private discussions with governors.
Mexican and
Construction began in July and is expected to be completed before the decade’s end, said Kevin Kelley, spokesman for the Imperial Irrigation District. The IID manages the U.S.-owned canal and is the lead agency in the lining’s construction.
Kelley said Mexican opposition to the canal is expected.
“It isn’t surprising because there have been ongoing discussions at diplomatic levels … since the project began,” he said.
Osuna reportedly discussed the canal with other border governors, including California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, about the possibility of storing Colorado River water in
Osuna’s press office in
Osuna was reportedly successful in reaching an accord to hold a discussion regarding the canal with each nation’s respective water and diplomatic agencies. And a date of March 11 in
The 80-mile
Kelley said the additional 67,000 acre-feet of water that is expected to get captured from the lining will not deduct
The captured water is scheduled to be transferred to the San Diego County Water Authority. #
http://www.ivpressonline.com/articles/2008/02/26/local_news/news04.txt
WATER SUPPLY POLICY REVIEW:
Editorial: Channeling Mulholland; The Times launches an editorial series on water and water policy in
The early history of
This must change. This page did not like the water bond that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger backed last year, but he is on to something when he insists that
Figuring out what kind of investments are called for will not be easy. Dwindling freshwater supplies are a worldwide problem, not limited to dusty Western states. In Atlanta, which gets more than 50 inches of rain in an average year (that's more than three times Los Angeles' typical rainfall), drought forced Gov. Sonny Perdue to declare a state of emergency in 2007 as water supplies sank to a frightening three-month supply. In the Upper Midwest, fear that dry Southern states will muster the political power to build pipelines to import water from the region has become "the third rail of Great Lakes politics,” as one observer wrote. Worldwide, according to research cited recently by U.N.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, about 2.7 billion people live in countries where climate change and water-related crises create a high risk of violent conflict. Another 1.2 billion suffer high risk of political instability from water shortages. Ban has pledged to protect water resources as a part of his global anti-poverty efforts.
Studying water, even on a local scale, exposes a universe of dazzling complexity. Here in Southern California, our sources of imported water, including the
Deliveries from the delta, which provides water for 25 million Californians, could drop by as much as a third this year. Imports from the
William Mulholland and his generation famously secured this region's water and gave
In the coming months, we will publish a series of editorials examining water and water policy in
The water we have
We begin with a call for
The agency works with developers to build new homes that are water efficient, using a third as much water as homes built just 10 years ago. It has installed experimental porous surfaces in agency parking lots, which allow rainwater to enter the region's aquifers.
Here in
The struggles to come
There will be many struggles over water in
Improving water efficiency is cost-effective. But it isn't sexy, especially viewed beside wonders like Mulholland's aqueduct or the Hoover Dam. As our governor understands, spending billions on monumental engineering projects has poetic appeal. It conjures the triumph of man over nature. Spending smaller sums on porous parking lot surfaces, filtration plants and programs to put drought-friendly plants and smart sprinkler systems in people's yards -- the workaday, street-level strategies required to develop local supplies -- seems janitorial in comparison.
We know now that we can't triumph over nature after all, yet we need not abandon the dreams of pioneers or the willingness to think big. Even as we dream, we must make the most of collective, modest solutions that, spread across millions, can reap staggering rewards. Our forefathers secured water for us; we must now care for what they made possible. #
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-water25feb25,0,4405013.story
KERN RIVER DIVERSIONS:
Letters to the Editor:
By Michael Young, Bakersfield, is a local farmer and president Kern County Farm Bureau
As a person who has logged hundreds of miles on the bike path that runs through our great city, I would love nothing more than for the
I have to agree with columnist Lois Henry when she says that "this ribbon of water through the city changed things."
She's right, it does make our city a more beautiful and comfortable place to live. What was not said in her recent columns and a subsequent editorial is the fact that all the water that was affected by the forfeiture of one of the existing right holders, has always been diverted and used by the other existing right holders of Kern River water, according to the prior rights as confirmed by the State Water Resources Control Board.
We all need to remember that we live in an "irrigated desert." The natural flow of the
Long before the City of
It is crucial to understand that the water rights of the
A plan to let the forfeited water flow down the Kern would be very harmful to the local agricultural economy and the businesses which depend on it. It would reduce the water supply that is essential to grow the thousands of acres of trees and vines that surround the City of
Agriculture adds beauty to our landscape, keeps open space open, provides jobs and tax revenue to
As Lois Henry mentioned, the City of
Michael Young of
http://www.bakersfield.com/opinion/letters/story/372039.html
####
No comments:
Post a Comment