Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
May 19, 2008
5. Agencies, Programs, People -
Idle land brings hard times
Local Entity completes its work
The
Santa Margarita water facility named Plant of the Year: Chiquita Water Reclamation Plant receives top honor from California
The Orange
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Idle land brings hard times
Over the years the acreage of Robert Slaton’s family farm has been pared down.
Now less than 100 acres behind his home is what amounts to the hay field, adding to the work he gets as a hay cutter and hauler.
But two years ago one of the farmers Slaton depended on for work began fallowing his crops.
The work Slaton had was divided with another contractor and reduced to half.
Slaton estimated that accounted for about 20 percent of his business last year.
“It’s a pretty serious deal,” Slaton said of the impacts of fallowing. “When you’re getting your regular paycheck chopped off … it’s hard.”
Slaton admits he’s a farm service provider on a much smaller scale than some of the other agriculture businesses around the Valley.
He spends much of his time taking care of his elderly mother, who has Parkinson’s disease, in between the demands of the family’s operation.
Since fallowing began in the
And when there are no fields to plow, no seeds to plant and no harvest to reap, farm service providers, workers and the economy are impacted.
This week the Local Entity, tasked to distribute money to farm service providers and noncompetitive grants to mitigate the impacts of fallowing, completed its duty.
It took more than two years and one committee reorganization to get it done.
The $3.5 million they awarded, however, was only for the first two years of fallowing.
The impacts of the last three years have not been mitigated.
“We’re a few years behind the eight ball already. The decision for the board will be to decide where to proceed from here,” IID Legal Counsel Jeff Garber said.
Nicole Rothfleisch, executive director of the Imperial County Farm Bureau, said farm service providers are the most directly impacted by fallowing.
“We’re already once again three years behind,” Rothfleisch said. “Farm service providers are losing the business they would have had on that field.”
Western Farm Service in Imperial, a fertilizer company, received mitigation money last year.
Facility Manager Jeremy Jensen said the volume of acres the business was servicing decreased as farmers left their fields dry.
“Our amount of employees today is a little less,” Jensen said of the immediate effects of fallowing. “I knew immediately it would affect our business anytime there are acres taken out of production.”
More than 40 farm service providers received Local Entity dollars last year ranging from about $4,000 to more than $300,000.
Jensen said Western Farm Service used the funds to pay employees for lost hours and time and to pay off equipment.
The time it took for the Local Entity to distribute the funds, Jensen said, was understandable.
“This was the first go-round in getting all the bugs worked out,” Jensen said. “I don’t really know how you would do it any faster.”
Local Entity Coordinator Gustavo Reza said largely due to the committee starting from scratch, it was a challenge.
Reza said getting input from the community on several occasions on how to disburse the funds slowed the process.
“We could have shortened the process by developing the program on our own,” Reza said. “We are all in agreement it has taken too long.”
The Local Entity has faced controversy over the years after it was disbanded and reconstituted without ever distributing a cent.
The 11-member committee was stripped down to five members and even then, the 90-day commitment stretched to nearly two years.
At a recent IID meeting Orbia Hanks said the entity is to be commended but there is room for farm service providers to have more input.
“There’s room for improvement,” Hanks said.
Rothfleisch said the process should be expedited now.
“It does not need to be that complicated. Just show your impacts, give them the money and move on. It needs to go to the people who deserve it,” Rothfleisch said.
No decision has been made by the IID board on how the Local Entity will proceed or if the decision in the future will be made by the board.
For Slaton, the day he can apply for the money he lost over the last two years will be a good one.
Whether he will get it, is another thing altogether, he said.
“I understand the IID has a lot of things going on. But I think they need to …,” Slaton said, snapping his fingers several times and chuckled. “There’s no good reason for dragging this on. That would be unreasonable.”#
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http://www.ivpressonline.com/articles/2008/05/18/local_news/news02.txt
Local Entity completes its work
The
The hardest part is over for the Local Entity and it doesn’t look like it will reconvene.
The Imperial Irrigation District board accepted the Local Entity’s recommendations this week in handing out the final dollars it was tasked to dole out.
It’s taken several years just to get the first distribution done.
Now the IID board will decide who will be responsible for handing out the rest of the money in the bank and future payouts from the water transfer agreement.
“The IID board needs to take over the Local Entity decisions,” IID Board President John Pierre Menvielle said. “We don’t need to put this on the backburner.”
At stake are the funds that are meant to help mitigate the impacts of farmers keeping acres idle to transfer water to the coast.
So far only $3.5 million has been spoken for and IID officials estimate by the year’s end there will be $12 million available for farm service providers and organizations to create jobs and training.
Andy Horne, a former IID director and former original Local Entity member, said it may not be wise to have elected officials deciding where the money goes.
“The concept of having a community group that doesn’t have any political agendas or pressure on them is sound,” Horne said. “It probably would have functioned better had it not had elected people like myself.”
Controversy surrounded the disbanding of the original Local Entity, which was comprised of 11 members from the IID,
Horne said while San Diego County Water Authority and IID were coming to an agreement on the mitigation money, the Local Entity was caught in the fervor.
“The failures of the original entity were tied to the agreement,” Horne said.
Later a five-member committee was put together of local community members who had backgrounds in business and service.
But some who applied for mitigation funds said the IID board should directly decide where the money goes.
Currently the board has final say over the entity recommendations.
“I think they need to eliminate the whole process and have us present directly to the board,” Eric Reyes, a former Local Entity member whose organization received grant funding, said. “It shouldn’t be based on how well you write a grant.”
Reyes said he also favors more money going to education, farmworker assistance and other programs that can help the community at large instead of direct payments to farm service providers.
“There are many impacts that are not seen by the economists,” Reyes said.
The Local Entity funds have been split two-thirds for farm service providers and one-third for community impacts. It is unknown whether that split will continue for the rest of the funds.
Nicole Rothfleisch, executive director of the Imperial County Farm Bureau, said she believed the farm service providers are “the most directly impacted.”
Menvielle said as long as an impartial system is set up to score applications, the board will be able to stay neutral when making decisions.
“The money’s there and we need to get it out to the people that need it,” Menvielle said.
It could be the end of the summer before the board takes up the Local Entity responsibility, he said.
Horne said there should be consideration of how the funds are split up and an understanding of how fallowing “results in economic harm.”
“The original philosophy was to leverage the money to create jobs, have economic development rather than try to slap Band-Aids on impacts that are difficult to measure,” Horne said.
“An important issue like this that affects the community … having some community input into that process is a good way to go,” Horne said.#
http://www.ivpressonline.com/articles/2008/05/18/local_news/news03.txt
Santa Margarita water facility named Plant of the Year: Chiquita Water Reclamation Plant receives top honor from California
The Orange
By Scott Cobett
The Santa Margarita Water District's Chiquita Water Reclamation Plant has received the Plant of the Year Award for a medium-sized wastewater plant from the Santa Ana River Basin Section (SARBS) of the California Water Environment Association.
The award recognizes SMWD's exceptional effort in safety, innovation, process control, energy conservation, facility accomplishments and maintenance at the Chiquita facility.
The plant, located near
Opened in 1984, the Chiquita plant allows SMWD to turn wastewater into a valuable resource, reducing demand for imported potable (drinking) water and also reducing the amount of effluent released to the ocean.
"Maximizing
The CWEA has 20 different categories of awards for water professionals. Now that SMWD's Chiquita Water Reclamation Plant has won at the local level, it will be submitted for state-level competition. Chiquita also was recognized as local plant of the year in 1990.
SMWD is
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/water-plant-chiquita-2043887-smwd-wastewater
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