Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
March 23, 2009
5. Agencies, Programs, People –
Editorial: Sacramento
Sacramento
Water worries weigh on farmers
With supplies stretched thin, some farmers idle fields and sell some of their water to serve urban users
Riverside Press Enterprise
Visalian in state Cabinet sees opportunity in water crisis
Fresno
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Editorial: Sacramento
Sacramento
The city of
In the eyes of many lawmakers and regulators,
Other metropolitan areas have invested tens of millions of dollars in conservation, efficiency and water recycling.
For years, city officials brushed aside its reputation – sprinkler water gushing into storm drains, people using hoses to sweep off their driveways – with a well-worn justification. Most of
That's true. Roughly 56 percent of
If just a portion of this water could remain in the rivers (no longer to be used on driveways), the benefits would be huge. The city would no longer need to pump, treat, store and distribute billions of gallons. The result would be significant energy savings for the city, along with less treated wastewater flowing back into the rivers – warmer and more polluted than when it started.
The city could even bank these savings. Water conserved could be sold or transferred for other uses, including helping fisheries or farmers to the south.
Sadly, the capital city has a lot of catch-up to do, as the graphic to the left shows. Over the last decade, the amount of water produced by the city has increased 24 percent, while the city population has climbed just 17 percent.
Part of this increased usage, a city utilities official says, comes from water transferred or "wholesaled" to
Yet as city officials acknowledge, wasteful water practices are common, and up until now, they've gone unpunished. That needs to change, but so does the city's overall investment in smarter parks management, landscaping and overall water efficiency.
Consider the example of other urban areas. Over the last 17 years, the East Bay Municipal Utility District has invested more than $60 million in conservation. Its total water consumption is now less than it was in the 1970s. Per-person usage has dropped to 136 gallons a day.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which serves 18.7 million people, also has made major investments in conservation and efficiency. In 2008, its total water consumption was less than in 1999, even though its service area has grown by 2.3 million people.
To be sure,
Yet
http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/story/1717308.html
Water worries weigh on farmers
With supplies stretched thin, some farmers idle fields and sell some of their water to serve urban users
Riverside Press
In
Farmers are facing the consequences of that approach now more than ever.
Growth, drought, an aging water system and environmental limits on pumping from
The impacts are serious and far-reaching, among them increased unemployment and fear for the future of farming in
Some of the nation's most productive farmland stretches across the state, from
The state has 81,000 farms that produce more than $30 billion in crops and livestock, and employ nearly 400,000 people.
In the
They are digging deeper wells, paying more for water, or using a saltier supply.
Many aren't growing at all.
Last year, drought cost the state $309 million in rangeland and crops, and farmers left 106,000 acres unplanted or abandoned, the California Farm Bureau reported.
The situation is expected to get worse this year.
"We don't know if we're in year three of a three-year drought or if we're in year three of a 10-year drought," said Ryan Jacobsen, executive director of the Fresno County Farm Bureau and a fourth-generation grape grower. "We're dealing with such dire circumstances; we're dealing with people's jobs, people's livelihoods. ... It's completely disheartening."
Praying For Rain
Dan Errotabere doesn't grow much cotton anymore.
He's not going to grow cantaloupes or onions, either.
The third-generation
His plight isn't unique in the county, where the total agricultural output is more valuable than in any other county in the nation.
More than a third of the county's 1.64 million acres of farmland is expected to lose out on water allocations this year.
Errotabere is praying for rain.
"There isn't much else to do," said Errotabere, president of the Fresno County Farm Bureau and a board member of the Westlands Water District in
The farmers can hope for price increases in the crops they have left, but it's doubtful with the country's economic troubles, he said.
Normally, water agencies tap the pumps in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in spring, after the snowmelt collects, and send the water to storage in places like the San Luis Reservoir, which feeds farms on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley.
Not last year.
A judge restricted pumping in the Delta to protect a threatened species of fish.
Without rain, the rivers didn't rise to fill the reservoir.
Water cutbacks could cost the
With the governor's recent declaration of a water emergency and the establishment of a state water bank to match parties who have water with willing buyers, there's hope that growers in
"This is the one thing that can be done this year," Howitt said.
The
If water isn't transferred, crop acreage on the west side of the valley, where the federal cutbacks and lack of wells make the situation dire, could decrease 35 to 55 percent, Howitt said.
Sometimes, because of contractual agreements, they also have to pay fees for water they won't get.
Other farmers have chosen to sell some of their water to urban suppliers.
Dry Fields
Mark Osterkamp, 56, is a third-generation farmer who fallowed hundreds of the 5,000 acres he works near Brawley, in
Osterkamp, like other farmers in the area, is paid by the local water district for not irrigating all of his land.
The unused water, imported from the Colorado River, is sent to residents in
Groundwater in the
As long as he is being compensated for the crops he does not grow, Osterkamp said he doesn't mind fallowing his fields.
He doesn't take too kindly, though, to seeing water being used on opulent landscape features like those in the
"They've got lakes with houses around them. That is disturbing," he said.
Osterkamp, like many of his fellow farmers, wonders how far the trend will go -- to let farms dry up as
"You could dry up the entire
One of his 70-acre fields could produce enough wheat for more than a half-million packages of pasta, or alfalfa to feed cows producing 157,000 gallons of milk, or Bermuda grass to feed 269 horses for one year, he said.
Standing between two of his fields flanked by a canal and separated by a homemade dam, Osterkamp looked over lush, green sugar beats on one side and, on the other, lifeless blades of Kline grass he stopped watering in June.
He hopes sugar beet prices are strong this year so he can profit.
"That's why we plant any crop," he said. "It's always a gamble."
Stumping
In 1994, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California offered its agricultural customers cheaper rates, with a catch -- the water wholesaler could cut their allocations 30 percent if supplies ran short.
The cuts were imposed for the first time last year.
The action sent ripples through local farming communities, where growers moved quickly to cut their crops 30 percent.
Charley Wolk, owner of Bejoca Grove Management in Fallbrook, stumped almost a third of the avocado trees in the 12-acre grove he manages.
Expecting another cutback in July from the San Diego Water District, he stumped more trees, some of them three decades old.
Some might once again bear fruit to be mashed for guacamole or sliced for sandwiches, but not anytime soon.
For now, they are stark trunks, painted white to protect them from the sun, like tombstones among the mature trees that haven't been sacrificed.
The scene saddens Wolk, who remembers when growers paid $75 an acre-foot for water. Now they pay close to 10 times that.
The California Avocado Commission expects this year's crop to be the smallest in 20 years.
ers of avocados in the state.
Beyond The Farm
In the Palo Verde Valley near Blythe, farmers have fallowed 25,947 acres of farmland since 2005.
The MWD signed agreements with 90 of the valley's landowners to give up some of their water for 35 years. In return, they got $84 million and promises of more for each acre they didn't plant each year.
The water they would have gotten is instead going to the MWD, which sends it to the taps of 18 million residents and businesses in
In the Imperial Valley south of the Salton Sea, the Imperial Irrigation District started a fallowing program in 2003 so water could be diverted to
For 5,764 acres that wasn't planted, farmers received $1.77 million.
Last year, farmers were told to leave 16,172 acres, mainly wheat, grass and alfalfa, idle in exchange for $6.25 million from the district.
A fund of $50 million has been set aside from a settlement with the San Diego Water Authority to help individuals and small businesses hurt by fallowing, a ripple effect that goes beyond growers, farmworkers and consumers.
Among those affected: beekeepers, who have less work because there are fewer fields for their bees to pollinate.
"We didn't anticipate that one," said Gustavo Reza, interim director of the
Statewide, fallowing will eventually impact truckers who haul produce, processors who package it and marketing departments that persuade people to buy it, said Dan Sumner, an agricultural economist with UC Davis.
"All will die if the farms go dry," Sumner said.
Researchers at UC Riverside are working toward a solution: crops that need much less water.
Biochemistry professor Daniel Gallie is working with corn and tobacco plants to come up with drought-tolerant grains and leafy crops.
Corn and tobacco, like lab mice, stand in for other species in the research process.
He discovered that cutting water 75 percent damaged a normal corn crop but had little effect on a drought-resistant variety.
That's good news for Grant Chaffin, a third-generation farmer in Blythe.
Chaffin joined a fallowing agreement a few years ago that pays him for letting some of his alfalfa and wheat fields go without water.
"Drought-resistant crops can make a big difference," he said.
If his crops needed less water to grow, the excess could be used elsewhere.
With increasing demand on the state's troubled water supply, drought-tolerant crops will become vital, he said.
"If previous history is any indication of where we're heading in 10 years, the population is not going to get smaller." #
http://www.pe.com/reports/2009/water/stories/PE_News_Local_S_farmers23.19769a5.html
Visalian in state Cabinet sees opportunity in water crisis
Fresno
By E.J. Schultz
He must cater to fishermen, farmers and environmentalists -- all while managing a $6.1 billion budget and 17,000 employees in departments overseeing California's water, wildlife, fish, forests and parks.
In his sixth year on the job, Chrisman is pulling it off for the most part, said a leading environmentalist.
"We may disagree with some decisions sometimes. We also applaud other decisions, but I think overall he's a fair guy," said Ann Notthoff,
His job is getting tougher, however, and some of his critics are growing louder. Budget cuts have chipped away at the agency's ability to enforce environmental rules. And the drought and deteriorating Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta are stretching state water operations.
Chrisman, the third-longest serving secretary in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Cabinet, sees opportunity in the water crisis.
Along with the governor, he's pushing for a multibillion-dollar water bond to help pay for new dams, more conservation and improvements in the delta. Previous proposals have gone nowhere, but Chrisman is hopeful a deal can be reached soon to put a measure on the 2010 ballot.
"We're in as good a place now as we've been in 25 years. We have got to get this done," he said in an interview last week. He led a panel of five Cabinet secretaries who in January endorsed the bond proposal while also calling for sweeping changes to the delta, the state's water hub.
The state by 2011 should begin work on a multibillion-dollar canal to move water around the delta to cities and farms in the Valley and
"Secretary Chrisman is working solely on behalf of big agribusiness," said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, campaign director for Restore the Delta, a coalition of delta farmers, fishermen and environmentalists. "People are forgetting the economy here [in the delta] is equal to or greater than the west side of the
Chrisman says the canal can be built without legislative approval and paid for by water users. But he vowed to work with all parties -- and to preserve delta water rights of
"Would we go it alone? Would we just go ahead and do it? Of course we wouldn't," he said. "Is it going to be easy? No. But it's very doable."
Chrisman, 64, a Republican, was first exposed to complicated water policy as a teenager. He accompanied his father, Jack, to
Jack Chrisman went on to serve on the state water commission under Gov. Pat Brown and helped push for the State Water Project, the largest state-built water system in the
Mike Chrisman got his start in government in the 1980s when he served as chief of staff to then-Assembly Member Bill Jones. He went on to work in the state Department of Food and Agriculture and was a deputy secretary at the resources agency from 1991 to 1994.
In 1997, Gov. Pete Wilson appointed Chrisman as the first-ever Valley member of the California Fish and Game Commission, where he earned respect from environmentalists for helping to improve fisheries and protect sea otters and other marine wildlife. #
http://www.fresnobee.com/local/story/1278068.html
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