A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
July 29, 2009
2. Supply –
Smaller Delta canal could work nearly as well as massive one in the works
Contra Costa Times
Mendota: a town scraping bottom
San Francisco Chronicle
California
Santa Rosa Press Democrat
How green was my valley: California
Cash-strapped
for farmers in the fabled
The Globe and Mail
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Smaller Delta canal could work nearly as well as massive one in the works
Contra Costa Times – 7/29/09
By Mike Taugher
Studies of an aqueduct as wide as a 100-lane freeway to carry water around the Delta are showing it might not get as much bang for the buck as some advocates might think.
State water officials recently put the rough price tag at $7 billion to $15 billion, which may be tough to swallow in a cash-strapped state. More importantly, studies are showing a 50-mile-long canal through a right-of-way as wide as three football fields — a size critics compare to the
These details about size, cost and time — which were included in a presentation last week by the Contra Costa Water District — play to critics of the canal plan, but water officials caution that criticism of the plan's cost-effectiveness is premature and no decisions have been made.
Still, studies show a peripheral canal would provide only slightly more water than agencies have pumped out of the Delta in recent years, and then only if the canal is operated in conjunction with existing south Delta pumps. Even that amount of water assumes regulatory approval that is not assured.
Surprisingly, the difference in average water supply from the massive, 15,000 cubic-foot per second canal favored by water agencies and a less controversial version one-third the size is marginal — less than 300,000 acre-feet on average, enough water for roughly 600,000 households or enough to irrigate 100,000 acres of crops.
"A small one does just as good as a big giant one," said Greg Gartrell, Contra Costa Water District assistant general manager.
"A small one you get done a lot faster without the threat" to water quality and the environment.
In addition to arguing for more consideration of a smaller canal, the water district is arguing for immediate action on a set of more modest — but largely ignored — measures that could improve water supplies and fisheries quickly.
Studies by the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, a committee of water agencies, regulators and environmental groups, shows the large canal would be full 4 percent of the time and would hold a trickle of 2,000 cubic feet per second or less 30 percent of the time, according the Contra Costa Water District's presentation to a group of Contra Costa business representatives.
By comparison, the smaller aqueduct could carry 5,000 cubic feet per second through a 25- to 30-foot tunnel.
Major water agencies say it is too early to make judgments about the appropriate size of a canal but added that if the Delta's vulnerable levees collapse after flooding or an earthquake, parts of the state will become entirely dependent on a canal.
"In the long-term, given the changes we will likely be seeing in the Delta, we will need to look at something in the (larger) 15,000 cfs size range," said Laura King Moon, assistant general manager of the State Water Contractors, an organization that includes Zone 7 Water Agency, Santa Clara Valley Water District and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
Other advocates point out that a larger canal would be prudent for the future if environmental conditions improve and restrictions on water deliveries are eased.
King Moon did not rule out a smaller canal but was critical of the Concord-based water district's conclusions.
"They presume to know the right answer. It's not possible to know the right answer right now," King Moon said.
The conservation plan was launched in 2006 to resolve two problems for water agencies from the Bay Area to
The plan seeks to build a canal, restore wetlands and enact other measures that committee members hope will be approved by regulators. King Moon said water agencies hope the canal can at least get water agencies back to the supply levels they were receiving before restrictions triggered by the collapse of endangered fish species.
Meanwhile, with the state's budget crisis addressed for now, state lawmakers are expected to turn their attention to California's water crisis so the entire slate of options is likely to be fiercely debated in coming months, particularly if public money is needed for wetlands restoration and pollution cleanup.
The chair of the state senate's Delta stewardship and sustainability committee, Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, said the Contra Costa Water District's numbers should carry a lot of weight.
"It's always good when a water district does this kind of analysis, especially using the BDCP's own numbers," said Wolk, who has been critical of the proposed canal and the governor's water plans. "A conveyance of a kind that is being proposed by the administration will not be cost effective and may not solve the crisis in the Delta," she added.
"The worst thing you could do would be to build a
http://www.contracostatimes.com/localnews/ci_12932308?nclick_check=1
Mendota: a town scraping bottom
San Francisco Chronicle – 7/26/09
By Kevin Fagan
Maria DeLourdes Oregel hasn't found work since her harvesting job petered out last year, her husband's hours at the local chicken farm have been cut by a third, and even though she feeds her children meat only once a week, she runs out of cash before the end of each month.
She's one of the lucky ones. At least she has a roof and her family has some kind of paycheck.
In one dreadful year, this dusty city in the heart of the most productive agricultural region in the nation has become a desperate place where mothers wash disposable diapers for reuse, children are sleeping in cars, and the unemployed trudge door to door to beg for food.
The fact that the unemployment rate in Mendota, 38.5 percent, is the highest in
"I try hard not to be depressed, but the little money we do get we can't stretch enough," Oregel, 38, said in Spanish as she sat in a weekly meeting at a community center, where mothers gather to share survival tips. "It's never been this bad in my life. I even have a friend who called his family in
In the worst national economic crisis since the Great Depression, there are few better illustrations of the resultant human suffering than Mendota, where 95 percent of the population is Latino and 42 percent of residents live below poverty level. Even in a good year, seasonal unemployment ranges above 20 percent because of the transient nature of farm work, but the past year or so has brought a convergence of blows that have made suffering a year-round reality.
Chain of disasters
First came the national housing meltdown, which led to hundreds of foreclosures in Mendota and halted construction on thousands of units of housing and commercial developments in the area. More than 2,000 people moved out of town in the past two years, and the loss of both residents and workers able to buy goods sent sales of everything from chain saws to groceries plummeting.
Then water deliveries from the Westlands Water District to Mendota farmers were cut to 10 percent of normal, with federal officials blaming the three-year drought and the need to protect delta smelt and other threatened species.
In short order, the Spreckles sugar plant on the edge of town, a furniture store and several restaurants shut down. The main bank announced it will soon close. Even the 99-cent store and the two thrift shops, the types of places that do well in hard times, are empty of customers most days.
Now, as harvest season begins in earnest for tomatoes, corn and the melons that have made Mendota the self-proclaimed "
Endless job hunt
"I've been going from farm to farm looking for work for a long time, and all I can get is one or two days of work a week," said Pedro Miranda, 30. "If things don't get better, I will have to go back to
Miranda lives with his wife and baby son in a house so dilapidated it's scarcely fit for habitation. He's stuffed toilet paper into holes in his door and walls to block out the wind, the rust on the metal kitchen cabinets rubs off on his pants if he brushes by them, and the paint is so worn it's hard to tell what color the walls are supposed to be.
Miranda's rent is $550 a month, which takes 13 days of fieldwork to earn. That's about as much work as he gets in a good month now, so he lines up with 300 or more people for the town's once-a-month food bank handouts, knocks on neighbors' doors for help and rarely eats more than rice and beans.
"My baby needs food," he said quietly, swatting flies from his 2-month-old son's face as they buzzed in through the torn window screen. "My wife needs food. I need work."
Estela Lara, a social worker with Centro La Familia Advocacy Services, said she has seen depression and alcoholism "getting out of hand" all over town.
"Before this year, you wouldn't see people standing out on the street drinking all day, but now just look at them," Lara said. She pointed across the street at a liquor store, where a dozen unemployed men in cowboy hats leaned against the wall at 11 a.m., swigging from bottles in paper bags.
"These are incredibly hard-working people in Mendota," Lara said. "They are proud people, but it's hard to stay proud when you are down for so long."
Down the block from the liquor store is Westside Grocery, where City Councilman Joseph Riofrio, a former mayor, feels he's been tap dancing ahead of ruin for two years as his business plummeted by 75 percent. He refuses to sell beer, to discourage alcoholism, and it's hurt his bottom line.
Noodle lunches
Over the past two years, Riofrio converted half of his store into DVD rental racks and added specialties like Häagen-Dazs bars alongside his Mexican ice creams. But these days his best sellers are the stacks of 50-cent Cup Noodles that farmworkers such as Miranda take to the fields so they won't have to buy lunch from the more expensive on-site taco trucks.
"We were having a housing boom here until about a year ago," the 47-year-old Riofrio said, leaning on his counter waiting for the rare customer. "Pacific Union Homes had a plan to double the size of this city for two years. Then, when the economy went bad a year ago, they pulled out. We have half-finished houses all over the area.
"And even if the farmers got 100 percent of their water next year, are they going to raise the minimum wage (typically $8 an hour) they pay?" Riofrio said. "Are they going to stop charging the workers $10 for a ride to the fields, $8 to cash their checks, give them health care? Some of our families are sleeping in cars in between jobs, and the only difference is there are more of them now.
"What we really need in Mendota is an industrial park, an expansion of the airport, more stores in town," Riofrio said. "But we're not going to see any of that until the economy picks up."
Just last year, Fernando Tirado was making two hauling runs a day in his Freightliner truck rig. Then his business dribbled away: Stores cut back on supplies, cotton gins restricted production and farmers canceled shipments. Now he's lucky to run two loads a week.
"I didn't even work for five months this winter," Tirado, 40, said as he fueled up half of one of his 100-gallon tanks - all he could budget for the day - at 5 a.m. at the Fastrip gas station.
Fastrip, the main day-labor spot in town, used to be a beehive of hiring from 4 to 6 a.m., but on this day there were only a handful of tense faces watching as vans whisked the fortunate few to the tomato and melon fields.
"I'm going to pick up 4,500 gallons of fertilizer today," Tirado said, managing a weary smile. "It's a good day. I wish they were all like this."
A fight for business
Mendota's current mayor, Robert Silva, has been leading a crusade to attract business that has resulted in the restart of stalled construction of a federal prison and a scheduled groundbreaking next month of a solar-energy farm by Cleantech America Inc. of San Francisco. He and others are also lobbying
But nothing, it seems, has been enough.
"We always have unemployment go up in the winter, but I never imagined it could be like this," said Silva, 68. "Our economy is based on agriculture here, and if we don't have the water, everything else suffers."
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency earlier this year for the entire state because of the drought and asked President Obama to do the same on the federal level, specifically for
But so far, digging out of the crisis remains mostly a self-help effort for farmers like Todd Allen, who because of the cutbacks in water deliveries was able to harvest only 40 acres of wheat this year out of the 600 acres he hoped for. For the first time since his father started the farm in 1975, he's afraid he'll go out of business.
No rain
"I was hoping Mother Nature would help me out with some rain, but month after month went by, and this part of the county just didn't get what other areas got," Allen said, standing in a fallow field and staring morosely at a sea of 3-inch wheat stalks burned brown by the sun.
Like many farmers, Allen has been trying hard to innovate. He spent $140,000 on a drip-irrigation system to cut water usage nearly in half for some crops and scrimped last year to save water for this year - which was the only reason he was able to grow the 40 acres he did.
"The suffering, the worrying I've gone through has been terrible," said Allen, 46. "I've got a wife and two daughters to feed, but I can't even sell the farm right now. I never thought it would get this extreme.
"Why don't people realize how important farmers are and give us our water, a little help?" he said. "If you like foreign oil, you're going to love foreign food when we all go away."
Mendota
-- Residential building permits issued: 100 in 2008; 10 in 2009
-- Adults who have completed high school: Mendota 23 percent;
-- Individuals living below poverty level: Mendota 42 percent;
-- Median age: Mendota 25;
-- Those who speak a language other than English at home: Mendota 82 percent;
-- Unemployment rate in Mendota: 24 percent June 2007; 27 percent June 2008; 38.5 percent June 2009
-- Unemployment rate in
Sources: University of the Pacific,
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/26/MNQ718IAAI.DTL
California
Santa Rosa
Opinion story by Rick Wartzman
A couple years ago, were you to have swung by Westside Grocery in the town of
Riofrio’s own business has fallen off 60 percent in the past six months.
Mendota (population 9,870) has gotten a lot of attention of late, what with its unemployment rate now topping 40 percent. The state secretary of food and agriculture showed up here last month. So did Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has called on President Barack Obama to issue a federal disaster declaration for
What Riofrio and others will tell you is that, despite the surge of interest in this region, the crisis did not materialize suddenly.
Rather, the people of Mendota and their neighbors — in
“You saw the establishment of a real working-class community,” said Don Villarejo, an agricultural policy consultant and longtime observer of Mendota and nearby towns.
But the realities of water shortages — and water politics — have taken a huge toll. Riofrio says that things began to slip away about five or six years ago. That’s when he began noticing the effects of farmers in the 600,000-acre Westlands Water District fallowing and permanently retiring more and more cropland as a way to cope with too little irrigation and major drainage problems that led to salty soil.
About a year and a half ago, well before Mendota started making headlines, things had gotten bad enough that Riofrio stopped selling fresh milk at his store. Too few could afford it anymore. In the last few months, the downward spiral has greatly accelerated. Farmers in Westlands, who’ve yanked about 100,000 acres out of production since 2000, say they may now be forced to idle as many as 150,000 more for lack of water.
The environmentalists’ instinct to dig in on this point is understandable. Many of the giant growers in Westlands have been less than honorable over the decades, gaming the system to claim more than their fair share of cheap, federally subsidized water. And there is something rather unseemly about the way the growers are using the plight of poor farmworkers to help aid their own cause.
The truth is, though, not every farm has access to multiple sources of water, resulting in a crazy patchwork of dusty and well-irrigated dirt that’s hard to miss these days as you drive across
And if environmentalists tend to distort the problem, so do many farmers, blaming what’s happening mainly on a series of court decisions and federal agency actions that have reduced pumping and diverted river flows to protect fish. State officials say the environmental rulings are responsible for about 25 percent of the current mess, while the rest was brought on by drought.
Second, and most important, federal, state and local officials need to coordinate on a long-term economic development strategy — and put some serious dollars behind it. This must go way beyond the $260 million in federal stimulus money that’s been promised by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to patch up ailing irrigation infrastructure across the state.
The real question is what emerges after the almonds, tomatoes and cantaloupes disappear. What happens as ever more
“We are part of a multibillion-dollar agricultural juggernaut that feeds the nation,” Riofrio said. “But we’ve gotten chewed up and spit out.”
After I left Westside Grocery, I headed over to
Also available were chicken and bags of peaches, plums and cucumbers — farm products for needy farmworkers, who queued up down the block, just as they once did outside Riofrio’s shop.
Rich Wartzman is executive director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University; he is the author, most recently, of “Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck’s ‘The Grapes of Wrath.’ ” From the
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20090726/OPINION/907249857
How green was my valley: California's drought;
Cash-strapped
for farmers in the fabled
The Globe and Mail – 7/27/09
By Sonia Verma
For a perfect view of
At first, you would never guess it. Mr. Allen, 46, is a blond, bright-eyed farmer, just like his father and grandfather before him.
When a stranger drives to his homestead, nestled neatly in
Ask Mr. Allen what he noticed when he drove along the back roads this sunny Friday morning, and his answer comes in a collage of images attesting to
The lineup at the makeshift food bank by the old rodeo grounds is almost a kilometre long.
Tent cities for the homeless have sprung up on
The last bank, Westamerica, in the nearby town of
In
Unemployment stands at 11.6 per cent and 180 cities are set to sue the state over a budget that proposes to close a $26.3-billion shortfall by taking $4.7-billion from their coffers.
In all of this,
Its jobless rate reaches 40 per cent in some towns.
On paper, the numbers are staggering. For the rest of
GONE, GONE, GONE
However, as the state struggles to pull itself out of an epic economic mess, proposing a budget settlement this week that taps into local government funds and cuts health care, welfare and education,
Which brings us back to Mr. Allen's front porch. Because, for all the signposts of despair that he passed on his morning drive, what kills him, what absolutely kills him, is the moment that he pulls his beige Ford pickup truck into his own fields: 240 hectares of the most productive farmland on Earth, bought by his father to bequeath to his sons.
The fields of wheat, cotton and cantaloupe that sustained his family for three generations are gone. The land is a mess of fallow fields, cracked earth and swirling dust.
However, his particular scene of devastation, Mr. Allen argues, has nothing to do with the credit crisis, the housing crash or the downturn that has
It has to do with a seven-centimetre-long, semi-translucent, steel blue fish known as the Delta smelt.
This is not a story about fish. Rather, it is a story about how efforts to save the fish through a court-ordered water shortage have pushed a region already brought to the brink by recession over the edge.
It is also a story about how farmers are fighting back, using almost unimaginable stories of economic hardship to argue for a reversal of environmental rules that could see their farms thrive once again, but also endanger wildlife that may never come back.
As
Their farms, with water, could provide
Central Valley, a semi-arid, 650-kilometre stretch of land is the heart of
Farmers here have always relied on imported water to make their fields bloom. At the turn of the century, they hauled it by horse and buggy. In the 1950s, Mr. Allen's grandfather, who had immigrated to
As
Environmental groups have long argued that the massive water diversions come with a cost. The tiny Delta smelt was chewed up so badly in the powerful pumps that it was designated an endangered species. Salmon, green sturgeon and a handful of other species showed dramatic declines.
Last December, fresh restrictions meant to protect the fish were imposed, effectively shutting down the spigots and starving the
Those in
UNEMPLOYMENT ‘REALLY SAD'
“The farmers may be facing hardship, but so are the fishermen and the fish,” says Carolee Krieger, president of the California Water Impact Network, a lobby group based in
If water pumping resumes in the Delta, more wildlife will be endangered, she argues. “The smelt is a bellwether and it's a very important marker for the health of the whole estuary.”
As for impact on humans, “it's really sad that there is unemployment, but we're all in an economic downturn,” she says, noting that stocks are so low, salmon fishing hasn't been allowed in
While it's true that the downturn is causing widespread pain, the water restrictions came on the heels of a brutal three-year drought, hitting the farmers especially hard and sending parts of Fresno County – a poor place even in the best of times – hurtling toward collapse.
“There's a big dichotomy between the
Today, Interstate 5, the highway that slices through the
The bitter irony that farm families in the region known as
Without water, farmers have left an estimated 200,000 hectares of once-productive farmland fallow. Thousands of farm workers, mainly Spanish-speaking migrants, have been laid off.
Mr. Howitt estimates lost farm revenue in the
“This is one of the classic, really difficult trade-offs we are faced with in hard times: environmental values versus human suffering,” he says.
“The rest of
The bottom line, Mr. Howitt says, is that “we are going to have to make fundamental choices. ... It's fish versus jobs and communities.”
OBAMA GETS THE FINGER
Back at the farm, Mr. Allen sits in his office – there is no work to be done in the fields.
On his desk is a picture of his two young daughters. In the drawer are the blood-pressure pills he began to take in April, when he wrote off most of his crops.
A doctored picture on the wall shows a smiling President Barack Obama. He is standing next to a sun-scorched farmer, who is giving him the finger.
With virtually no water this year, Mr. Allen has managed to irrigate and harvest just 16 hectares of winter white wheat, now a key crop here because it can thrive with minimal water.
Since bringing in the wheat last month, Mr. Allen spends most days at his desk, fending off phone calls from telemarketers and the bank.
His farm, a million-dollar operation in good times, is 70-per-cent financed. He also owes money on three tractors, a $140,000 drip system, which is useless to him now, and his house.
“I've never been in a predicament like this … so, if I can survive this year, I can survive anything,” he says, blinking back tears.
When he began to farm full-time 20 years ago, he had a consistent water supply. He also had 10 employees and started with 600 hectares of cantaloupe, cotton and wheat.
This year, he has laid everyone off and is doing what little labour is left himself.
“You know, I am really scared for my family. I have two daughters and I thought I had a future going out here, and now I can't even sell this land because, without water, it is worthless,” he says.
“It seems like in this economy the government would look for quick fixes instead of throwing money at everything. All they have to do is turn the pumps on. The water is there.”
Last month, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger asked Mr. Obama to declare
But when
With the state siphoning off its revenue, the county is laying off 700 workers and seeing its $20-million debt grow to $30-million. Programs ranging from in-home support for the elderly to food stamps will be slashed.
“Without water, we have no way of fighting back,” says Phil Larsen, who sits on
“In the
But most farmers here say they don't want a handout. At a town hall meeting in
UNEMPLOYMENT 41 PER CENT
The City of
Mendota, population 10,000, was once famous as the “cantaloupe capital of the world.” Today, it is the jobless capital of
Mayor Robert Silva came to Mendota from
Today, Mendota is a place where mothers wash disposable diapers so they can use them again, and rhyme off 10 ways to cook rice and beans from the food bank so that their kids don't complain about being fed the same meal every night.
It's a place where workers with no work cluster on corners, or pile high in pickups, combing back roads for ways to make a few dollars.
Linda Boustos is 37 years old and has just had a baby. Her husband used to work in the fields. Now, he scrounges around for a chance to make a few dollars by driving a truck.
“We can barely pay our bills,” she says, in Spanish. “I feel desperate. My kids are always asking for money for food.”
If things don't turn around, she will pack up her family and leave, but she has no idea where to go.
Towns like Mendota are already emptying out. What began a trickle now feels more like a torrent, and as people leave,
Some towns have begun to explore the possibility of simply shutting down, transferring their authority to the county because they can no longer afford to provide basic services.
In the meantime, they are doing all sorts of things to balance their books – from not filling potholes to firing the sheriff and replacing him with volunteer police.
In Firebaugh, the closest town to Mr. Allen's farm, the sales tax usually funnelled to the town from its two biggest businesses – the Ford and Chevrolet dealerships – has fallen off a cliff. The Chevy dealer has been ordered to close by November, and the town's reserves are tapped out, municipal manager Jose Antonio Ramirez says.
“This is all 95-per-cent due to the water crisis,” he says. “The farmers who normally buy the trucks are broke.”
A coalition of farmers has filed a lawsuit claiming that state officials overstepped their authority by ordering the water cuts.
There is also talk of short-term solutions, such as diverting water from other areas to the
Environmental groups still maintain that's not enough, and that any form of diversion is ultimately damaging and unsustainable.
Some economists say
“This is a place that started out poor and has had this huge loss of wealth because they were ground zero for the housing crisis and now ground zero for the water crisis,” says Steven Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy, a private research organization in
Without water, he concedes, “it's hard to see where a recovery will come from.”
WAITING ON THE BANK
The farmers, meanwhile, say they may not be able to hang in long enough to find out.
Todd Allen is waiting to hear from the bank whether he will get financing for next year. The bank, he says, is waiting to hear what his water supply will be. If the money does not come through, he will be forced into bankruptcy. And like the labourers he once employed, and who now wander the roads looking for work, he has no idea what he will do.
“You just look around and you think, ‘Why is this happening in
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