Water that grows farm products doesn’t stay on the farm. It becomes part of the food we eat and clothing we wear, making consumers the true end users of farm water. California farms consume 8.3 trillion gallons of water in a normal year but farmers aren’t using water frivolously on their lawns or taking long […]
Farmers and consumers share a unique relationship. The California drought is helping people understand how important it is for farms to have the water they need to grow the food we all find at the grocery store. Serious water supply cuts affect our food supply as well as the people in rural communities who depend […]
Over 41 percent of California’s irrigated farmland will lose 80 percent or more of its normal surface water allocation this year, according to a new survey by the California Farm Water Coalition. The survey of agricultural water suppliers conducted the first week of April shows that 3.1 million acres, or 41.6 percent of California’s irrigated […]
Farmers first to be hit with water supply cuts Farmers have been the first to feel the effects of the drought because of mandatory water supply cuts. Last year saw an unprecedented amount of farm water cuts – zero water – for vast parts of the state and 2015 will be worse. Stories like this don’t often […]
USBR to deliver zero water Today’s announcement that farmers in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys will receive zero percent of their contracted supplies from the federal Central Valley Project is a tragic repeat of last year. In 2014 the state’s farm economy lost more than $2 billion and more than 17,000 jobs as […]
Elected leaders urge SWRCB to reverse staff decision denying limited water supply increase In two separate letters submitted February 11, a bipartisan group of State legislative and congressional leaders, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, urged the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) to overturn a single staff member’s decision to deny additional water to much of drought parched California. The letters emphasized […]
SWRCB staff rejects urgent request for water Despite concurrence among five State and federal agencies, a single State employee reversed a plan that would have delivered desperately needed water to most of drought-parched California. The decision is currently costing California water users about 2,000 acre-feet of water per day. A decision yesterday afternoon by State […]
Water management: A Super Bowl of a different kind By Stefanie Schulte, New South Wales Irrigators’ Council A visitor to the United States cannot fail to notice that Americans love their sports. Be it baseball, basketball, tennis, ice hockey or football – Americans ‘live and breathe’ their games. Back home in Australia there is no […]
Federal government cuts water supply to farms On January 1 the federal National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) instituted a management action that reduces water deliveries to 25 million Californians and millions of acres of struggling drought impacted farmland. All of this is done in the name of protecting salmon. But fish don’t have calendars. Regrettably, […]
Reduced Pumping Now May Protect Future Supplies The Department of Water Resources (DWR) and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) in conjunction with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) are experimenting with pumping reductions for several days to prevent a “turbidity bridge” from occurring in the central and south Delta. Delta smelt are attracted to […]