One failure is we’re not capturing and storing nearly as much floodwater as we should.
Continue readingThere is broad consensus on the need to capture more water when its raining
Abandoning Established Water Law Does Nothing to Produce or Save One Drop of Water and Puts Our Food Supply at Risk
In times of crisis, drastic measures born out of panic almost always make things worse, and the same applies to dealing with California’s current drought.
There is no doubt that people, farms, our communities, and the environment are suffering. And there is a theory being floated among the state’s water bureaucracy that if we abandon our long-established system of water rights, our problems will be solved.
They won’t. Water rights are not the cause of California’s changing weather patterns and neither discarding this long-established law, nor fighting the legal battles that would result from trying to do so, will move, store, or create one drop of water.
Water rights provide stability during dry times
Water rights, a form of property rights, lend some predictability to water users in times of scarcity. Cities, businesses, farms, and rural communities all need some idea of available supply during a drought in order to plan and adjust.
In addition, it’s important to understand that even under existing water rights, regulators have sufficient flexibility to alter water deliveries in critical situations. In 2021 and 2022 those powers were used to make drastic cuts to most farms and some cities, with many farms receiving none of their normal allocation.
A safe food supply is a matter of national security
Under the state constitution, all water, no matter the rights attached to it, must be put to “beneficial use.” We argue that maintaining a healthy, abundant, and safe food supply is also a matter of national security. Sixty percent of our nation’s fruits, nuts and vegetables come from California and that production cannot simply be moved to other states. If we abandon California farms, we’re accepting food shortages, higher prices, and more imports from foreign countries, many with significantly lower safety standards. To put it in perspective, for every acre that is left unplanted because of a lack of irrigation water, it is the equivalent of 50,000 salads that would not be available to consumers.
And while most calls to eliminate water rights are aimed at farmers, upending the system would impact all Californians.
Some of the most senior water rights holders are water agencies in major metropolitan areas such as San Francisco and other Bay Area cities serving more than 1.8 million Californians.
We can store more water in wet years without harm
The inconvenient truth for all Californians is that our state has not moved quickly enough to deal with the impacts of climate change. For some time, climate scientists have been telling us that precipitation in the form of rain instead of snow is the new normal. That means we must build additional storage for both above and below ground water in order to capture water when Mother Nature delivers it. A recent policy brief by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) echoed the need for more storage saying, “. . .it is possible to do a better job of storing water during wet years—both above and below ground—without doing harm.”
The kind of projects needed include new or expanded reservoirs that can serve as environmentally-friendly water storage. New canals and pipelines would help distribute floodwater to areas in California’s Central Valley and also help recharge groundwater basins. PPIC estimates increasing storage could allow us to capture between 400,000 and 800,000 acre-feet of water each year, enough to serve hundreds of thousands of homes for a year or grow literally millions of salads.
There is money to pay for projects right now
And we have the money to do this. The federal government passed a huge infrastructure bill last year and California’s government currently has a $100 billion surplus.
Difficult times call for balanced, collaborative solutions, not drastic measures like upending water rights, which solves nothing and could make things worse for all Californians.
Without Action, Water Shortages Will Lead to Less Food Production and Higher Prices
Water shortages that continue to plague California are increasingly affecting the number of acres devoted to growing our food. Farmers are making tough choices on which crops and how much to plant in the face of crushing water supply cuts. The state could see as much as 691,000 acres taken out of production this year, a 75 percent increase over last year and 151,000 acres more than the previous high in 2015.
Critical for consumers are the crops that won’t make it to the grocery store because of insufficient water supplies. Fresh fruits and vegetables, along with processing tomatoes, strawberries, citrus, peaches, broccoli, and rice are among the crops impacted when farm water supplies are cut off. It’s estimated that up to 40 percent of California’s irrigated cropland will receive little or no surface water this year.
Are Curtailments a Balanced Water Use?
California’s water supply continues to face serious challenges and nowhere is the evidence clearer than on the farms that grow our food. Some of the most critical shortages expected this year extend from the Klamath Basin and Scott Valley, near the Oregon border, to Bakersfield at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley. This 450-mile stretch includes some of the most productive farmland on the planet, where the ongoing drought threatens thousands of farms.
And it’s not just farmers who will suffer the consequences of vanishing water supplies. Consumers also face uncertainties when it comes to the food they buy. It’s hard to imagine empty shelves at the grocery store but the evidence of food shortages is already here in the form of higher prices.
In the Scott Valley an unprecedented water curtailment by the State Water Resources Control Board is aimed at reducing the use of irrigation water from both the Scott River and the area’s groundwater basin. Unlike most of California, this area is not served by the large state and federal water projects, nor does it have any reservoirs. The water in the Scott River and underground wells is the sole supply for these farmers on their 30,000 acres of irrigated land, located within a 512,000-acre watershed. This mountain valley primarily produces alfalfa and grass hay, pasture, grain, and cattle. Besides two organic dairies, beef production is either organic or conventional pasture-based for popular markets.
And unlike other areas of the state experiencing critically overdrafted groundwater basins, the Scott Valley basin is designated a “moderate priority,” with a Groundwater Sustainability Plan (GSP) recently completed for SGMA and submitted to CDWR for approval. Despite this concerted effort, farmers in the area are wondering why another State agency is ignoring their GSP strategy and is forcing them to cut all groundwater use as part of the surface water curtailments on the Scott River.
Retired local watershed consultant, Sari Sommarstrom, said the inclusion of all agricultural wells in this drought emergency order appears to be a new extension of the State Water Board’s water rights enforcement powers. – an action that other well users in the state should be aware of. The agency asserts that this severe curtailment is needed to protect Coho salmon, a species listed as threatened under the state and federal Endangered Species Acts, from going extinct.
“If minimum instream flow targets designed by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) to protect salmon are not attained each month, all ag water diversions – under both junior and senior water rights – will be cut back 100%. A 30% reduction option is available for well users through negotiation but is not guaranteed. Many irrigators fear the permanent loss of family farms this year if no irrigation is allowed.” Scott Valley organic rancher Gareth Plank adds, “It’s important to know that a 30% water curtailment translates into a 90% income reduction. Farming in a region with a short growing season necessitates utilizing 100% of those precious frost-free days.”
Further, hydrologic modeling done by UC Davis water experts shows the target flow the Board is trying to achieve with these draconian cutbacks could not be met even with zero irrigation.
Sommarstrom, who helped create the Scott River Water Trust as a win-win option for fish and farmers, commented: “The California Water Code requires ‘reasonable’ decisions among competing water uses, yet the State Board is asking for the beneficial use of water for fish to almost entirely supersede the beneficial use for agriculture, which is not ‘reasonable’. And the Public Trust Doctrine seeks a ‘balance’ of uses, yet this curtailment is not a balance.”
The Scott River, she said, “currently represents the largest Coho population in the Klamath River system with an annual average of about 800 adults, similar to estimates for the Scott made by CDFW back in the 1960s and a significant improvement over 20 years ago. Its trend does not indicate any probable risk of “extinction”.
“CDFW agrees that local restoration efforts have helped lead to this significant increase in the salmon population,” leaving her questioning the Coho population rationale as the necessity for the State Water Board’s unprecedented measures in the Scott River watershed.
Plank added, “It’s astounding that after so many years of collaborative efforts with their corresponding successes that the state would want to blow it all up with an ill-conceived draconian plan.”
This year is going to be rough for farmers throughout the state. In situations like this, California’s leadership must take into account the dire situation for farmers with few options and even less water when they’re making decisions that could end farming for thousands of people and the rural communities in which they live.
Thanksgiving.
The traditional Thanksgiving celebration is centered around the blessings of harvest. Farmers have an obvious connection because of their year-long efforts to grow the food that we all bring home to our families. Like most Americans, we are thankful for the food on our plates and the people who make it possible.
This Thanksgiving will be a bigger challenge for a lot of families because of higher food prices and fewer choices at the store. According to the Consumer Price Index, food prices in general have been 4.6 percent higher since September of 2020. Meat prices rose the most, up 12.6 percent, followed by fish and other seafood at a 10.7 percent increase and higher prices for fruits and vegetables and other grocery staples.
“Food prices, along with prices of a lot of other goods, are rising and that means Thanksgiving dinner, along with all of our other meals, are more expensive than they were a year ago,” said Purdue Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Joseph Balagtas, on the news outlet wlfi.com in West Lafayette, Indiana.
Price increases are also affecting food banks and pantries. According to the Marin Independent Journal, the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank has seen an 80 percent increase in the prices they pay for poultry and other items they stock for underserved communities.
According to the Marin IJ, approximately 60% of the food the nonprofit distributes is fresh fruits and vegetables. For the first quarter this year, the food bank is about $400,000 over budget on produce, and about $75,000 on eggs.
Connecting the dots between the food bank shortages and local farmers, the Marin County Agricultural Commissioner said that water supply shortages due to the drought have resulted in reduced acreage of some farm crops. He encouraged residents to buy local to help maintain the viability of the county’s agricultural community.
Water shortages this year caused a steep decline in the number of acres in California planted to processing tomatoes. Between January 18 and May 26, the wholesale price of tomato paste rose 31 percent, and crushed tomatoes rose 22 percent. That’s important for two reasons. Processed tomatoes are used in a large number of foods we buy, from ketchup to salsa to spaghetti sauce, as well as soups, stews, and many other foods found in restaurants and at the grocery store.
Secondly, it is important because California grows more processing tomatoes than any other state in the nation. The No. 2 state is Indiana, which in 2020 grew 389,000 tons of processing tomatoes. That same year, California grew over 12 million tons, or 30 times the production of the Hoosier State because, like most other states, Indiana simply doesn’t have the acreage or climate to come close to the production that’s possible in California. What happens to all those products you buy every day if California can’t produce the amount of tomatoes it does now? You can expect shortages, or higher prices, or less safe imports or all three.
Other examples of fresh fruit and vegetables grown in greater abundance in California are grapes (17 times the production of No. 2, Washington), peaches (6 times the production of No. 2, South Carolina), and lettuce (almost 3 times the production of No. 2, Arizona).
California grows food in greater abundance than anywhere else in the U.S. because we have better soils and the only Mediterranean climate in North America. Most other states face more significant weather extremes, higher altitudes, oppressive humidity, and in some cases, too much water, which limits their ability to grow the same kinds of crops in the quantities that come from California.
Because California is a global leader in food safety, reliability, diversity, quality, and abundance, our leaders should be doing everything possible to support farmers here in California.
We’re already aware that supply chain issues have led to shortages and higher prices at the grocery store, and it only makes sense to keep that chain as short as possible. Imagine a future where much of our food is sitting in container ships off the coast of Los Angeles, waiting to be unloaded while prices at the grocery store rise and the quality of the food on-board declines. Local, California-produced food gives us the assurance that we’re not depending on other states or countries to grow the things we want here.
Politics, more than weather, affects the amount of water farmers have to grow our food. We must ensure that our water supply infrastructure is operating as efficiently as possible to meet the critical health, safety, and nutritional needs of all Californians.
The infrastructure bill signed recently by President Biden includes $3.2 billion to repair and upgrade aging infrastructure. There is another $1.5 billion for new storage projects, including groundwater storage and floodplain management. It’s a start but more needs to be done at the State level to assure consumers that our farms have the water needed to avoid future food shortages and unaffordable price increases.
Thanksgiving is a time to look back and appreciate all that we have. California does many things well, which is why it is the fifth largest economy in the world. Agriculture is a big part of that and, as Californians, we’re fortunate that our farmers can grow almost everything we need and in quantities that are the envy of the world. But it takes water to do that and with the right support from our elected leaders, farming in California will continue to lead the world in food safety, reliability, diversity, quality, and abundance.
That’s something for which we can all be thankful.
Central Valley Project Users Can’t Get a Break
WATER SUPPLIES ARE better than normal in Northern California, so why is it that Central Valley Project (CVP) water users can’t get a break? The water users in question are the farms and ranches in the San Joaquin Valley that rely on the federal Central Valley Project water conveyance system. They are set to receive a meager 5 percent of their water supply this year.
It’s the middle of May and rainfall in the northern Sierra is currently 111 percent of normal. Lake Shasta is 93 percent full and 108 percent of its year-to-date average. By all accounts there is sufficient water in the system operated by the federal government to meet the needs that the CVP was designed to serve – irrigation and municipal water supplies. But the priority for the project in the last two decades has shifted from providing water for people to being geared toward environmental demands. This almost complete reallocation of California’s federal water supply has reached a point where the people paying for the project are no longer able to rely on it to serve their needs.
The ripple effect reaches an area in excess of 3 million acres (1.2 million hectares) – more than one-third of the irrigated cropland in California. In contrast, California’s other large water supplier, the State Water Project, is delivering a 60 percent allocation to its customers. Many other areas of the state are on track to receive 75– 100 percent of their normal water supply.
Water districts find themselves in the same position as Oliver Twist asking for an additional spoonful of gruel – and it’s looking less likely that they will get any.
The newly styled CVP management impacts go far beyond the farms receiving the pittance of water being delivered to the San Joaquin Valley. The kicker is that without farmers paying for irrigation water the repayment of the construction costs of the CVP falls behind, and operation and maintenance (O&M) costs escalate for other users within the CVP. Federal water users in Northern California have seen O&M prices more than double because they end up carrying a greater share of those costs when water supplies are shorted elsewhere in the state.
What is occurring is a slow-motion train wreck. Much of the blame can be placed on federal fishery managers overseeing the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta with a myopic view of what constitutes effective protection for Chinook salmon and delta smelt. Water supplies have been cut over the last 24 years in favor of fishery management but the fish aren’t doing any better. In fact they’re worse off than they were before the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service stepped in after Congress passed the Central Valley Project Improvement Act in 1992.
According to Dr. Sean Hayes of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the awareness of other stressors is now more prevalent, which includes invasive species, predators, poor ocean conditions and the loss of salmon and smelt-rearing habitat. Yet fishery managers continue to limit farm water deliveries on the Sacramento River and through the Delta as their only tool to try to protect the fish.
A mild shift in how we manage the problems affecting the Delta can pay big dividends in the future. Fishery managers need to pay attention to emerging science. Allowing unlimited fishing for predators in “hot spots” where they are known to congregate can help salmon in the short term. Investing in tidal marsh habitat will provide more natural areas for young salmon and delta smelt to grow, giving them a fighting chance for survival and reproduction. And installing a barrier at the head of Old River will help maintain a more natural flow through the Delta, keeping fish on track during their migration.
Taxpayers have shelled out hundreds of millions of dollars in this failed effort, both in direct costs supporting the Endangered Species Act and in aid to families displaced when farm jobs and the water that supports them are taken away. It’s time for a comprehensive look at how we manage our water resources. The taxpaying public, water users, local communities and our environment deserve better.
The bleeding of agriculture
Approximate number of acre-feet of fresh water flushed to the ocean since December 1, 2015
One acre-foot is 325,851 gallons.
It is enough water to meet the household needs of two California families for an entire year.
Every day more than 6,600 acre-feet, or more than 2 billion gallons, of precious water is flushed to the ocean. That’s enough to meet the annual household needs of over 36,000 people. Every day.
Since December 1, 2015 over 218 billion gallons has been lost – enough water for almost 4 million people for an entire year.
At the same time, electronic highway signs caution Californians to limit their water use because of the drought. What’s wrong with this picture?
On February 23, the House Committee on Natural Resources subcommittee on Water, Power, and Oceans heard testimony that underscored what California consumers and farmers have known for years: that bureaucrats are wasting water that could serve farms and families at a rate of two billion gallons per day, all in a failed, misguided effort to save fish—and it is set to continue.
In less than 90 days between December 1, 2015 and February 23, 2016, 184 billion gallons of water has been flushed out through the San Francisco Bay. That’s enough water to supply over 3.3 million Californians with enough domestic water for a year, or to produce 9 billion salads. At the same time, CalTrans’ electronic billboards continue to urge people to reduce their water use.
These actions are supposedly meant to prevent harm to threatened and endangered Delta smelt and winter run Chinook salmon. Sadly, after years of trying the same tactic over and over, flushing all this water to the ocean has shown no measurable ecosystem benefits and instead resulted in a monumental waste of water.
Last April Governor Brown called for a 25 percent reduction in water usage by California’s urban residents. People responded with shorter showers, less outdoor watering, and more to meet the governor’s mandate. Urban users were joined by farmers, who had already lost between 40 and 100 percent of their surface water supplies. Even with this strong effort, farmers were forced to fallow fields, and farm workers stood in food lines because the jobs they had harvesting the nation’s food supply were gone.
Despite these cuts that have diverted water to salmon and smelt, population counts for these two fish have not improved. Yet water continues to be diverted, when it could instead be used to grow food, run a business, or irrigate a soccer field. Everyone wants a healthy environment, but there should be some accountability for the resources we’re quite literally pouring down the drain.
It is possible to protect the environment while giving people fair and equitable access to water. However, this gross mismanagement will continue unless Congress steps in.
Timing is Everything
Timing is Everything.
NRDC’s Doug Obegi wrote in a recent blog that we’ve captured and diverted too much water in the state’s reservoirs in January. He claims that “prevailing science” indicates that we shouldn’t be diverting more than 20 percent of unimpaired flows but he doesn’t tell us what science that is. A link in his blog goes to an opinion piece that doesn’t identify the science either.
Isn’t the water that was stored in January the same water that Doug will argue later in the year is water that we should be keeping in storage for cold-water salmon flows? I bet it is.
Isn’t the water that was stored in January the same water that Doug will argue later in the year is water that we should be keeping in storage for cold-water salmon flows? I bet it is.
In November the Chico Enterprise Record reported on an NRDC lawsuit against the Bureau of Reclamation and Sacramento River Settlement Contractors over water supply management (http://www.chicoer.com/article/NA/20151111/NEWS/151119941). The article quotes Doug on the subject of storing water for salmon.
This year the amount of cold water in Lake Shasta ran out — Doug Obegi
“This year the amount of cold water in Lake Shasta ran out, [Doug] Obegi said,” according to the paper. The story also reported that water users made an additional 440,000 acre-feet of water available for salmon by delaying deliveries to farms.
What would conditions be like if we weren’t capturing water now so it is available later in the year for multiple benefits, like fish and farms and communities? The public voted 2-1 in favor of new storage projects when they passed Proposition One, the Governor’s water bond. We think that capturing and storing water while conditions are wet is exactly what water managers ought to be doing and apparently so does the majority of California.
Over 41 percent of California’s irrigated farmland loses nearly entire surface water supply
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 farmland, is expecting deep cuts to the water delivered in a normal year. That is an area 10 times the size of Los Angeles.
The survey also revealed that almost 30 percent of the irrigated farmland in the state, 2.2 million acres, will get no surface water deliveries this year.
Because of significant agricultural water supply cuts that have happened over the past two years, large amounts of land going unplanted will occur in 2015. According to the survey, approximately 620,000 acres are estimated to be fallowed this year. Associated job losses could reach 23,000 with an economic hit to the state’s economy exceeding $5.7 billion.
California farms have taken a severe hit to water supplies for two years in a row. Researchers at the University of California issued a report last year based on computer modeling that estimated the Central Valley’s surface water supply diminished by about one-third, or 6.6 million acre-feet with 410,000 acres estimated to be fallowed.
Some farmers last year received no surface water deliveries at all and turned to groundwater pumping to offset the losses. Recent levels of groundwater pumping are expensive and not sustainable.
Mismanaging Floods in a Drought – Updated 12-15-2014
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 turbid, or cloudy, water because it provides shelter from potential predators, such as non-native bass. According to a statement today by DWR, “Foregoing the capture of tens of thousands of acre-feet of water over the next several days may allow water project operators to avoid the loss of hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of water supply later in the winter.”
Turbidity Reduced Pumping in 2012
In December 2012, a plume of turbidity that extended into the central Delta helped to create the situation in which water project operators severely curtailed pumping storm runoff in order to avoid harm to smelt. As a result, hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of water were not moved into reservoir storage.
Will the Risk Pay Off?
Clearly there is risk associated with a decision like this. We hope the risk pays off.
Mismanaging Floods in a Drought (12-12-2014)
While this week’s big storm dropped significant amounts of rain and snow in California, many water users worry that we are on track to repeat the disaster of last year. Hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of water were in the system and Delta pumps were almost completely shut down. It surprises many that we are mismanaging floods in a drought. As it turned out, last year’s wasted water resulted in most South of Delta water users getting a zero allocation and the state suffering significant economic and social damage with no measurable environmental benefits.
As this really big storm brings its bounty of water we are situated just like we were 12 months ago except that now the State’s reservoirs and its groundwater are substantially more depleted than they were exactly one year ago.
Pumping plants are running at reduced levels
Last week, the C.W. “Bill” Jones Pumping Plant at Tracy was running at a pathetic 19.7% of capacity. This week it is running at 60% capacity, or 2,600 cubic feet per second (cfs) out of a permitted level of 4,300 cfs. Delta outflows, in comparison, are six to over 30 times the permitted export level.
The possibility of Delta smelt will prevent additional pumping
Delta inflows are rising dramatically and with very high outflow, perhaps exceeding 100,000 cfs, a significant amount of water is available for export to put into storage for next year’s crop season. Many agencies will be in flood control management mode. Nonetheless, with the state in a historic drought, pumping is likely to be sharply curtailed due to the possibility that smelt are cloaked in the turbid water stirred up by storm flows. Except for a marginal theoretic benefit to Delta smelt, the entire southern half of the state would be able to access this precious resource, which instead will be turned to salt in the Pacific Ocean.
This is just the kind of Kafkaesque nightmare the Emergency Drought Legislation sought to relieve… at least around the margins.
Perhaps the crystal ball is wrong. If not, let’s hope this year we are better prepared to make the case that such behavior is blatantly contrary to the public interest.