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Drought Or No Drought?

June 1,2016-

opinion piece by John Lindt

Screen Shot 2016-06-01 at 5.54.35 PMIs there a drought or no drought in California? The average Californian would not hesitate to say yes despite Donald Trump’s pronouncement in Fresno this past week.
The latest authoritative Drought Monitor map dated May 24th tells the story pretty clearly showing a dark red shadow over a good part of the state that is described as “exceptional drought”. The map says right now some 34 million people in the state are in drought areas or various intensities in California.

Only the extreme northwest corner of the state is without dry or drought conditions. So it’s clear, we got a drought.But its complicated for sure.

Screen Shot 2016-06-01 at 7.51.50 AM
In terms of our reading area the map indicates the center of the state is in the “exceptional drought” shadow- there is no truth to the comment that the dark red shadow on the map is Trump’s profile.
Trump’s statement comes after meeting with Kings and Fresno County’s westside farmers before the Fresno rally who told Trump that the government was to blame for them not getting water this year and that was due to that 3-inch fish the government biologists were trying to save.

Now the westside of the Valley is naturally a dry area in the rain shadow of the Coast range – a dusty place with no rivers and what is left of a dry lakebed. It is the home of the Westlands Water District who orchestrated the Trump powwow. This is where several hundred thousand acres of farmland has been “ retired” – ruined by salt build up from irrigation water brought in from northern California with the idea – to make the desert bloom.But since the late 1980s when the  California drought began to take hold Westlands has faced a decline in water shipped in even as low value crops like cotton went out of favor.

To get water to the westside of the Valley water is pumped from the California delta to San Luis Reservoir near Los Banos. Those big pumps can kill fish at certain times of the year.
California faces an endless debate over water use. But the plain fact is some areas have a supply and some do not.

Here is a little primer on the state’s water use from the Water Education Foundation.

While parts of Northern California receive 100 inches or more of precipitation per year, the state’s southern, drier areas receive less precipitation – and just a few inches of rain annually in the desert regions. That means 75 percent of California’s available water is in the northern third of the state (north of Sacramento), while 80 percent of the urban and agricultural water demands are in the southern two-thirds of the state. Despite the geographic and hydrological challenges, California has more irrigated acreage than any other state, thanks to massive water projects that include dams, reservoirs, aqueducts and canals to deliver water to users, especially in the central and southern portions of the state. Water also is moved east to west such as through San Francisco’s Hetch Hetchy system.
Everything depends on the development and management of water: Capturing it behind dams, storing it in reservoirs, and rerouting it in canals stretching hundreds of miles across the state. California has 1,400 dams, two of the largest water storage and transport systems in the world – the Central Valley Project (CVP) and State Water Project (SWP) — and some of the largest reservoirs in the country.
Yet, leaving water in rivers and streams is important for the health of the environment, wildlife, and fish. Some water is officially dedicated to the environment, such as Bay-Delta outflows. Other waterways are protected under the state and/or federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Acts, putting further water development off-limits. Overall, how much water is left in streams and rivers for the environment depends on a lot on yearly precipitation. Drought years, such as 2014, left many streams depleted and cities and farmers facing water supply cutbacks and, in some places, water rationing.
According to the California Water Blog and former University of California, Davis professor Jeff Mount, based on net water use, which accounts for water that is lost to evapotranspiration or salt sinks and not returned to rivers or groundwater, 62 percent of California’s water goes to agriculture, 16 percent to urban use and 22 percent is dedicated to instream flows and to maintain drinking water quality.

Despite having little water they can call their own – westside farmers  feel entitled to move water from someone else’s back yard and seek political help when they need it.

There is the rub. We are in the moving water business – to where  there is demand, and demand is alway bigger than supply. Those places where the snow melts in their back yard  and residents see it replenishing their watershed understandably want to keep that water at home. They scream if too much is taken away to supply far away places who want use it to build more homes or plant more almond trees.

Screen Shot 2016-06-01 at 6.01.07 PMBut the idea that if we just pump more water to the Valley’s westside  and the drought would be is over is surely nonsense. In Tulare County -on the east side of the Valley – nearly 1500 residential wells have gone dry because of a multi-year lack of local rainfall and poor  snowpack in our own Tulare County mountains. Rivers here, the Kings,Kaweah and Tule had several years of disastrously low flow. On the Valley floor  Hanford saw several years of 3 and 5 inch rain totals for the whole year.In 2013 Fresno got a scant 3 inches of rain and it was not the governments fault.

Just like our northern California counterparts- if anyone tries to ship Tulare County originated water to some distant place – we too scream bloody murder.

Here is a common refrain we hear from those advocates of moving more water south.
“If Californians were somehow allowed to capture the precipitation that falls naturally on the state and store and move it, our problems would be solved. Our Valley would bloom and our economy boom.”

But take a look at what is actually happening in the fields of the Central Valley right now – it is not scarcity that is biggest problem – it’s over production!

The state’s highest value ag commodities have suffered a decline in prices not based on lack of supply but because there is a glut of supply. From almonds to walnuts to pistachios farmers have planted  fence row to fence row in recent years but the world’s appetite has not kept up. The same for milk – Tulare/Kings top crop- where the world is awash in supply and prices have fallen to below cost of production.

Tulare County dairies have water this year but what they need is customers and higher milk prices.

It is the same argument we have seen nationally over oil production. Remember ’drill baby drill’? They drilled alright –  producing so much oil they drove themselves out of business and helped cause this past year’s slowdown in the US economy. Bankruptcies have caused massive job layoffs for valley oil companies – hurting the state’s economy.

Massive over planting of nut trees in the state has caused a 50% drop in nut prices here – not because they did not get enough water.
So much for the “bloom” argument.

Those farmers who met with Mr Trump did not give him the whole story it seems. Farmers need water for sure – but they also need labor  since much of fruit crop we produce is picked by hand.Less so in the Westlands and more on the east side where raisins,peaches, olives and nectarines grow. Shipping that labor back to Mexico as Trump has advocated – does not work for farmers. Did they tell him?
They also need trade deals to open markets to sell these commodities  we produce.

Screen Shot 2016-06-01 at 6.01.46 PMIn other words- ‘No Labor-No Farms’ as well as ‘No Trade-No Farms’.
Put those signs up by the highway – why don’t you,guys?

Despite all this there is some unfairness for westside farmers who have been promised just a 5% allocation this year despite the fact that Shasta Reservoir is full and other water contractors are getting much more.
But let’s not tell the electorate ‘there is no drought in California.’

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