Tag Archive for: Agriculture

Pendulum Swings in Clean Water Act Regulation

/in , , /by /Capital Pressby Mateusz Perkouwski

The regulatory pendulum is expected to swing toward stricter Clean Water Act enforcement, though experts say the Biden administration’s changes probably won’t be immediate. Farmers and environmentalists have been in a political tug-of-war over the law’s scope for years, largely due to ambiguous legal interpretations of the statute. While Democrats will now have power over Congress, their majority is too slim to make changes to the law, said Don Parrish, the American Farm Bureau Federation’s senior director of regulatory relations.

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Opinion: Water Markets Critical to Managing Scarcity

/in , , /by /OC Registerby Will Rinehart

As COVID started to spread, farmers and large cities in Southern California were hit with another blindside last March. Fires, drought, and the planting season drove up the price of California’s water market, over 220 percent in just three months. Crops failed and pastures were lost.

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Coffee Is Growing, Thriving In San Diego’s North County

/in , , /by /KPBSby Jacob Aere

Coffee is typically grown in tropical regions and was previously considered an unviable crop in the continental United States. But along the state Route 76 corridor in San Diego’s North County, farmers are growing California coffee. Singer-songwriter Jason Mraz owns one of those farms in East Oceanside, in the South Morro Hills community. Five years ago he became one of the first farmers in the region to plant coffee trees.

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New Avocado Study Outlines Costs/Returns of High-Density Plantings

/in , /by /California Ag Todayby Pam Kan-Rice

Growers considering producing avocados in San Diego County with high-density plantings now have help to determine the economic feasibility. A new study on the costs and returns of establishing and producing avocados in San Diego County has been released by UC Agriculture and Natural Resources’ Cooperative Extension, UC Agricultural Issues Center and the UC Davis Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

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Wall Street Eyes Billions in the Colorado’s Water

/in , , /by /The New York Timesby Ben Ryder Howe

There is a myth about water in the Western United States, which is that there is not enough of it. But those who deal closely with water will tell you this is false. There is plenty. It is just in the wrong places.

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Tired of Waiting on Salton Sea Fixes, Desert Shores Residents Take a Stand

/in , , /by /Palm Springs Desert Sunby Mark Olalde

These days, the house where Donna and John Winters planned to retire in the Southern California desert reflects in a stagnant pool of blood red water, their dream home becoming something of a nightmare.

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Climate’s Toll on the Colorado River: ‘We Can Weather Maybe a Couple of Years’

/in , , /by /The Arizona Republicby Ian James

Beside a river that winds through a mountain valley, the charred trunks of pine trees lie toppled on the blackened ground, covered in a thin layer of fresh snow. Weeks after flames ripped through this alpine forest, a smoky odor still lingers in the air.

The fire, called the East Troublesome, burned later into the fall than what once was normal. It cut across Rocky Mountain National Park, racing up and over the Continental Divide. It raged in the headwaters of the Colorado River, reducing thick forests to ashes and scorching the ground along the river’s banks.

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Water Authority and GSA To Settle On Sagging Friant-Kern Canal Resolution

/in , /by /The Sun Gazetteby John Lindt

The Friant Water Authority cleaned up some of the most important work in the last month of the year hashing out a legal settlement with farmers in southern Tulare County.

Represented by the Eastern Tule Groundwater Sustainability Agency farmers agreed to contribute at least $125 million to repair the significant subsidence-caused sag in the gravity-fed canal that has cut water deliveries by 60%.

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Climate Change Spells Trouble for the Colorado River. But There’s Still Hope

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Sammy Roth

One of the best road trips I’ve ever taken was a sightseeing tour of the Colorado River, where it straddles the California-Arizona state line. I stood at the edge of Imperial Dam near the Mexican border, which diverts water to the farm fields of the Imperial Valley, then drove north to Cibola National Wildlife Refuge, home to lots of birds. I walked along the river in Laughlin, Nev., where there’s a hotel called the Colorado Belle that looks like a boat, and in Needles, Calif., where Snoopy’s brother Spike lives.

Farmers Swap Out Irrigation Methods To Keep The Colorado River From Growing Saltier

/in , , /by /Aspen Public Radioby Jodi Peterson & KVNF

AJ Carrillo farms 18 acres outside of Hotchkiss, Colo., in the high desert of the Western Slope about an hour southeast of Grand Junction.  When he irrigates his peach orchard, water gushes from big white plastic pipes at the top of the plot and takes half a day to trickle down to the other end of his five-acre orchard. Carrillo is planning to convert his Deer Tree Farm from flood irrigation, which is commonly used in Western Colorado, to a new and much more efficient style of irrigation – microsprinklers.

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