Tag Archive for: Agriculture

A Clear Warning About the Colorado River

/in , , /by /Steamboat Pilot & Today (Routt County, Colorado)by Dave Marston

For the West this summer, the news about water was grim. In some parts of California, it didn’t rain for over 100 days. In western Colorado, the ground was so dry that runoff at first evaporated into the air. And in New Mexico and Nevada, the rains never came.

Bill Hasencamp is the manager of California’s Metropolitan Water District, which provides treated water to 19 million people. What was most unfortunate, he said, was that, “the upper Colorado Basin had a 100% snowpack, yet runoff was only 54% of normal.” In 2018, a variation happened — light snow and little runoff, which doesn’t bode well for the future.

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In a Dry State, Farmers Use Oil Wastewater to Irrigate Their Fields, but is it Safe?

/in , , /by /Inside Climate Newsby Abby Weiss

For decades, farmers in California’s Kern County have turned to wastewater from oil production to help irrigate their crops during extended dry spells. The wastewater provides an alternative to groundwater, which has become increasingly scarce as farmers have pumped more than they could replenish.

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Erin Brockovich says US is Now in a Water Crisis Far Worse Than People Realize

/in , , /by /The Hillby Anagha Srikanth

Amid a global pandemic and protests against police brutality, Erin Brockovich is trying to get America to pay attention to yet another issue: water.

“We are in a water crisis beyond anything you can imagine. Pollution and toxins are everywhere, stemming from the hazardous wastes of industry and agriculture. We’ve got more than 40,000 chemicals on the market today with only a few hundred regulated. We’ve had industrial byproducts discarded into the ground and into our water supply for years. This crisis affects everyone – rich or poor, black or white, Republican or Democrat. Communities everywhere think they are safe when they are not,” she wrote in an opinion story for the Guardian.

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Arizona Endorses a Company’s Plan to Sell Colorado River Water to Queen Creek

/in , , /by /Arizona Republicby Ian James

Arizona’s top water regulator has endorsed a company’s proposal to take water from farmland near the Colorado River and sell it to the fast-growing Phoenix suburb of Queen Creek.

The plan, which still would require federal approval, has generated a heated debate about whether transferring water away from the farming community of Cibola could harm the local economy, and whether the deal would open the gates for more companies to buy land near the river with the sole aim of selling off the water for profit.

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An Extraordinary Summer of Crises for California’s Farmworkers

/in , , /by /National Geographicby Alejandra Borunda

Rosa Villegas woke up at two in the morning on a late August Monday to make her way to the lettuce fields in California’s south Salinas Valley, where she was scheduled to start bagging heads of romaine at 4 a.m. The sky overhead wasn’t its usual dark, star-dotted self as she walked to her car. Instead, it glowed a sickly red, colored by the fires burning on the flanks of the Santa Lucia mountains, just a few miles west.

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Delta on the Edge

/in , , /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Kurtis Alexander

In spring and summer, when the skies are warm and the shadows thin, California’s snowy Sierra Nevada and southern Cascades unleash billions of gallons of fresh water each day, a melted bounty that nourishes the state’s mightiest rivers before converging slowly on the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

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County Crop Report Shows Bountiful 2019 Harvest

/in , /by /KPBS-FM/TVby John Carroll

It’s not quite on the level of tourism or biotech, but agriculture is a major contributor to San Diego County’s economy. The county’s annual crop report was released this week, and it shows agriculture contributed nearly two-billion dollars in 2019.

Statewide, agriculture in California contributes $50-billion a year, much of it coming from industrial-sized operations.

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Meet the Water Baron You (Likely) Haven’t Heard of

/in , /by /The Sun (Central Valley)by Alex Tavlian

Has the San Joaquin Valley reached its Chinatown moment? For farmers who rely on water from the Kings River, the answer winds up as some shade of “yes.” But the players are different. This isn’t the Owens Valley and William Mulholland doesn’t work for the City of Los Angeles. Uneasy about a slowly-marching plan to siphon Valley water for Southern California, farmers and some water managers are worrying about the growing shadow of one of the region’s largest land owners.

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Napa Sanitation District Harvests Napa’s Sewage Sludge for Fertilizer

/in , /by /Napa Valley Registerby Barry Eberling

Dredging is common in navigable waterways, but the project underway at the Napa Sanitation District property in southern Napa County is a little bit different.

The dredging is taking place in a vast sewage treatment pond. And the material being removed is biosolids, which is another way of saying sewage sludge.

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Comments on Imperial Valley Water

/in , /by /The Desert Review (Imperial Valley)by Rusty Jordan

The recent decision regarding Michael Abatti’s appeal of the IID 2013 EDP confirms some most disturbing trends.

My experience has been to closely follow four water battles over the years and watch the courts. In the courts were three, Jordan vs Santa Barbara et al., Morgan QSA, and Abatti vs IID. What shines out is the bias of the courts for the government entities. If you think about the crazy positions of Democratic leadership in California, their long control of the legislative process, and the people they put into the courts — it’s no surprise. I was co-chairman of a water transfer battle in the 1980s in Arizona, that’s a story in itself.

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