Farmers in California’s Central Valley are in for another brutal summer of drought.
The federal government announced initial 2022 water allocations Wednesday for customers of the Central Valley Project, and the figures were dismal: Most irrigation districts in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys can expect to receive no deliveries from the project’s vast network of reservoirs and canals.
Vicki McDowell woke up on a Saturday morning in May, thinking about what she would make her son for breakfast. He was visiting from Hayward, and she wanted to whip up something special. Biscuits and gravy. Fried potatoes. Eggs.
She walked to the kitchen sink to wash her hands. Turned on the faucet. Nothing happened. Worried, she tried the bathroom sink. Still nothing. She flushed the toilet. It gurgled.
In the verdant San Joaquin Valley, one of the nation’s most productive farming regions, domestic wells like McDowell’s are drying up at an alarming pace as a frenzy of new well construction and heavy agricultural pumping sends the underground water supply to new lows during one of the most severe droughts on record.
Farmers in the Bay Area were excited that the latest storm brought another round of much-needed rain in the hopes it will bring them closer to the end of what has been a difficult drought.
Many in the agricultural and farming industries of the Santa Clara Valley are relieved the region took in substantial rainfall over the past few days.
As California experiences a second year of drought, with no end in sight, the effects on California’s largest-in-the-nation agricultural industry are profound and perhaps permanent.
State and federal water agencies have cut deliveries to some farmers to zero while others, thanks to water rights dating back more than a century, still have access to water.
A profound reduction in the Colorado River water earmarked for Arizona’s crops has at last triggered the rationing that irrigation farmers have dreaded. The Tier 1 shortage will prompt a 512,000-acre-foot reduction in Arizona’s Colorado River deliveries.
That amounts to about 30% of Central Arizona Project’s normal supply. Extrapolating from University of Arizona studies, it will result in a decrease of about $100 million in farmgate sales, and much more if the indirect effects are fully factored in.
Hailed as a complex and historic step, Sonoma County supervisors on Tuesday unanimously endorsed plans to guide use and governance of groundwater relied on by rural residents, farmers and cities.
The plans, required by a 2014 state law crafted amid California’s past drought, will eventually include well water use fees in three basins underlying the Santa Rosa Plain and Sonoma and Petaluma valleys.
Amid this year’s severe drought, Hmong farmer June Moua had to leave a portion of her 10-acre plot of land in eastern Fresno County dry and fallow. Large sections of the rows of crops she did plant, including bunches of water-intensive greens, have wilted and shriveled into crunchy bits of brown foliage. Her kale and bok choy are casualties of the central San Joaquin Valley’s dwindling water supply. Declining groundwater levels have made it harder for her to pump water from her well into her fields.
The Newsom administration has informed regional water districts that it will move forward with a plan to increase flows from San Joaquin River tributaries in an action that may create more water uncertainty for farmers.
A notice from the California Natural Resources Agency and state Environmental Protection Agency represents a departure from the state’s earlier willingness to consider voluntary agreements with water districts, which includes aspects other than just flow increases. That departure means that the regulatory regime, adopted by the State Water Resources Control Board in 2018, will now move forward.
Four states in the drought-wracked West considering whether to pay farmers to cut their water use see federal infrastructure legislation as a possible revenue source.
The $550 billion bipartisan legislation approved in the Senate includes $25 million for the four states—Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.
“There’s that bucket, and a lot of other buckets, in the federal infrastructure bill that could come into play for drought contingency planning implementation,” said Amy Ostdiek, interstate and federal manager in the Colorado Department of Natural Resources.
The Family Farm Alliance aims to protect water for Western agriculture and describes itself as a powerful advocate before the government for family farmers, ranchers, irrigation districts, and allied industries in 17 Western states. The drought-stricken Klamath Basin is one area that they’ve identified as needing legislative change.
The alliance says it has this goal to ensure the availability of reliable and affordable irrigation water needed to produce the world’s food, fiber, and fuel.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
