The Undersecretary of the United States Department of Agriculture, Robert Bonnie, privately met with the Imperial Irrigation District. The meeting started at 4:00pm Sunday and took place in El Centro.
During the meeting, Bonnie and the IID discussed the Western Water Policy and irrigation assistance to southeastern California farmers and ranchers.
More than 40 million people rely on the Colorado River in the West, and every drop of it is used. But with climate change, there’s now less water to go around. To try and avoid a multi-state legal battle over this precious resource, Colorado and other states are considering paying people to keep more water in the river.
In southwest Gunnison County, farmers and ranchers rely on water that would otherwise end up in the Colorado River. Drought has plagued the area for more than 20 years, so the resource is now more valuable than ever.
A day long dreaded by hundreds of ranchers, grape growers, farmers, water providers and towns arrived Monday as the state ordered them to stop diverting water from the Russian River watershed or be fined $1,000 a day.
State regulators issued orders effective Tuesday prohibiting about 1,500 water rights holders in the upper river — including the cities of Cloverdale and Healdsburg — from diverting water in an effort to preserve rapidly diminishing supplies in Lake Mendocino.
The cotton’s gone.
The alfalfa barely exists.
“Can you even call this a farm?” asked Nancy Caywood, standing on a rural stretch of land her Texas grandfather settled nearly a century ago, drawn by cheap prices and feats of engineering that brought water from afar to irrigate central Arizona’s arid soil.
While California is known for its world-famous entertainment industry and ever-transforming tech sector, agriculture is the often-overlooked backbone of our diverse state and one of its earliest economic engines.
Our state’s multigenerational farmers and ranchers not only feed Californians, but also supply one-third of our country’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts, while also leading the nation in milk production.
With most of the state gripped by extreme dryness, some conditions are better, some worse, than the last record-breaking drought. Over-pumping of wells hasn’t stopped. But urban residents haven’t lapsed back into water-wasting lifestyles. “We are in worse shape than we were before the last drought, and we are going to be in even worse shape after this one,” said Jay Lund, co-director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at University of California at Davis.
California’s agricultural community made clear in a series of public meetings last month that growers, dairies and ranchers stand ready to expand forward-thinking environmental practices — but that such activities don’t necessarily make financial sense without some form of government support.
The American food consumer has access to fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains and meat throughout the year. That’s largely because of Western producers and the projects that provide water to these farmers and ranchers.
Western irrigators have been dealing with changes in climate and hydrology for more than a century. But the outlook for water supplies in the future is not positive.
The order raises more questions about the administration’s agenda when it comes to pesticides and freshwater flows for threatened fish species.
Mexico’s water wars have turned deadly.
A long-simmering dispute about shared water rights between Mexico and the United States has erupted into open clashes pitting Mexican National Guard troops against farmers, ranchers and others who seized a dam in northern Chihuahua state.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
