CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2025, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D.
ELIAS
"STATE AGAIN
GIVES FARMERS AN ABSURD WATER ALLOCATION”
The thousands of
drivers traversing Interstate 5 on any given day this winter can see for
themselves: nothing even remotely like a water shortage currently plagues the
State Water Project.
This is
completely obvious from the major viewpoint off the east side of the interstate
between Justine and Patterson, from which it’s clear that all major canals of
the project just south of the Delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers
are full to capacity, or nearly so.
It's much the
same a few dozen miles to the southwest where the water project’s largest
man-made lake, the San Luis Reservoir, is chock full. Sand-colored margins that
grew steadily larger during the drought of the 2010-20 decade have long since
been inundated, with the artificial lake shining bright blue on crisp, sunny
winter days.
Water officials
also promise San Luis will soon be expanded.
So why does
California’s Department of Water resources persist in providing preliminary
farm water allocations that can only be described as pikerish?
It may be due to
insecurity, a sense that the Pacific Ocean is due for a long-running “La Nina”
condition that could produce a new drought and lower water levels of the State
Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project to the dangerously dry levels
of seven and eight years ago. Or it may simply be bureaucrats reminding farmers
that they control the lifeblood of America’s most productive agricultural
region, also one of the five largest industries in California.
But the reality –
especially after heavy “atmospheric river” rains in mid-November and December
drenched Northern California – is that farms will receive far more water than
the 5 percent of requested amounts promised them in late December, when state
officials behaved as if the November downpours would be the water year’s last
precipitation.
Yes, it is the
duty of water officials to husband California’s water supplies to make sure
neither cities nor farms ever run completely dry. But 5 percent made no real
sense.
It’s as if the
bureaucrats who work for Gov. Gavin Newsom wanted to put the lie to his
post-election pledges to pay more heed to the Central Valley and its interests,
whose sense of being disrespected was one reason that region was the only major
part of California carried by President Trump in last fall’s election.
This adds up to a
need to change some practices, including a few outlined by Karla Nemeth,
director of the Department of Water Resources. “We need to prepare for any
scenario, and this early in the season we need to take a conservative approach
to managing our water supply,” she said.
But that makes it
difficult, if not impossible, for farmers to plan crops unless they depend
greatly on ground water, a resource becoming increasingly depleted while ground
levels above aquifers subside. And they have subsided, as anyone can deduce
from seeing onetime irrigation pipes that now rise several feet above current
ground levels.
Better to
compromise a bit in years following a few seasons of heavy rain, today’s
situation. Another way to put this might be to ask why state bureaucrats push a
number and then essentially wink at farmers to tell them what they’re hearing
is nowhere near what will eventually govern. That’s what happened last year,
too, when the initial estimate of what farmers would get was 10 percent of
requests and the ultimate amount was 40 percent – still using conservative
allocations to make sure – unnecessarily – that reservoirs and canals remained
full all year round, rather than just partially full.
Even now, after a
2024 that was much drier than 2023 and an early winter with virtually no rain
in Southern California, drinking water reservoirs remain nearly full. Diamond
Valley Lake, near Hemet, the largest such potable water storage facility in
Southern California, was at 97 percent of capacity shortly after Christmas.
All this makes it
high time for California water bureaucrats to cut out their act and provide
farmers and other citizens realistic supply estimates, rather than constantly
reserving the right to leave water districts and their people and industries
high and dry, even when supplies are copious.
-30-
Email
Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski
Breakthrough," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more
Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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