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California’s Drought Gets Personal — Suzanne Temple
Next week, California shuts off the water. So says the letter my parents received from their local water district, informing them that the water supplied to the district’s farms in Northern California will be no more. This year, the North Valley will not be filling its water canals.
My parents own a 33-acre orchard and my other family members lease or own farmland all over my hometown. A few years ago, when rainfall began to diminish and irrigation prices began to rise (and environmentalists appeared determined to make all water policy beholden to the goal of saving an endangered three-inch fish, the delta smelt), my parents drilled their own well to irrigate their orchard—as did many other farmers in the area.
Farmers seem to have a way of sensing what’s coming. The delta smelt got its government protection, forcing some of the state’s water to be diverted from farmers into the Pacific Ocean. Just last month, the courts upheld the ruling that the fish, not the farmers, get the water. With record-low rainfall over the past few years, water prices have skyrocketed. Last year my parents’ water district told growers that they would receive an allotment of water for $35–$50 per acre. They can still get water if they go over that allotment, but for $600 an acre. It’s a good thing that my parents had their own well; this year, the water district is saying no water at any price.
Today, it seems like every grower in California is drilling wells on his property to tap into that underground water source. Environmentalists are beginning to worry that so much drilling is upsetting the underground water flow. My dad suspects that soon he’ll be getting letters telling him he’s not allowed to use his own well.
This weekend, when I heard about that Nevada rancher—the one who faced off against the feds because he stopped paying land-use fees for 20 years after being told to significantly reduce his herd and keep them off parts of the land, all because of some endangered tortoise—I knew whom most people in my hometown would be siding with. Take a guess. It wasn’t the feds. People don’t like the government telling them they’re out of a job because of a spotted owl, or kicked off of land because of a tortoise, or are going to have to watch their crops dry up because of a three-inch fish.
The letter my parents received had an interesting “P.S.” It asked the farmers to come into the water district’s office to discuss “options” (whatever that means). My dad is undecided about going. He’s not sure if it’s worth his time, because he doesn’t think that anything can be done. But I suspect that some of my other relatives will go, and so will a lot of other growers. A word of advice to the water district: expect the farmers who show up to be worried, distrustful, and angry.
Published in General
The biggest issue regarding our water consumption is landscaping. It’s a huge huge issue and water shortages may eventually stop lawns etc in places they aren’t able to easily grow.
I drove by Shasta Reservoir a few weeks back and from Carmel to Yosemite this past week by Hetch Hetchy. The amount these reservoirs are down is mind blowing. Our drought is bad and the Sierras are going to burn.
Screw the Delta Smelt.
Maybe if the price of arugula goes up enough they’ll agree with DocJay.
Can your parents sustain their orchard with the well alone?
California as an institution has become an addict to bad science and steamroller politics. I am afraid it’s going to have to hit bottom before it realizes it’s errors. People are going to get hurt, families will be broken apart, businesses will close, and the community will scratch it’s head afterwards and wonder where it went wrong. Unfortunate metaphor but that’s what it looks like.
Docjay’s warning about the fires will be exacerbated by the equally stupid policies of the US Forest Service if they are still leaving all that fuel on the ground and limiting selective logging.
Watch out California there is a monster in Sacramento ( and Washington !) and the lost weekend is about to start.
Old saying out west: “Whisky’s fer drinkin’ an’ water’s fer fightin’ over.” I think water is a public resource, and as such can and should be regulated by the public authorities. But I also don’t trust those authorities to act intelligently, ethically, or morally. The temptation that they’ve given in to (as usual) is to use this as an issue to increase their power and favor special constituencies.
Yes, Aaron, my parents orchard should be fine with their well this year. I don’t think all my grandparents’ orchards have wells though. I’m not sure what my grandpa is going to do. He seems to think that the threat to shut off water is just a bluff to raise water rates. As if the drought isn’t as bad as everyone is saying. I’m not so sure he’s correct about that though. We’ll see.
Several weeks ago National Review hosted a symposium about the California water crisis & competing interests. It was fascinating although lengthy. Of particular interest to me was a former Univision executive turned labor activist speaking about the increase in poverty resulting from current water policy.
Environmentalists in California have run amok. I’m disgusted.
Video here
http://www.nationalreview.com/events/372480/man-vs-wild-california-water-crisis-parts-1-3-nr-staff
Apparently, comedian Paul Rodgriguez also comes from a farming family. He’s been fighting this water nonsense.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brad-wilmouth/2009/07/16/actor-paul-rodriguez-turns-gop-after-farmers-hurt-save-endangered-fis
Unfortunately, They won’t expect Them to be armed.
Look for some part of the government to come in and close the water wells. I have been through several natural events. The government always comes to help. Maybe they even help a few. Mainly they just get in the way as they pile regulation upon regulation, rule upon rule, oversight upon oversight, causing everything to be delayed, cost more, till eventually people just give up and walk away.
I lovingly ignore the water consumption rules in my hometown because my landscape supports a small yet remarkably diverse ecosystem of possums, geckos, squirrels, one lime green iguana, a contented school of koi (3 generations), and all the blue jays, red birds, and butterflies that cross pollinate just about everything and save me from ever having to replace a plant. Not to mention the plethora of gardenia, orange blossom, and night-blooming jasmine bushes that fill the air with an intoxicating aroma 24 -7.
Screw the Smelt indeed.
We need more of this kind of post.
Just remember that the envirnomentalists always have time to show up and “discuss” options. If they are the only people who show up, you can guesss what the options will be.
When Julius Caesar besieged the Gauls at Auletta, the Gallic army released its women and children who remained caught between the lines where most of them starved to death or died of exposure. Vercingetorix feared that if the Gauls died as a people, no one would be left to honor their gods, so he ordered the army to surrender whereupon the men were sold into slavery. The Gauls proved decisively that people are willing to die for the sake of a myth, not for the first time, and probably not for the last time either. The high priests of Mother Gaia demand sacrifice from the farmers of California! Be glad it’s not a blood sacrifice. Not this time, anyway.
I attended a lecture here at the university some years ago. One of the speakers was talking about the adaptation of various salmon species of the North West induced by our damming of rivers in the early 20th century. The change in the river flows created selective pressure on the fish leading to a shift in the population favoring fish with a particular spawning pattern. The talk was focused on saving the bio diversity, so at one point he began discussing recent efforts at restoring original habitats of the fish. Well it turns out that after many generations of dealing with the altered water ways, when you change them back the fish once again face sever stress, as once again they are poorly adapted.
The conclusion I drew from the talk was that the fish will adapt to whatever we do, so there isn’t much point in us fretting about them. Sadly I think I was the only one to come to this conclusion.
Thanks for the link, danys. I’ll check it out tonite.
And that’s exactly why water shouldn’t be treated as a public utility.
Water rights are rights attached to land that, like other rights associated with land (air rights, mineral rights), can be unbundled from the land itself and rebundled into other forms. We have, if we choose to avail ourselves of it, centuries of legal evolution regarding water rights, both for jurisdictions where water is usually plentiful (this is the more traditional system, but it’s not clear how well it’s adapted for the desert) and for jurisdictions where water is extremely scarce (this is a newer system of rights adapted to drier climates).
We do not need to resort to turning water into a public utility, certainly not at the state or federal level. (If individual towns find it more convenient to provide municipal water as a local public utility, that is their concern.)
And from what I hear, Lake Shasta is incredibly low too. A lot of people around the lake make a living by tourism over the summer. But there’s not gonna be much boating if there’s no water in the lake. It’s going to be a rough summer.
Whether one man’s use of his well may disrupt the water table and injure his neighbors’ wells is not a question that should be left up to environmentalists, but one that should concern ordinary people, and moreover, a question that ordinary people are capable of solving through bargaining with the rights they’ve bought.
In areas where flooding is a risk, if I buy a property that doesn’t flood, and then, without my permission, my neighbor alters his property in a way that causes my property to flood, I have a legitimate grievance against my neighbor. I paid for land that wouldn’t flood, after all. He has diminished my property significantly without my consent, and probably owes me compensation.
Similarly, in areas where water is scarce, if I pay for land with a with a working well, but then my neighbor’s use of his well causes mine to dry up, I have a legitimate grievance against him.
We also have a drought in AZ – it maybe explains why it is a desert.
I must confess that I do have a tiny lawn that I irrigate, and some shrubs and geraniums on a drip system. I’m hoping the lefty Californians don’t move in and ban water from the deep underground supplies.
Suzanne,
I seriously think conservatives & “advocates for the poor” should join forces. That environmental policy in CA makes the growing of food more difficult is nuts if not immoral.
Or does the fact that it’s a desert explain the drought? Could go either way, maybe.
I’m a fan of the look and feel of natural (or natural-ish) desert landscapes. Dry air and a low pollen count really perk me up. “Move to Arizona,” my asthma doctor suggested, “Except for Phoenix, which is now so heavily irrigated, you’d have the same problems there as you have here.”
Still, as long as people are paying for water at a rate that reflects what it’s actually worth… if they want to pay for keeping their greenery lush, why not?
I do sometimes wonder if all the ornamental greenery springing up in the desert is due to the price of water being artificially suppressed in some locations, though. It may not be, of course.
One possible solution: Smelt Sandwiches and Turtle Soup.
So the average precipitation here in Albuquerque is 9.5 inches…per year. (Having moved here from Florida that’s amazing. We would get that much on a summer afternoon.) As you can imagine, wells are closely regulated. Out here, your neighbor can literally pump you dry if he is not careful. Many people have to buy water by the truckload because their well has gone dry. The price of living in the desert.
I remember living in California during a previous drought. No watering the lawn, no washing the car, and if one used the loo, it was pee don’t / poo do. It could get kind of thick in the loo.
Midget Faded Rattlesnake:
“Still, as long as people are paying for water at a rate that reflects what it’s actually worth… if they want to pay for keeping their greenery lush, why not?”
We don’t pay water rates that reflect what water is worth. We merely pay for the delivery system.
Who are the owners of the water sources, then, and why are they OK with not being compensated for the substance taken from them?
It would seem to me that in buying most natural resources, you don’t just pay for the delivery system, but also some compensation (often indirect, I’m sure) to those who agreed to have the resource in its raw state taken from them in the first place.
If my neighbor’s property contained nice sand for glassmaking or nice deer for hunting, and I wished to avail myself of his resources, wouldn’t it be natural for me to offer to pay him for that privilege?
MFR,
It’ll take me some time to find my source but it was in The Big Thirst. The author also makes the case that all the water that is in the world is in the world, we can make water really, really clean and delivery is the problem (world wide).
Another excellent book on water (especially way out west) is Cadillac Desert