While Paramount Farms and other corporate agribusiness interests continue to expand water-thirsty almond acreage during California's epic drought, Delta farmers this week stepped up to the plate and proposed a voluntary 25 percent reduction in their water use.
On May 22, the State Water Resources Control Board approved the proposal from Delta farmers, riparian water right holders in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, to voluntarily cut back water use in exchange for assurances they would not face further riparian curtailment during the June-September growing season.
“This proposal helps Delta growers manage the risk of potentially deeper curtailment, while ensuring significant water conservation efforts in this fourth year of drought,” said State Water Board Chair Felicia Marcus, in a Board press release. “It allows participating growers to share in the sacrifice that people throughout the state are facing because of the severe drought, while protecting their economic well-being by giving them some certainty regarding exercise of the State Water Board’s enforcement discretion at the beginning of the planting season.”
According to the release:
"Growers who participate in the program could opt to either reduce water diversions under their riparian rights by 25 percent, or fallow 25 percent of their land, In both cases, the reductions would be from 2013 levels. Riparian water right holders who choose not to participate in this voluntary program may face enforcement of riparian curtailments later this year, though risk of curtailment would not be any greater than it would have been if the program were not approved.
Water right holders throughout the state, including senior and riparian right holders, have been warned that curtailments are likely this year because of the continued unprecedented drought conditions. Junior water right holders in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river watersheds and others have already been curtailed for the second consecutive year. Last year, hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland were fallowed.
To be included in this program, participants will have to submit a specific plan to achieve the program’s conservation requirements by June 1, and the State Water Board will conduct spot checks during the growing season.
The program only applies to riparian water right holders in the Delta. Riparian water rights are held by those who own property that abuts a river or stream and divert water for use on that property. Unlike appropriative rights, which are curtailed by seniority along a waterway, riparian rights are curtailed collectively by a shared percentage. Because most of the farm land in the Delta abuts natural streams and sloughs, riparian water right claims are more extensive in the Delta than in other agricultural regions of the state.
These water rights are among the most secure in the state’s water rights system and are curtailed only when natural stream flow is inadequate to serve the reasonable uses of all riparians.
The State Water Board welcomed the farmers’ proposal and staff has worked with them and other stakeholders to refine it. The State Water Board is open to voluntary agreements to manage and mitigate drought impacts, as long as they do not harm other water rights and do not cause unreasonable effects to fish and wildlife.
Although this conservation program has been proposed by riparian water rights holders in the Delta, the program could be a template for riparians in other parts of the state, subject to adjustment for local and regional conditions."
George Hartmann, a water rights lawyer who is representing farmers in negotiations with the state, told the New York Times the reasoning behind the proposal: "There’s a misconception that delta farmers are a bunch of arrogant snobs who say, ‘It’s our water and don’t you dare touch it.' But they recognize there’s an extreme drought, and they want to do something to help. Hopefully this will change part of that perception.” (http://www.nytimes.com/...)
Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, the executive director of Restore the Delta (RTD), described the plan as an “absolutely generous and noble act” from the Delta farmers.
“It really exemplifies the difference between sustainable farming that we see here versus continued expansion of permanent crops like almonds in the desert," she told the Times. "It may just be enough to save the fisheries or help another community out if there is a real emergency.”
Let's hear a big round of applause for Delta farmers in their voluntary effort to save water during the California drought! Now when will other farmers follow their model water conservation plan, approved by the Water Board?
During the same State Water Resources Control Board where Delta farmers proposed their voluntary water cuts, Restore the Delta and the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA) slammed the Brown administration regarding drought impacts, the installation of a drought barrier in the Delta, and violations of Delta water quality standards since the beginning of the year.
“The California drought is a fifty-eight county drought,” said Barrigan-Parrilla. “Previous workshops in front of the SWRCB have focused primarily on efforts to get water to a handful of the 58 counties in California, and less than equal time has been spent on the impacts of drought management on the five Delta counties, Delta fisheries, threatened species, and water quality standards."
"The five Delta Counties are donor counties to the water export system, and have already suffered the negative impacts from the export of hundreds of millions of acre-feet of water over decades," she said. "This board determined in 2010 that greater outflows to the San Francisco Bay were needed for the protections of the estuary. Yet, the pumps have yet to be turned off one day in over four years of drought. The negative impacts of over pumping the estuary are now being exacerbated by drought emergency measures, and federal water quality standards are being violated on a daily basis.”
Bill Jennings, Executive Director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, emphasized, “The State Board Drought orders are an execution warrant for Central Valley fisheries. It is an unreasonable use of water to send species into extinction and hijack water from the environment, areas where water originates, and urban communities, simply to supply junior water rights holders in the desert with vast quantities of water to irrigate crops that produce relatively little revenue and few jobs.”
Barrigan-Parrilla said "the priorities of the State are evident" in the inadequate steps taken to protect the endangered giant garter snake during drought barrier construction at False River. Photos taken during barrier construction show that DWR installed a 150-foot-long fence along the road surrounded by open fields that extend for 7 miles around the island.
Barrigan-Parrilla explained, “It is laughable to think that a small fence will protect the threatened snake from slithering into equipment and materials during construction. The snake can go, and has already gone, around this cloth fence. Additional historical documents show that the False River Barrier is being constructed exactly where their habitat is located on Bradford Island.
If the State cannot follow the laws in place or use good sense and judgment to get this small project right from the start, how can anyone believe that they will they protect the dozens of endangered species that live in the Delta, like the giant garter snake, while staging 35 miles of around-the-clock construction for 10 years to build Governor Brown’s water tunnels?”
Restore the Delta also released a short video on You Tube to make their drought concerns accessible to the public, calling for favoritism to end in the Brown Administration’s handling of drought measures and efforts to move forward with the Delta tunnels. The video can be seen here: http://restorethedelta.org/...