California Drought Update
by Patrick Ruckert
May 28, 2015
http://www.californiadroughtupdate.org
https://www.facebook.com/CaliforniaDroughtUpdate
Give me your water, or I will take it!
That was the message given to the farmers in the Delta last week, and why Delta farmers agreed to forego 25 percent of their allocated water this year, under the threat that the state was days away from ordering perhaps more drastic cuts.
This occurred May 21, and California water officials were almost giddy as the farmers “voluntarily” agreed to the deal. The deal? Agree to the cut or we may take all your water later in the year– and maybe even sooner. Having set this action as a precedent, state officials hope to use it as a model throughout the state, especially since farmers in the delta hold some of California’s oldest and thus best protected water rights.
For the farmers, what was at stake was the millions of dollars they have already spent planting this year’s crops. If they did not surrender to the extortion, losing 25 percent of their crop, then they might lose it all.
As one farmer put it, “… I’m being asked to give up 25 percent of my paycheck.”
No sooner than that deal was done, the California State Farm Bureau in their publication, Ag Alert, on May 27, warned that state regulators are about to cut-off more farmers, that is, more than the 9,000 junior water rights holders that have already lost some or all of their allocations. This is the second year in a row these farmers have been cut. The State Water Board indicated that senior water rights holders in Sacramento and the San Joaquin watersheds, and others, may be hit in the coming days.
Also on May 27, in Ag Alert, under the title, “Commentary: We must communicate the facts about water use,” by Mark Jansen, summarizes the cuts to their water farmers are getting:
“In 2014, farmers received only 5 percent of their contracted State Water Project allocation and 0 percent from the federal Central Valley Project. This year, farmers are projected to receive 20 percent of State Water Project allocation and again, 0 percent of CVP water. Our farmers have been feeling the effects of this drought from the very beginning.”
Then Jansen blows a hole in the oft-repeated and stupid statement that agriculture is not a significant part of the state economy:
“Some have questioned whether agriculture’s economic impact justifies the amount of water used by the industry. The media points to agriculture’s 2.8 percent share of the state GDP, but again, this figure lacks context. It does not tell the whole story. Getting our food from farm to fork involves an interconnected supply chain, undoubtedly contributing significantly more than 2.8 percent to the state’s economy. The almond industry alone contributes 104,000 jobs to California, 97,000 of which reside in the Central Valley, and more than 37,000 additional jobs throughout the supply chain.”
And those who eat, the one’s at the end of the food production chain, to put it in crude terms, as did the New York Times, on May 22: “The average American consumes more than 300 gallons of California water each week by eating food that was produced there.”
How bad is the drought?
The U. S. Drought Monitor graphics illustrate just how bad the drought is:
U.S. Drought Monitor
May 13, 2014
May 13, 2015
(Unfortunately the graphics do not reproduce here. Go to the U.S. Drought Monitor on google to see them.)
The very dark red signifies “exception drought,” the worst category of drought used by the U.S. Drought Monitor. Last year, in January, there was zero percent of the state in “exceptional drought.” By September of last year, 58 percent of the drought was in “exceptional drought.” As of May 19, 2015, 47 percent of the state is currently in “exceptional drought.”
It get’s worse, and even worse is feared
For farmers, the cutbacks in water for their crops is not something that is new this year or even last year. It has been going on since the early 1990s. As I have written in previous issues, California and federal water planners had established in the 1960s two projects that would have provided adequate water supplies to the state by 1990. Those projects were the building of nuclear-powered desalination plants to be completed in the 1970s and 80s, and the North American Water and Power Alliance(NAWAPA) to be completed by the 1990s. NAWAPA was, and is still today a viable project to bring water from Alaska and Northern Canada to the Canadian prairie, the mid-west of the U.S., the Southwest and Mexico. The Brownshirts of California, with the new regulators on desalination, have virtually eliminated that means of providing new water supplies.
Below is an article from the Capital Press on May 26, by Tim Heardon, which expresses the increasing pessimism of those in the Central Valley:
Some fear SJ Valley ag could go the way of timber industry
FRESNO — Is agriculture in the iconic San Joaquin Valley going the way of California’s once-abundant timber industry?
As nearly 1 million acres of farmland could be fallowed this summer because of drought-related water shortages, some farmers are beginning to draw comparisons with the wood products industry, whose decline was hastened by protections for the Northern spotted owl.
Farm layoffs and processing plant closures could rekindle memories of lumber mill shutdowns after the spotted owl’s 1990 listing as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.
Since then, more than 80 sawmills have closed in California alone because of various factors, including the spotted owl. In 1978, more than 4.4 billion board-feet of lumber valued at $699 million was produced in California, according to state Board of Equalization tax records. In 2009, in the heart of the Great Recession, only 805 million board-feet was produced with a value of $99 million.
Since the early 1990s, Central Valley Project water allocations to farmers south of the Delta have declined with each new environmental protection — from winter run salmon temperature controls in the San Joaquin River to biological opinions further protecting salmon and the Delta smelt, grower groups say.
Among San Joaquin Valley commodities that have suffered a similar fate to timber is cotton. California has gone from 1.6 million acres of cotton in the 1980s to somewhere between 150,000 and 170,000 acres this year, largely because of a steady drop of water supplies from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, said Roger Isom, who runs a trio of organizations for nut and cotton growers and processors.
Amid the drought, the Central Valley Project has shut off agricultural water to junior rights holders, including the prime citrus growing region in Fresno, Tulare and Kings counties, for the second straight year. California Citrus Mutual has estimated as many as 50,000 acres of orchards could be removed as a result of the zero allocation.
Climate change: Believe it or you will be considered a threat to national security
That was the message that Obama delivered to the graduates of the Coast Guard Academy last week. On his heels was White House Science Adviser John Holdren, who is quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle on May 24. Holdren states, “Climate change is moving faster than anticipated and is intensifying California’s drought, and unless greenhouse gas emissions are slowed, the state’s efforts to adapt will ultimately be overwhelmed….” Remember, two weeks ago Governor Brown issued an executive order to accelerate the state’s reduction of the production of CO2.
Interestingly, Holdren did say something positive about desalination, sort of, after first exaggerating the costs: “If the San Diego County plant produces its maximum projection of 50 million gallons a day, ‘you would need some 60 of those to meet half of the urban water needs of the state of California,’ Holdren said. ‘It could be done.’”
We used to say, “If it is Brown, flush it.” Now it is, “If it is Brown, drink it”
Widely reported this week is a new propaganda campaign promoting the processing of sewage water into drinkable water. Newsweek, under the title, “Californians may have to drink sewage as drought crisis continues,” on May 26, states, “California residents may be forced to drink their own sewage as plans to combat California’s record drought gain momentum.”
But, Newsweek assures us, this is the up and coming way to conserve: “Direct potable reuse takes treated sewage effluent and purifies it so it can be used as drinking water. It is a process currently used in Namibia and parts of Texas, according to the Los Angeles Times. Experts believe that if the water is thoroughly filtered to remove all harmful bacteria, the water can be cleaner than bottled water.”
The article even quotes Tim Quinn, executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies, who told the LA Times, referring to sewer water, “That water is discharged into the ocean and lost forever.” Come on Tom, you know better than that. That water will be recycled by evaporation and once again fall to Earth as precipitation.
Unfortunately, this policy will be expensive and it could take decades before we Californians will be able to flush our toilet and then drink it out of the tap.
The generation represented by President John F. Kennedy and Governor Pat Brown created the California Water Project explicitly to ensure that the next generation would have all the water required. This generation represented by the likes of Jerry Brown, Obama and George Bush, are gifting the next generation with the slogan: “If it is Brown, drink it.”
Population reduction organizations blame the drought on immigration
(EIRNS, May 24)– Indirectly endorsing Governor Jerry Brown’s de-population policy by denying water to the people of California, anti-population and anti-immigration groups are now blaming the drought on illegal immigrants and over-population, confusing a climatic process with a water crisis caused by decades of not investing in new water infrastructure.
Echoing Prince Phillip, who in 1988, in an interview with a German publication, said that when he dies he wishes to be reincarnated as a deadly virus to deal with over-population.
As reported by the Los Angeles Times on May 24, Californian’s for Population Stabilization is airing a commercial throughout California blaming immigrants for the high levels of population growth that the state’s natural resources cannot support.
The Times reports that: “‘Essentially all of California’s rapid population growth has been due to people from other countries and the children of immigrants,'” said Ben Zuckerman, an astrophysics professor at UCLA who sits on the board of CAPS. “‘The larger the population of California, the more difficult it will be to deal with the effects of the drought.'”
The article counters that statement with a quote from a climatologist: “Blaming the drought on immigrants “‘doesn’t fit the facts,'” said William Patzert, a climatologist from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The drought is caused by meager snowpack and poor planning, he said, “‘not because the immigrants are drinking too much water or taking too many showers.'”
Who funds this fascist organization? It is the Colcom Foundation, begun by Cordelia Scaife May, one of the members of the Scaife family, noted for their funding of neo-cons and other anti-American groups. Scaife May puts her environmentalist credentials up front, funding anti-population growth and anti-immigrant organizations.
A second organization, Population Environment Balance, issued a report in May, 2015, “Mass Immigration Intensifies Water Crisis But There is A Solution.” The document claims that nearly 100 percent of California’s population growth comes from legal and illegal immigration. The drought is amplified, they claim, by over-population, and since the population growth comes from immigrants, immigration must be stopped.
Usually the anti-population growth environmentalists are more careful in presenting their fascist outlook, but when the governor of California has joined them they rip off that mask.
Desalination is not a fix, the report states, because it harms the environment; the same for dams and reservoirs. The report concludes forecasting that as the water crisis tightens supplies more people will join them in the campaign to depopulate California.
