[env-trinity] SF Chron Editorial Water

[Byron Leydecker]

Editorial 

Farmers must monitor, reduce water use

The San Francisco Chronicle- 9/14/08

 

Drought, population growth, global warming, a collapsing Sacramento-San
Joaquin River Delta environment - it's no secret that California's water
challenges are only going to get more challenging in the near future. So
you'd think, at the very least, that the state would measure how much water
farmers - who use about 80 percent of the water drawn from the ailing delta
- use each year. 

 

 
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/15/EDLP12TB1O.DTL>
Pelosi views on abortion in synch with most Catholics 09.15.08 

And you'd best think again.

 

There's no system to measure or monitor how much of our water is being used
by agricultural interests - and therefore we have no idea what our state's
water needs and policy should be going into the future. (Think about that,
voters, before you approve any more water bonds.) That's just one of the
surprising revelations of researchers at the Pacific Institute in Oakland in
their new study about the potential for agricultural water conservation in
California. The other big surprise in their report is the fact that
California farmers could save billions of gallons of water every year by
expanding practices they already use - sparing the rest of us the cost and
environmental damage of at least some of the new dams being discussed by
legislators and the governor. 

 

The report lists a number of ways in which farmers cannot just conserve
water but save money in the process: installing drip irrigation (about 60
percent of California agriculture is still irrigated using flood-irrigation
methods), switching over to crops that require less water and yield higher
prices (it's pretty hard to justify growing rice and cotton in what is,
after all, a desert climate), and managing irrigation with technology
instead of visual inspections. 

 

This is good news: Who likes wasting money? And who wants more dams? So it's
disheartening to watch farming interests try to tear the report down. A
spokesman from the California Farm Bureau Federation declared that farmers
are already increasing their efficiency. 

 

Jasper Hempel, executive vice president for Western Growers Association, the
trade group whose members grow 90 percent of California's fruits and
vegetables, said in a statement that his organization was "troubled" by a
report he described as "incomplete" and added that he hoped a "more serious
study" would soon emerge.

 

There are a few reasons why farmers might take umbrage to the suggestion
that they could be doing things better, but they all go back to money -
money and perceived control. Regarding the money, it requires quite a bit of
up-front cash to, say, shift from flood irrigation to drip - $1,000 per
acre. But that initial capital outlay is usually recouped within two years,
and there's no reason why the state couldn't offer farmers rebates to do the
right thing.

 

The other reason for farmers to resist change is that it could upset the
infrastructure, delivery systems and financial plans they've already
created. But change, like it or not, will have to come to California's water
policy. We simply can't continue along the path that we're traveling. Just
as urban dwellers in California have had to adapt to low-flush toilets,
short showers and mandatory reduction programs, farmers, too, need to step
up the efforts to use less water.

 

For the sake of California, that day needs to come sooner rather than later.
The first step is for the Legislature and the governor to insist on a
measuring and monitoring system for agricultural water use. That system must
be approved before voters offer Sacramento yet another check for dams and
other water infrastructure.

 

The second step is for our state leaders to go to the farmers and ask them
what kinds of changes they're willing to make if they're to continue getting
so much water at such a great cost to the state. Will they work with the
state to update their irrigation systems? Phase in different crops? And if
they say that they won't change a thing - if they say that California's
environmental sustainability and future growth are less important than their
ability to continue farming rice or cotton using wasteful methods - well,
then, they'll have to explain that to the voters themselves.

 

 

Byron Leydecker, JCT

Chair, Friends of Trinity River

PO Box 2327

Mill Valley, CA 94942-2327

415 383 4810

415 519 4810 cell

bwl3 at comcast.net

bleydecker at stanfordalumni.org (secondary)

http://fotr.org 

 <mailto:bwl3 at comcast.net>  

 

 

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