California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

NY Times ^ | 6/12/2015 | Jennifer Medina

[RightGeek]

Farmers with rights to California water dating back more than a century will face sharp cutbacks, the first reduction in their water use since 1977, state officials announced Friday. The officials said that rights dating to 1903 would be restricted, and that such restrictions would grow as the summer months go on, with the state facing a prolonged drought that shows few signs of easing.

“Demand in our key rivers systems are outstripping supply,” said Caren Trgovcich, the State Water Resources Control Board’s chief deputy director. “Other cuts may be imminent.”

It is too early to know the practical impact of the cuts, which prohibit farmers from taking surface water. State officials have warned of such curtailments for months, and many farmers and agricultural water districts prepared for them by increasing their reserves or digging new wells for groundwater.

[snip]

The restrictions could cause the widespread fallowing of cropland in areas that have so far been largely exempt from cutbacks. The impact is likely to be felt far more broadly than it was in the 1970s, because the state now has more authority to impose cuts and a greater ability to measure how water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is used.

[snip]

[ScottinVA]

“Some might even have to go home now..”

Problem is.. for years liberals and their reps in government have told the illegals they ARE at home. The illegals will leave CA all right, but not for Mexico. They’ll be fanning out throughout the rest of the country.

[Drago]

Not quite that simple, both L.A. and the San Jose/Santa Clara area get a large amount of water from the SWP (”State Water Project”)...70% of the total water in the SWP system goes to cities. Farmers paid for part of the original SWP construction cost and of course continue to pay for their 30% of SWP water. And sometimes the ag interests get the shaft...in 2014 Westlands Water District paid for and “banked” water in San Luis Reservoir and won’t receive it until 2016 or later depending on rainfall.
CA water rights are a VERY complex topic!! Oh well, guess I’ll just watch “Chinatown” for an entertaining movie version! ;-)
http://www.water.ca.gov/swp/cvp.cfm
http://www.usbr.gov/history/cvpintro.html

[Pollster1]

Depending how you measure, California agriculture generates about $43B a year in productivity (milk, fruit, vegetables, nuts, wine, and other food for the world). Again, depending on how you measure, California (state and local) spends about $75B a year on their illegals.

Given a choice of sending water to California’s farmers or to 11 million illegal aliens in the state, California’s government finds that an easy decision.

[bert]

The desert civilizing gamble has lost

the desert is winning

[bert]

.....Suddenly, there isn’t enough water.-——

There is enough water...... there are too many needs for water

The California experiment has failed in the long term

[hal ogen]

It is only right that the Cali’s help that little worthless fish while they build a high speed train to nowhere.

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

Yes, and of course the root cause is the turnstiles we have installed at the southern border.

If we actually protected our border and controlled immigration (illegal AND legal), we’d be able to limit population growth to what is, umm, what’s that word the leftists keep using?

Oh, yea...SUSTAINABLE.

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

And the new trend of the liberals in CA is to snap a picture of someone “wasting” water and to post it to social media.

They call it water shaming.

At what point do we start taking pictures of people at the checkout counter with a stack of steaks and junk food texting on a $600 iPhone and post that to social media.

When do we start EBT Shaming?

[Sivad]

Amen, vette FRiend

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

I do. Sure thing.

And also those who buy vacation homes down at the Jersey Shore.

Did you know John Stossel (the big government-waste investigative journalist) has a home at the beach? That it was destroyed in a hurricane? And that he admits that he took the $250,000 from the government (that is, your tax dollars and mine) to have it repaired?

If people want to live in a flood plain or on the beach, I say go ahead. But if you get flooded out, either you get reimbursed by paying the full price of insurance (which should be pretty high in a high-risk area and should NOT be subsidized by others), or you are out of your investment.

Don’t ask me to bail you out.

I’d have some sympathy for those in CA if it were truly just a drought brought about by, you know, lack of water.

But it isn’t.

This is a socialist-caused problem. They let the illegals in. They let the legals in. They did so for their votes. The econazis refused to let any new power plants, reservoirs or aquaducts be built in the last 30 years while the population doubled.

The econazis insisted they shut down the aquaducts to save some critter.

This is not a natural disaster, it is a socialist disaster.

So I say the socialists can go to hell.

The only sympathy I have is for the conservatives in CA who see what’s going on but who have been disenfranchised by the illegal votes that put the socialist scum in power.

[Sivad]

I applaud your consistency and thank you
for your tip of the hat to California
conservatives. I would point out that the
vast majority of California farmers are
conservative. They add to the economy and
supply our nation with food.

[Axenolith]

I’m not claiming those were built by farmers, the overall majority were. For an individual instance, take the Klamath system, that was built for irrigation and VETERANS were settled there with the promise of water in perpetuity. They’ve since be screwed out of that promise.

The Central Valley Project dwarfs those systems you cited, and it was built for agriculture by the FEDs and State. The state was built on agriculture, and the way it’s political system is going, that’s what it’s going to end up returning to.

[Axenolith]

Oh, and even Los Angeles' system was initially designed for irrigation, though intended for growth. And essentially stolen through fraud no less...

From 1902 through 1905, Eaton, Mulholland, and others engaged in underhanded methods to ensure that Los Angeles would gain the water rights in the Owens Valley, blocking the Bureau of Reclamation from building water infrastructure for the residents in Owens Valley.[8]:48–69[10]:62-69 While Eaton engaged in most of the political maneuverings and chicanery,[10]:62 Mulholland misled Los Angeles public opinion by dramatically understating the amount of water then available for Los Angeles' growth.[10]:73 Mullholland also misled residents of the Owens Valley: he indicated that Los Angeles would only use unused flows in the Owens Valley, while planning on using the full water rights to fill the aquifer of the San Fernando Valley.[10]:73

The water from the aqueduct carries water from the Owens Valley in the Eastern Sierra to irrigate and store water in the San Fernando Valley. When the aqueduct was built, the San Fernando Valley was not part of the city.[10]:74–76[11]:152[15] From a hydrological point of view, the San Fernando Valley was ideal: its aquifer could serve as free water storage without evaporation.[10]:73 One obstacle to the irrigation was the Los Angeles City Charter, which prohibited the sale, lease, or other use of the city's water without a two-thirds approval by the voters.[8]:18 This charter limitation would be avoided through the annexation of a large portion of the San Fernando Valley to the city.[8]:133 Mulholland realized that the annexation would raise the debt limit of Los Angeles, which allowed the financing of the aqueduct.[16] By 1915, the initial annexations were completed,[17] and by 1926 the land area of Los Angeles had doubled, making it the largest city in the United States by area.[18]

The water from the aqueduct shifted farming in the San Fernando Valley from wheat to irrigated crops such as corn, beans, squash, and cotton. The Valley became known for its orchards of apricots, persimmons, and walnuts; and major citrus groves of oranges and lemons. These continued within the city environs until the growth of Los Angeles converted land use into suburbanization.

[Axenolith]

Bravo Ghost!

Bureaucratic inertia also prevents utilizing the drought as a period to enlarge capacity by excavating sediment, hills, and knobs from the currently drawn down reservoirs. Statewide, I bet you could increase capacity a half million + acre feet.

Might have to slurry that 806 million yds3 of spoils and build an island at sea though...

[Morpheus2009]

Thanks for the insight. I never knew exactly how old, but I had known the warnings had been shouted out for years, but I had no idea how far back. The earliest I had known was 1990, but I had always been guessing that was an understatement.

Thanks