Posted on 03/19/2004 9:58:14 PM PST by calcowgirl
SAN FRANCISCO - A half-century ago, the federal government moved mountains and harnessed rivers to convert California's Central Valley into some of the nation's most productive farmland, fed by subsidized water at rock-bottom rates.
Now, many of those cheap-water contracts are up for renewal, rousing critics who argue that the government should increase its rates, both to generate more revenue and encourage farmers to conserve.
The critics include both fiscal conservatives and liberal environmentalists. Aileen Roder, the program director for Taxpayers for Common Sense in Washington, calls the contracts "a raw deal" for taxpayers. Barry Nelson, a senior policy analyst for the New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council, says farmers should "get off the welfare rolls."
But officials at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which runs the system of dams and canals known as the Central Valley Project, appear ready to renew the contracts for as long as 25 years with few changes. Under decades-old policy, the farmers pay the federal government a set fee for water stockpiled by the project. Bennett Raley, an assistant secretary of the Interior Department, says the reclamation bureau, which his office oversees, wants to provide farmers with an economical source of water. "We don't think it's good for California or the nation to adopt punitive pricing proposals that might have the effect of driving more agriculture out of existence," he says.
A spokesman for the Bureau of Reclamation, Jeffrey McCracken, adds that the agency is trying to adhere to policies outlined by Congress beginning in the 1940s that gave farmers a price break on water, compared with urban and industrial users. He notes that the farmers' rates have been increased recently to accelerate payments to the federal government, but that they're still nowhere near the urban rates.
In urban San Jose, for example, a water agency pays about $80 an acre-foot for water from the Central Valley Project. Just 50 miles away, farmers in the Central Valley pay as little as $10 an acre-foot. An acre-foot is 325,800 gallons, or roughly as much water as a family of five uses at home in a year.
Critics say that by not moving to substantially raise rates now that it has the opportunity, the Bush administration is favoring its traditional allies in agricultural areas. "These contracts look like a pure payoff to people who have been politically and financially supportive to the Bush administration," says John Lawrence, an aide to U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez. Assistant Secretary Raley denies there are any political motives.
Many of the new contracts are expected to be finalized this year. What the government chooses to do could have implications far beyond California, because hundreds of old contracts supplying cheap water to farmers will soon expire across the arid West, where federal irrigation projects made deserts bloom.
The dispute is also adding a new chapter to the West's storied water wars. Ever since Los Angeles diverted water from the eastern Sierra Nevada, drying up Mono Lake by the 1920s, cities, states and federal agencies have been fighting over how to divide up the arid region's scarce water resources. A particular point of contention has been the amount of water used for agriculture. Because farmers in California use the majority of the state's water, officials in urban areas like Los Angeles and San Diego have long complained that agricultural users need to conserve more.
Federal public-works projects made large-scale irrigation possible, and the biggest of these efforts was the Central Valley Project. Authorized in 1935, the system routes water from the Cascade Mountains near Oregon and the Sierra Nevada on California's eastern flank through 20 dams and more than 500 miles of canals. It allowed farmers to vastly increase planting in the 400-mile-long Central Valley, particularly in the region south of Sacramento, where water is particularly scarce. Under the current contracts, the rates charged to farmers don't include any of the interest on the financing for the $3.6 billion project; urban and industrial rates do include interest.
Critics say that eliminating the agricultural subsidy could raise hundreds of millions of dollars for the federal government and result in a big enough increase in water conservation to supply a city the size of Los Angeles. The state Department of Water Resources estimates that doubling water prices would reduce water use roughly 30 percent. Environmentalists also argue that higher water rates could change what crops are grown in the California agricultural industry. For example, they say, alfalfa consumes roughly one-quarter of the state's irrigated water, but it produces only about 4 percent of California's agricultural revenue.
But farmers say that most of the 20,000 growers who take water from the Central Valley Project already use drip irrigation or other water-saving techniques. And they say they have plenty of incentive to conserve because the seemingly low rates at which irrigation districts buy water don't reflect the actual rates charged to farms. The Westlands Water District near Fresno pays $37 an acre-foot for its federal water. But after tacking on distribution costs, the district charges farmer Dan Errotabere more than twice that, or roughly $80 an acre-foot.
Errotabere says his family uses about 9,000 acre-feet of water a year -- at a cost of $720,000 -- to irrigate 3,000 acres of lettuce, tomatoes and other crops. Eliminating the agricultural subsidy would increase his water bill as much as $360,000 a year, he says, potentially forcing him to reduce planting and lay off some of his 15 workers.
Competing in a global market against farmers with lower costs, Errotabere says he has little room to raise prices. "The hardship would be extraordinary," he says.
Farmers also say they're already suffering because environmental restrictions have reduced their water allocations in recent years. The 600,000-acre Westlands district, as big as Rhode Island, has received only slightly more than half of its 1.1-million-acre-foot annual allotment in each of the past six years, officials say. As a result, farmers have been forced to tap groundwater, which can cause land to sink, or to buy more expensive surplus water from other districts.
But environmentalists point to the practice of some farming districts of selling their unused water as further evidence the system needs to change. While the water-selling farmers say such sales allow them to bolster their meager incomes, the environmentalists say the federal government is losing out because the water is being resold for several times its original cost. "This," says the NRDC's Nelson, "has become an arbitrage opportunity."
Let 'em eat yellow snow!!!
Mar. 19, 2004
By Dennis Pollock, The Fresno Bee, Calif. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Mar. 19 - John Diener of Five Points, a leader in the west-side cause, has reclaimed land by reducing the saltiness in water.
Sitting in the midst of soured farmland where the economy is on the skids, about 20 people gathered in Five Points on Thursday to discuss the need for a revolution.
"With the Westlands land retirement, the decrease in water supplies and the drainage problems, the stage is set for a revolution," said Sarge Green, manager of the Westside Resource Conservation District.
Some 200,000 acres of farmland in the Westlands Water District are expected to be taken out of production because of salinity that has been building as a result of drainage difficulties. With one in three residents of the region unemployed, the land retirement is expected to cause the loss of thousands of jobs.
The meeting was marked by an emphasis on trying to help farming operations survive and keep jobs in the region -- and perhaps create more -- by employing new ways of thinking and farming:
Instead of seeing salt as a waste product, find markets for it. Instead of depending on crops such as wheat and cotton that are assisted by federal subsidies, diversify into other arenas, including biodiesel production and biomass production.
Also, some crops can be used to draw selenium, a naturally occurring mineral linked to deformities in waterfowl on the Kesterson Reservoir, from the soil. Those crops -- including canola in the winter and sunflowers in the summer -- can be used in biodiesel and provide selenium to cattle who lack the mineral.
One of the leading soldiers of the west-side cause is John Diener of Five Points, who is working to reclaim thousands of abandoned acres and attract interest in alternative farming approaches.
"We need to do things that keep the money here," Diener said during the program that was presented by the conservation district and Community Alliance with Family Farmers.
Diener explained how he uses biodiesel made from the oils of sunflowers and canola to help power irrigation pumps and tractors on his Red Rock Ranch. He said the meal from those plants contains selenium and protein feed for "ruminant animals" -- sheep, deer and cows. While the west side of the Valley is naturally rich in selenium, the east side is not, Diener said. Cattle on the east side could benefit from the addition of selenium to their feed. Diener came up with a way to recycle water to reduce its salinity and in three years made great strides.
"We were surprised how fast we reclaimed the land," he said. "We went from 1 ton of wheat per acre to 3 tons in three years."
Among those who attended the meeting was Craig Roberts, who said Diener "is on the cutting edge of what ag needs to do if it is going to survive."
Roberts is plant manager for Cal/West Seeds in Tranquillity, which is operated by a grower cooperative.
He said the cooperative's grower base has been dwindling because of economic challenges that growers are facing, and its sales of alfalfa seed have dropped to 3 million pounds from 14 million in 1988.
Rob Rundle, an agronomist with Britz Farms, said he has a personal interest in biodiesel because it does not emit greenhouse gases.
"It's more environmentally friendly and could be a solution to the problem of climate change," he said.
But Rundle pointed out that biodiesel costs more -- about $1 more than a gallon of conventional diesel, according to Bryan Jenkins, a professor with the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering at University of California at Davis.
Jose Faria, chief of the Special Investigations Branch of the California Department of Water Resources, talked of using salt ponds to absorb energy from the sun to produce electricity or to operate a greenhouse.
He also said saltwater is being used at Tulare Lake to raise brine shrimp, which are sold as feed for pet fish.
David Righthouse, plant manager and vice president of AES Mendota, a biomass energy facility, said such plants are seen as "an air pollution solution" to burning orchard prunings in open fields.
That's because they can cut particulates released by between 96 percent and 99 1/2 percent.
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Fresno Bee Article via Miami Herald
Mark! Thank you for that link!!!
Having been a "shallow politician" in one of my past lives, I never had actually gone and looked up Warren's words in delivering the dastardly decision. As you are well aware of my thoughts on this matter, the following is primarily for calcowgirl, or anyone else that happens to read it. You've heard it all before.
calcowgirl, try to imagine a representative federal legislature with both houses based on "one person, one vote." The U.S. Senate would have only one U.S. Senator representing the 7 western contiguous states and AK & HI!!!
Thus, in CA, LA County voters have access to 13 State Senators, while I have to share my State Senator with 13 other counties. Is that not a total dilution of my vote?
There never was a need to switch the dilution of votes and make state legislatures as imbalanced as a unicameral legislature like NE's, except the changing occupational nature of this nation from ag to non-ag industry.
I have to go now, but this decision is exactly why I cannot imagine anyone not understanding how a percieved "unfairness" is remedied by a literal injustice!!! Presidential candidates might need to worry a tiny bit about the "farm vote," but state-wide candidates no longer need be concerned whatsoever!!!
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