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At war over Valley water rights; Farmers fear they’ll get short straw in court fight

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 21, 2008 at 6:38 am

From the Antelope Valley Press:

A farmer needs two things to produce his crops: his land and his water.

In the long, often contentious court battle to determine water rights in the Valley, local farmers are seeking rights to the water under their land and the ability to sell water from their wells for use within the Antelope Valley. They are suspicious of efforts to restrict access to the groundwater, which has allowed many of them to farm the Antelope Valley successfully for generations.

Last year, more than 16,000 acres of the Antelope Valley were farmed, producing crops that included alfalfa, onions, carrots and peaches. The Valley’s 2007 crops were worth more than $53 million, according to the Los Angeles County Agricultural Commission. Success of those crops depends on a reliable source of water - groundwater pumped through wells or water imported from north of the Sacramento Delta through the California Aqueduct.

Farmers are at odds with Los Angeles County, Lancaster, Palmdale and water purveyors, all of whom are fighting for their own water rights to satisfy a growing demand by residential customers, businesses and industrial users.

Farmers are also at odds among themselves regarding the right to sell well water. Most farmers want the ability to sell excess water under their land. But carrot growers, who lease much of the land they farm, fear water transfers will unfairly limit their access to available land by making water sales more lucrative to landowners than leasing.

Some purveyors and city officials think farmers want access to all of the groundwater, while the farmers believe the cities and purveyors are making a grab for water that belongs to them.

One source of conflict among farmers is the county’s claim that it has higher priority to the water in the Valley’s basin than farmers. But farmers claim owning land and drawing water for their own use outweighs this appropriation by the county.

Farmers are still bristling over comments made four years ago by Los Angeles County in a lawsuit brief alleging that using water “for irrigation purposes is unreasonable in the arid Antelope Valley and constitutes waste and unreasonable use … and is thereby unlawful.”

“I think there’s a lot of people who eat food that would probably disagree with that,” said John Calandri, a third-generation farmer who has been farming on the east side of Lancaster for 43 years.

The Calandri farm produces onions and carrots and ships onions across the United States and as far away as Australia and Italy. Local farmers scoff at the notion that the dry, windy Valley is not a good place to raise crops. “It’s a very difficult place to farm. But if you can get through the elements you can raise a really good commodity for the consumer,” Calandri said. “Quality-wise, it’s one of the most recognized areas in the United States for onions,” he said.

Read more from the Antelope Valley Press by clicking here.

July 21, 2008 · Filed Under Agriculture, Antelope Valley, Groundwater