Time seeping out for drainage debacle? State regulators give 90 days to act on half-century old environmental problem
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 10, 2008 at 6:10 amFrom the California Progress Report:
Fifty years after the Westlands Water District began irrigating drainage-impaired lands in the San Joaquin Valley, causing massive accumulation of toxic selenium and other salts in the soils and drainage water, the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board (Board) has taken action to address the ongoing pollution problem. In a letter last week, the Board gave the water district 90 days to file for a waste discharge permit and present a plan for cleaning up the soils that have been building up salts and toxins for decades.
While federal officials knew that providing water to Westlands from the Delta and Northern California would aggravate the naturally occurring salt-loading problems on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, the Federal Bureau of Reclamation pushed forward with the irrigation project. As a result, the Westlands area is one of the largest, most heavily subsidized, and profitable agribusiness regions in the world as well as one of California’s worst environmental legacies.
Read more from the California Progress Report by clicking here.
The district that went from drought to excess in just one summer – California big ag has water to store after earlier calling for a state of emergency?
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 22, 2008 at 5:37 amFrom the California Progress Report:
Earlier this month, Westlands Water District (WWD), the largest single recipient of water from the Central Valley Project south of the Delta, filed an application to store 50,000 acre feet of water from this year’s water supply for the District to use in future years.
While water storage is not unusual, this particular action is perplexing given that the same water district reported severe water shortages, resulting in lost crops and lost jobs earlier this year. In fact, the district’s shortages were the primary motivation for the Governor’s declaration of a state of emergency for several California counties. In response to the emergency declaration, water quality standards were relaxed for the Bay Delta as well as the California Aqueduct. In both cases, water quality for the environment and urban users was degraded in an effort to help the district get through the growing season.
Read more from the California Progress Report by clicking here.
Westlands Water District discusses nuclear plants to power desalination facility
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 20, 2008 at 5:49 amFrom the Fresno Bee:
Fresno Nuclear Energy Group LLC on Tuesday signed a letter of intent with the Westlands Water District to discuss the possibility of building two 1,600-megawatt nuclear power plants on 500 acres in the district.
John Hutson, the company’s president, said the district would choose the site.
Hutson said that, under the proposal, a desalinization facility, powered by the plants, would be built “to supply clean, reliable water to the farmers on the west side.”
Ground water in the district is plagued by salts that include selenium and boron.
State law bans any new nuclear power plants until the federal government approves a process for the permanent disposal of their spent fuel. A nuclear plant also would have to clear several federal legal hurdles, most notably from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
It would be at best ten years before anything was built, says Sarah Woolf of the Westlands Water District. More from the Fresno Bee by clicking here.
Westlands water rationing finished
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 15, 2008 at 7:47 amFrom the Fresno Bee:
Rationing within the Westlands Water District has ended early because of declining demand that resulted when crops were abandoned and fall planting declined.
The water rationing program, which has been under way since late May, ended Aug. 1 and deliveries have returned to normal, based on a 40% allocation, for water users in the district.
Sarah Woolf, a spokeswoman for the district, said the reduced demand convinced U.S. Bureau of Reclamation officials that it was acceptable to stop the rationing and allow growers to use their remaining water supply for the year.
Read more from the Fresno Bee by clicking here.
Metropolitan’s & Westland’s purchase of Yolo bypass lands has some worried
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 3, 2008 at 12:24 pmFrom the Sacramento Bee:
Southern California’s biggest water agencies are putting down roots in the Yolo Bypass. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and Westlands Water District are buying land and jointly planning restoration projects in the bypass to protect their access to water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, officials told The Bee.
The agencies are the two largest diverters of Delta water, contributing to the decline of threatened Delta smelt and other fish. A related disruption of the Delta’s food chain has prompted fears that an ecosystem collapse is under way, which could affect water quality for millions. The water agencies hope to protect their diversions by creating more habitat for fish to thrive.
This new interest has local residents worried. They fear the water titans have other motives, such as draining groundwater from the area or somehow seizing Sacramento River water rights. “The purchase of land by out-of-county water districts makes us nervous,” said Yolo County Supervisor Mike McGowan. “Until we see some real legitimate response from these entities being willing to work with us, we’ll continue to be paranoid about it.”
Read the full text of this article from the Sacramento Bee by clicking here.
Dry country: Water rationing forces Westlands growers to abandon crops and lay off workers
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 15, 2008 at 7:03 amFrom the Fresno Bee:
In 47 years of farming, 65-year-old Jim Diedrich has battled it all — hail that savaged his tomatoes, insects that ate his cotton, sagging prices and searing heat. But now he faces something new. He and his son, Todd, must abandon more than a full square mile of tomatoes in the Firebaugh area — their blooms yellow, leaves still green, drooping a little from the lack of water but otherwise standing firm and stretching in endless rows. “Being a farmer, it’s tough to let this go,” Todd Diedrich says.
The Diedrichs are letting 725 acres of tomatoes die so they can keep 550 acres of almond trees alive. “If we lose the trees, a 35-year investment is gone,” Diedrich says.
Unprecedented water rationing, resulting from a drought and court-ordered environmental restrictions on pumping, have forced the move, which will mean millions of dollars in lost revenue this year. Thursday’s emergency declaration by the governor won’t help, Diedrich says.
Many growers in the massive Westlands Water District face the same Sophie’s choice — which crops to save and which to abandon.
The Westlands Water District will receive only 40% of its water allocation for the year, and the resulting decrease in production means many farm workers have been laid off.
Particularly frustrating to the Diedrichs is that they thought they had prepared for drought conditions. In recent years, they spent more than $1 million to put in underground drip irrigation to save water. They added solar sensing equipment to detect moisture levels.
And they purchased water outside the district, water they won’t be able to obtain in the three-month period because of the restricted pumping and the rationing program aimed at making sure the San Luis Reservoir is not drawn so low that deliveries will come to a halt.
The Diedrichs say they don’t expect to be able to collect on crop insurance, though they’re seeking to do so.
“Crop insurance is for a crop failure,” Jim Diedrich says. “No insurance man is going to pay you because you didn’t water your tomatoes.”
Avtar Gill, a partner in Gill Insurance Agency in Caruthers, says Diedrich is right. “It’s not a covered loss,” he says.
Read more from the Fresno Bee by clicking here.
USGS critiques plans to clean up Westlands tainted irrigation water:
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 12, 2008 at 8:25 amFrom Garance Burke of the Associated Press, via San Diego Union-Tribune, extensive coverage of the latest plans to clean up the drainage problem on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, primarily the Westlands Water District area:
A new report by the U.S. Geological Survey suggests the federal government’s plans to clean up acres of polluted croplands where thousands of birds died in the 1980s could, if poorly managed, put shore birds at risk again.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein has been brokering negotiations over the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s proposals, which are intended to fix a botched federal drain project that left fields in California’s San Joaquin Valley too salty to grow crops. Two weeks ago, Feinstein met behind closed doors in San Francisco’s Ferry Building with bureau officials and the two USGS scientists who wrote the internal report the senator requested.
A copy obtained by The Associated Press Wednesday critiques a proposal previously floated by the bureau. That plan would give a group of wealthy farmers a perpetual contract for irrigation water if they took on the cost of the clean up, which is estimated at more than $2.6 billion. The bureau is considering using a new technology – a solar evaporation system – to separate harmful selenium concentrations from the runoff. “However, at this concentration there still may be a potential for selenium risk to wildlife, if performance does not meet specific criteria,” the report said.
Farmers and the government have been fighting over the drainage issue since the Kesterson disaster in the 1980’s, when thousands of birds were born deformed or died after nesting in contaminated irrigation water. Lawsuits ensued, and the federal government is under court-order to clean it up, at a cost of up to $2.7 billion dollars. How best to do that?
Growing crops on fewer acres of land is one option explored in the USGS report. But growers say fallowing fields would rob them of their livelihoods and cause major job losses throughout the region. Given the huge expense required to fix the drainage problem, farmers say they need a permanent water contract to ensure their financial viability, and to keep growing the fruits and vegetables the nation relies on.
Westlands and other water districts propose to fix the problem by shooting the polluted runoff through a sprinkler system that would allow the salts to solidify and be collected.
The report critiqued that proposal, and another to build the solar evaporation systems, calling them untested options that had not been proven to work at the scale required.
If necessary, Finnegan said the government would complete additional environmental reviews of the reuse projects, the sprinklers and other new techniques.
The study also suggested farmers boost the water they draw from underground aquifers to lower the amount of selenium brought into the environment.
Read more of this extensive coverage from the Associated Press & the San Diego Union Tribune by clicking here.
More on the Westlands plan to clean it up from the Fresno Bee:
As a cheaper alternative, Westlands last year offered to take over the job and use a combination of land retirement, water purification and evaporation on gravel. West-side farmers have been experimenting with such approaches for years.
In return, Westlands would be forgiven about $100 million of debt related to construction of the Central Valley Project, the state’s largest water project. The district also would receive perpetual federal water contracts that would not need to be renegotiated periodically.
But the USGS said the Westlands plan calls for retirement of 100,000 acres, while the Bureau of Reclamation’s approach would take 194,000 acres out of production. The retired land would not be irrigated, and no bad drainage would be produced there.
Under Westlands’ plan, there would be a lot more drainage than under the federal plan, because more land would continue in crop production, the USGS concluded.
Read the full text of the article from the Fresno Bee by clicking here.
Westlands water rescue plan debated; Environmentalists fight growers’ plan to pump ground water into aqueduct
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 12, 2008 at 7:55 amFrom the Fresno Bee:
Environmentalists say they will fight a proposal by Valley farmers to pump salty ground water into the canal that delivers drinking water to millions of south state residents.
Growers in the west Valley are pitching the plan as a way to boost dwindling water supplies. If it were pumped into the California Aqueduct, water could be moved to farmers who don’t have access to wells. Something needs to be done quickly, the drought-stricken farmers say, or they will have to lay off more workers and abandon more crops.
In an emergency declaration last week, the Fresno County Board of Supervisors urged Gov. Schwarzenegger to temporarily “relax the water quality standards” to enable piping of ground water into the aqueduct. The 444-mile concrete canal sends delta water to Southern California cities and Valley farms, but has rarely been used to transfer farm water within the west Valley. The administration says all that’s needed is a finding that the blended ground-delta water meets quality objectives specified in state water contracts. State officials are trying to work out an agreement with water customers. But environmentalists say growers would have to go one step further — apply for a federal permit under the Clean Water Act that could take months to approve.
Bill Jennings, executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, said his group would immediately sue if water were pumped without a permit. “It’s not something the governor can wave his wand and make it happen,” said Jennings, a longtime water-quality advocate.
Read more on this story from the Fresno Bee by clicking here.
Water deliveries cut for Westlands
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 7, 2008 at 10:48 amFrom the Capital Ag Press:
Things want from bad to worse almost overnight. Already facing rationing of surface water, Westlands Water District growers learned this week that the Bureau of Reclamation would further reduce water deliveries this season, leaving growers to decide which of their crops they will save.
At a meeting June 2 at the Los Banos fairgrounds, about 400 anxious farmers listened to Bureau officials outline the federal water delivery outlook for the next six months, a time when multiple high-dollar crops are already in the ground. They said water allocations from the San Joaquin Delta would be cut to 40 percent, down from the 45 percent announced earlier. With water supplies drying up, crops that have been staples for westside growers - including cotton and lettuce - may be abandoned this year to conserve scarce water for permanent crops such as almonds.
There was also a call for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to declare a state of emergency. The governor did declare a drought on June 4, but stopped short of an emergency declaration.
“Half the people in this room are gong to go broke,” predicted Westlands general manager Tom Birmingham at the meeting. Westlands, the state’s largest water district at 600,000 acres, announced last week that water would be rationed throughout the summer for the first time in the history of the district.
Westlands Water District analysis shows the area needs 350,000 acre-feet of water, but can only expect 240,000 acre-feet from the Central Valley Project, and some of that won’t be delivered until September.
Fresno County Supervisor Phil Larson, who is also a grape grower, said he received a call about the Westlands rationing decision May 30 when he was having a cup of coffee with other farmers at the local welding shop. “There was silence,” he said, when they heard the news. Westlands, which provides about $1 billion worth of the crops in the state, won’t be the only district affected, Larson predicted. “If the water leaves here, it’s going to go away on the east side, too, and up north. We’re all in this together,” he said.
John Davis, assistant district director for the bureau said the Central Valley Project has lost complete flexibility this year. The state needs to relax water quality standards in the delta and the bureau is also looking at water transfers to alleviate some of the shortages.
Ron Milligan, operations manager for the Central Valley Project, acknowledged the economic, social and environmental issues involved the water shortage. The water picture significantly changed in April, he said, when officials saw the low carryover numbers. The State Water Project reported its lowest carryover since 1977, Milligan said. The lower start-off points mean lower allocations. “We’re in circumstances that are very unusual. We’ve never seen this with all the regulations on top,” Milligan said.
Read the full text of the story from the Capital Ag Press by clicking here.
Westlands to ration water through summer; unprecedented move follows dry ‘rainy season’
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 31, 2008 at 6:48 amFrom the Fresno Bee:
After the driest spring in more than 80 years, Westlands Water District is rationing its already reduced irrigation supply through the hottest months of the year. The move could mean damaged crops, abandoned fields and lost jobs. Contributing to the unprecedented decision, which cut irrigation supplies by about one-third, is a court ruling setting aside water for threatened fish in Northern California.
Officials of the Westlands Water District, the nation’s largest at 600,000 acres, decided this week to continue rationing through Aug. 31, spokeswoman Sarah Woolf said.
Westlands, most of which is in Fresno County, produces about $1 billion in crops each year. That is more than 20% of the crop value for the No. 1 farming county in the nation.
The court decision, resulting in shut-downs at pumps, already has cost the district about 700,000 acre-feet of water, which would have been pumped into the San Luis Reservoir in western Merced County. Westlands farmers get their water from San Luis Reservoir. The 700,000 acre-feet represents more water than the district would have received all year from the federal government.
Westlands is not the only district affected. About 30 other districts on the Valley’s west side also are struggling with water supply. Westlands and the other districts are part of the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority, which represents districts covering more than 2 million acres of farmland.
Dan Nelson, authority executive director, said California never has had to deal with a drought when so many options available to farmers “have been denied by administrative, judicial and statutory restrictions.”
Mark Borba, a Riverdale grower in Westlands, said crops like almonds, tomatoes and cotton will suffer. “Yields will fall, quality will decline, fields will be abandoned, trees may die and unemployment will skyrocket,” he said.
Read the full text of this article from the Fresno Bee by clicking here.
A California water story of individual tenacity; column by Lloyd G. Carter
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 25, 2008 at 6:21 amFrom the Sacramento Bee:
You have to give 75-year-old Felix Smith of Carmichael credit for tenacity.
A quarter-century ago, Smith became the conscience of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service when he blew the whistle on the selenium poisoning of the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge in western Merced County.
In the spring of 1983, Smith and another biologist discovered deformed bird embryos in nests at Kesterson, where 100-acre holding ponds were evaporating agricultural drainage water from the Westlands Water District. The drainage water contained selenium, a naturally occurring element in the soils of Westlands that was highly toxic to bird reproduction. Adult birds were dying by the thousands and some species had a complete reproductive failure.
James Watt, then U.S. secretary of interior, ordered news of the discovery suppressed while an official press release was prepared. Several months later, with the press release still supposedly being formulated, a frustrated Smith leaked the story to Deborah Blum, when she was a reporter for the Fresno Bee.Within 18 months, the New York Times, the Washington Post and CBS’ “60 Minutes” all gave major coverage to the unfolding debacle, pitting a politically powerful federal irrigation district against environmentalists and adjacent Kesterson landowners, who had seen their cattle die.In February 1985, the State Water Resources Control Board, responding to a complaint from Kesterson neighbors Jim and Karen Claus, ordered Kesterson cleaned up or closed. The following month, the Interior Department, its options dwindled, ordered Kesterson closed, an action that left the Westlands Water District without drainage, a problem that exists to this day.
But the story’s not over yet. Click here to read the rest of this article by Lloyd G. Carter in the Sacramento Bee.
Conservation groups oppose San Luis Drainage Resolution Act
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 6, 2008 at 8:36 amFrom Dan Bacher at IndyBay.org:
Bill Jennings, chairman of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, and Carolee Krieger, President of the California Water Impact Network, on Friday sent a letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein blasting the Proposed San Luis Drainage Resolution Act and Settlement Process.
“We unconditionally object to the process and the proposed legislation,” their letter states. “The proposal will in no way be sustainable, cost effective, environmentally responsible or successful. It is guaranteed to fail and cost the taxpayers literally hundreds of millions of dollars. The proposal will also enrich a small number of landowners within the San Luis Unit by giving them a perpetual water contract that they can then market to urban areas at an incredible profit, once these untested drainage solutions inevitably fail.”
The letter then says that the solution to the drainage problem of lands on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley is “massive land retirement in the Western San Joaquin Valley.”
This proposal occurs at a time when Central Valley salmon populations and California Delta fish, including delta smelt, longfin smelt, juvenile striped bass, threadfin shad and other species, are in an unprecedented state of collapse.
Two of the key factors behind the fishery collapses are increases in water exports out of the Delta and declining water quality. The land on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, laced with selenium and other toxic salts, should have never been irrigated because of the massive drainage problem.
“This drainwater contains extraordinarily elevated concentrations of selenium, boron, chromium, molybdenum, and extremely high concentrations of various salts that disrupt the normal ionic balance of the aquatic system,” according to a 1997 report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Read more on this story from IndyBay.org, which includes a copy of the letter sent to Senator Feinstein, by clicking here.
New plan surfaces to address Westlands drainage issue
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 8, 2008 at 7:37 amFrom the Modesto Bee:
Farmers and federal officials are revising plans to fix the San Joaquin Valley’s irrigation drainage problem.
The latest plan, quietly floated on Capitol Hill this week, gives the sprawling Westlands Water District an indefinite contract for irrigation water. In exchange, Westlands would pay off some of the money it owes for irrigation facilities and assume the federal government’s responsibility for drainage on the valley’s west side.
Westlands includes more than 600,000 acres of farmland in western Fresno and Kings counties.
“I think it’s moving in a very positive direction,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
Nonetheless, the latest plan still faces numerous legal, budgetary and political hurdles, and officials stress they must boil it down to strict legislative language before they can evaluate it. The new plan is the latest bid to solve the costly irrigation drainage puzzle, a legacy of the Central Valley Project that helped valley farms bloom.
And what about the debt? Westland Irrigation District owes a substantial amount of money for constructing the water system that they benefit from:
An earlier plan would have forgiven Westlands’ multimillion-dollar debt to the federal government. The present value of this debt is $270 million. With accumulating interest, the total owed will be some $418 million. Critics called forgiving the debt an unwarranted giveaway. The new plan calls for Westlands to pay the federal government $170 million.
The earlier plan would have given Westlands 60-year irrigation contracts, more than twice as long as is typical. Farmers would have been exempt from the acreage-limitation rules designed to ensure only small farms get subsidized water. The new plan provides indefinite-length irrigation contracts, also exempt from acreage-limitation rules.
“It’s one step forward,” Westlands farmer Jean Sagouspe said after a Capitol Hill briefing. “We’re getting people to understand the concept.”
Read the full text of the story from the Modesto Bee by clicking here.
GAO Report shows that Westlands & other farmers still owe taxpayers over $450 million for water infrastructure - *more added*
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on January 18, 2008 at 8:25 amFrom the Associated Press via the San Diego Union-Tribune:
A federal watchdog agency said Thursday some of the San Joaquin Valley’s largest farms owe the government hundreds of millions of dollars for the cost of building California’s water infrastructure. The report issued Thursday by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office says four large irrigation contractors owe the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation nearly $450 million for building pumps and canals. The Westlands Water District, a coalition of giant agribusinesses in the San Joaquin Valley, owes an additional $48 million, according to the report.
The farmers are in the midst of negotiating a proposal with the bureau that would forgive some of the cost of building the Central Valley Project, a vast irrigation system that serves the state’s most fertile farmland. The report makes public for the first time the official size of that debt.
“Taxpayers paid for these water projects decades ago,” said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., one of three legislators who requested the review. “This independent audit confirms that taxpayers are still owed an awful lot of money by some of the largest private users of water in the state.”
To read the full text of this article from the San Diego Union-Tribune, click here.
From Dan Bacher at IndyBay.org:
The Central Valley Project (CVP) is the largest federal irrigation system in the nation, and the beneficiaries of the CVP’s San Luis Unit include some of the most productive and lucrative farms in the world. The irrigation districts that were the subject of the report were assessed $523 million by the Bureau of Reclamation for the construction of the San Luis Unit, which was first authorized in 1960.
But due to the heavily subsidized and forgiving nature of antiquated federal western water policy, the water districts had repaid to the federal treasury only $74 million of that $523 million as of September 30, 2005, according to today’s GAO report.
The approximately 600 agribusinesses that make up the Westlands Water District – the San Luis Unit district that is often cited as the largest irrigation district in the world – were assessed an additional $179 million for the construction of their internal water distribution system. Including the remaining balance on Westlands’ account, the San Luis Unit contractors still owe the federal treasury approximately $497 million.
For the full text of this story from IndyBay.org, click here.
From Mike Taugher and the San Jose Mercury News:
Miller said the GAO report showed that the exchange, the details of which are still in flux, probably would be a bad deal for taxpayers. “They want more forgiveness from taxpayers,” Miller said. “It’s a flat-out abuse of the taxpayer.”
A layer of clay that underlies most of the Westlands district inhibits drainage and causes polluted water to build up, potentially into the root zones of crops. Before the district’s drain was plugged in the 1980s, the polluted water emptied into the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge, causing widespread deformities and deaths in birds. Without a place to dispose of its drainage, Westlands sued the federal government and in 2000 won a court order that requires the government to fix the problem.
Last spring, the government signed off on a plan to treat the tainted water and resolve the lawsuit. But by summer, farmers had offered up several alternate plans in which they proposed debt forgiveness in exchange for taking on the vexing drainage problem, which has left thousands of acres of farmland too salty to grow crops.
The reclamation bureau has estimated the cost of draining the land at $2.7 billion, which is why Westlands has said the exchange would be a good deal for taxpayers: the government would not have to build the expensive project.
But if the government does have to deal with the drainage problem, Westlands would have to repay that $2.7 billion, or at least a substantial portion of it, although it might be under terms highly favorable to the water district.
Mike Taugher’s experience with this issue really shines in this story - excellent reporting and writing. He explains the situation much better than the AP story. To read the full text of this story from Mike and the San Jose Mercury News, click here.
From the Fresno Bee:
The Bureau of Reclamation estimates one drainage option would cost the government $2.7 billion, for a combination of land retirements, evaporation ponds and soil treatments. A second option would transfer responsibility to the water districts. They would fund the drainage solutions in exchange for having their construction debt forgiven. Water district officials and state and federal representatives have been meeting to discuss irrigation drainage options, but no solution appears to be imminent. Westlands representatives could not be reached to comment Thursday.
All told, the new audit notes, the federal government spent about $3.4 billion on the Redding-to-Bakersfield system of dams and canals known as the Central Valley Project. The CVP’s San Luis Unit serves the Westlands, Pacheco, Panoche and San Luis water districts, which stretch as far north as Merced County.
A separate proposal has been made to restore water flows and salmon population to the San Joaquin River below Friant Dam. The dam, which is not part of the San Luis Unit, is blamed for drying up the once-teeming river.
Though the irrigation drainage problems primarily affect the Valley’s west side and the river restoration primarily affects the east side, taken together they illustrate the scope of the water problems facing the region.
To read the full text of the article from the Fresno Bee, click here.
You can read the Governmental Accountability Office report by clicking here.
Picture of Central Valley irrigation canal by flickr photographer Ben Werdmuller. Picture of staggered fields by flickr photographer Topherous. Click on the pictures to visit the flickr website, which is very cool and worth the click through.
Westlands plan to create smelt habitat has a few skeptics
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on December 29, 2007 at 8:01 amFrom Stockton’s RecordNet.com:
A massive water district long targeted by environmentalists for its thirst for Delta water says it wants to help the estuary’s most infamous yet inconspicuous fish.
Westlands Water District this month purchased more than 3,000 acres of farmland in the north Delta, where it says it intends to restore wetland habitat for threatened Delta smelt. The crash of the smelt in recent years has been blamed at least in part on pumps near Tracy that ship Delta water to Westlands and other farms and cities as far south as San Diego. Smelt are caught in the current and killed at the pumps. A federal judge earlier this month ordered water exports be reduced to protect smelt.
“We entered into this to try to create habitat for the Delta smelt,” said Westlands spokeswoman Sarah Woolf. “It’s to our benefit to create that habitat. We have every intention of making this happen.”
But many doubt the effectiveness of Westland’s plan:
Stockton environmentalist Bill Jennings said Westlands’ gesture is “nice,” but he questioned how much of a difference the $12 million purchase would make. The land purchase doesn’t cancel out the harm caused by immense amounts of water diverted south, he said. “Additional habitat is a good thing. I just don’t see the benefits coming from 3,000 acres” of restored habitat, Jennings said.
To read the full text of this article from Stockton’s RecordNet.com, click here.
Lack of water means less money, less jobs for parts of the San Joaquin Valley
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on December 20, 2007 at 9:55 amWhile the recent rains are a blessing to those farmers on the east side of the San Joaquin Valley who rely on rainfall to water their crops and replenish their local reservoirs and aquifers, it isn’t much help for the Westlands farmers, who rely on water from the Delta for irrigating their crops. From Fresno’s ABC30:
But things are different for those who grow on the 600-k acres in the Westlands Water District. They are likely to get only a third of the water they rely on from the Sacramento Delta because of environmental and other restrictions.
“We’re not able to plant as many of the normal crops that we normally would. Normally we have a lot of tomatoes and lettuce and onions. That acreage has been cut back significantly,” said Sarah Woolf, Westlands Water District.
Cutting back on those crops will mean the loss of thousands of jobs.
“Those jobs won’t be as available as they have been in the past, so unfortunately the small communities will feel the hardest impact and be the ones hit first,” said Sarah.
Those towns, like Mendota, Firebaugh and Tranquility are already seeing an exodus of workers and their families. School enrollments are dropping and the ripple effect from the lack of water is likely to be felt throughout the entire region.
“Whatever affects the farming industry affects not only the farmers and farm workers, but it also affects the fertilizer industry, the farm implement industry, the trucking industry, on and on and on. There’s a whole bunch of industries that are very dependent on farming in this area,” said Henry Nishimoto, economist.
To read the rest of this article, which includes video of the newscast, click here.
Westlands Water District purchases land for fish habitat - coverage from the Sacramento Bee
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on December 14, 2007 at 10:15 amFrom the Sacramento Bee:
One of California’s most powerful water agencies has purchased a huge tract of land in the Yolo Bypass, saying it hopes to create a nursery for imperiled fish and ease pressure on the state’s water system.
Westlands Water District irrigates more than 600,000 acres of farms in the San Joaquin Valley and is almost entirely dependent on water pumped out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. It is the world’s largest irrigation district, known for power politics as much as a billion-dollar annual yield of grapes, nuts and cotton. But its fortunes are threatened by Delta pumping restrictions that were driven by a rapid decline in several sensitive fish species, particularly the Delta smelt, a native fingerling protected by the federal Endangered Species Act.
On Wednesday, Westlands closed escrow on a 3,450-acre tract of farmland on the southern edge of Yolo County alongside the Sacramento Deep Water Ship Channel. The acreage lies in the Yolo Bypass, a swath of land designed to flood in major storms.
Research shows that fish colonize the bypass to feed on insects and plants that bloom during floods. By causing more frequent flooding and creating refuge areas within the bypass for fish to feed and rest, biologists believe the bypass could boost the population of many native species. Government agencies have tried and failed to pull that off, so Westlands decided to step in.
“The district purchased this property because it thinks that if we’re going to improve our water supply, it’s necessary to recover the species, and restoring the habitat is one of the things necessary to accomplish that,” said Tom Birmingham, Westlands general manager. “We are not dependent on federal or state appropriations. So there will be a steady stream of revenue for the restoration program.”
But of course, some are skeptical:
“Of course we need to be skeptical, but if Westlands is telling the truth that they bought it to do restoration and they want to help, I applaud them,” said John Cain, director of restoration programs at the Natural Heritages Institute, which has designed habitat projects in the area. “It’s fantastic that Westlands is stepping forward to try and solve the problem that they helped create.”
For more details, check out the Sacramento Bee article by clicking here.
Westlands Water District purchases property to establish smelt habitat
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on December 14, 2007 at 9:00 amFrom Business Wire, this press release:
California farmers are coming to the aid of a tiny endangered fish, the Delta Smelt. The Westlands Water District announced today that it acquired property in the northern Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The District plans to restore natural tidal wetlands and upland habitat for the protection and conservation of listed species, including the smelt.
“We’re trying to solve a problem that is of critical importance, not just for agriculture but also for 25 million Californians who get drinking water and water for irrigation from supplies conveyed through and pumped from the Delta,” said Tom Birmingham, General Manager of Westlands.
As the smelt’s numbers have declined, a federal court in California has ordered new restrictions on Central Valley Project and State Water Project operations that will result in massive water supply reductions, amounting to a loss of one-third of the water that is normally delivered from the Delta. Those deliveries are needed to supply billions of dollars worth of agricultural production in the Central Valley and meet the water needs of two-thirds of the state’s residents.
These restrictions are in addition to prior restrictions prescribed for the protection of the smelt and come on top of two years of an ongoing drought. As a result, many experts are predicting major losses for the state’s economy and water shortages in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego.
“Saving the smelt is an issue of self-preservation for most of California,” Birmingham said. “Regulation of the state’s water supply projects alone hasn’t worked, and as a public agency with responsibility for providing water for more than 500,000 acres of farmland, the District’s Board of Directors decided we need to act directly to help solve a critical problem.”
“We recognize that water is a sensitive issue, in Yolo County as in the rest of the state,” Birmingham said. “We plan to be a good neighbor in Yolo.”
The Delta property that Westlands acquired is in the area identified by state and federal fisheries experts as the prime location to create habitat for the smelt. Lying at the southernmost tip of Yolo County, the property is currently used for farming. Westlands plans to convert portions of the property to create habitat for the smelt and maintain the rest in agriculture.
“The plight of the smelt is just one part of the problems facing the Delta,” Birmingham pointed out. “We’re working with other public water agencies, state and federal authorities, and the scientific community to define ways to restore the Delta, increase the reliability and adequacy of water deliveries, and ensure the safety of the public water supply. It is a complicated process, but everyone agrees that protecting the smelt is an essential element of any comprehensive plan for restoring the Delta and providing improved conveyance.”
About Westlands:
The Westlands Water District serves a community of more than 600 families who farm some of the most productive agricultural lands in the world. Westlands is constantly changing to meet the needs of a dynamic marketplace, enhance the environment, expand the diversity of its crops and apply the most advanced irrigation techniques and technology for water conservation and long-term sustainable production.
Westlands is the largest agricultural water district in the United States. It encompasses more than 600,000 acres in an area 15 miles wide and 70 miles long on the west side of California’s Central Valley. To address chronic water supply shortages resulting from environmental regulations in the Delta Westlands has, at its own expense, fallowed nearly 100,000 acres.
The value of the food and fiber produced by Westlands farmers currently totals $1 billion dollars a year and the regional economic activity generated by its operations exceeds $3.5 billion annually. Diversity is the key to the district’s continuing prosperity. Twenty five years ago, for example, 79 percent of the district’s lands were planted in cotton, wheat and other field crops. Today more than 61 percent of the district’s lands are producing fruits and vegetables as well as permanent crops such as almonds, pistachios and grapes.
Westlands is a world leader in water conservation. Scientific research and innovation keep Westlands at the cutting edge of new technology. From its inception, Westlands’ distribution system has been fully enclosed, to eliminate losses from evaporation and leakage. Laser-levelling, computer-aided drip irrigation and the extensive use of global positioning systems help Westlands farmers achieve efficiencies of water use of 85 percent or more.
Westlands farmers prepare for water cutbacks
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 26, 2007 at 11:50 amFrom the Fresno Bee, a story about Westlands Water District farmers and the steps they are taking to prepare for water cutbacks:
Mark Borba, a Riverdale grower, is crunching numbers on his computer to rate crops according to the return per acre-foot of water. And like Allbright, he’ll do his best to keep his one permanent crop — almonds — alive. That may mean idling some crop- land so he can qualify to use some of his federal irrigation water on the almonds, which don’t like the well water, which contains salts such as boron.
Borba’s putting drip irrigation into about 1,000 acres of almonds and processing tomatoes at a cost of about $450 per acre. He’ll pay the cost over three years. And he is trying — so far without success — to find someone to sell him a water allocation for 2008. The deal would go something like this: A neighbor is looking to plant wheat. Borba might offer to pay the grower to idle the land, letting Borba use the water on his trees.
While Northern California farmers sell water, the cost may be too steep for their Valley compatriots. Southern California’s major water wholesaler, the Metropolitan Water District, this week announced plans to buy billions of gallons of water from those farmers to make up for a shortfall left by drought and environmental regulations. The northern farmers calculate they can make more selling their water allotment than by using it to grow crops.
Ted Sheely, who farms in the Huron area, said Valley farmers will be disadvantaged — and probably outbid — in any competition with urban agencies such as the Metropolitan Water District. “I wouldn’t want to be sitting at the table with [Metropolitan] and hear somebody say, ‘OK, what’s your opening bid’?” he said.
“Everybody’s out trying to buy somebody’s water if they can get it. Everybody’s competing for water.”
To read the rest of this article from the Fresno Bee, click here.
Canola project in the Westlands water district removes selenium from the soil
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 5, 2007 at 3:04 pmFrom Biodiesel Magazine:
During a half-hour interview broadcast on www.youtube.com, Biodiesel Industries Inc. (BDI) founder Russ Teall alluded to research BDI is conducting in the Westlands Water District in California’s Central Valley, where canola planting on selenium-contaminated land has resulted in bioremediation of the soil while providing a biodiesel feedstock on marginal lands.
Extended irrigation with salt water has reduced toxic levels of selenium, a sodium-based nutrient vital to humans and animals in trace amounts. As essential as selenium is, the substance can be fatal in higher doses, which is why land in the Westlands Water District is no longer used for food crops. “They’ve closed it down,” Teall said in the interview. “There’s no water available to it anymore. It’s virtually valueless land.”
Because the land had no value, it was a good place to test canola as a bioremediation crop. “We started growing canola on it and found that the canola actually takes the selenium out of the soil, and it ends up in the meal when they crush the feed,” Teall said. The oil can be used for biodiesel production, and if levels of selenium in the meal are still too high to be safe, it can be blended with meal lacking the nutrient for synthesis into a nutritious animal feed.
To read the full text of this article from Biodiesel Magazine, click here.
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