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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><A href="http://www.newsweek.com/id/211381"><FONT
face="Times New Roman"
size=3>http://www.newsweek.com/id/211381</FONT></A><BR><FONT
face="Times New Roman" size=3>© 2009<BR>Dying on the Vine<BR>As another water
war rages, the west side of California's storied San<BR>Joaquin Valley waits for
relief that may not come.<BR>By Katie Paul | Newsweek Web Exclusive<BR>Aug 24,
2009 | Updated: 2:08 p.m. ET Aug 24, 2009<BR><BR>Playing cards and a small wad
of dollar bills sit on a pool table at Los<BR>Kiki, a dusty pool hall at the end
of the main drag in Mendota, Calif. A<BR>breeze blows through a broken window,
past six men hunched over the table,<BR>beer bottles in their hands. It is
middle of a Wednesday afternoon. A year<BR>ago, they would have been out
planting and pruning in the vast fields of<BR>grapes, tomatoes, onions, and nut
trees that fan out from the city limits.<BR>But this year, many of those fields
are lying fallow, and the men at Los<BR>Kiki are out of work.<BR><BR>"Before, it
was good. There were jobs eight months, 10 months out of the<BR>year. Now,
nothing," says Luis Cortez, 52. Others nod in agreement. Cortez<BR>says he has
worked just three days all year.<BR><BR>Mendota touts itself as the cantaloupe
capital of the world, but its de<BR>facto motto is far less optimistic. "No
water, no work" is the refrain<BR>repeated everywhere here in the western
reaches of the San Joaquin Valley.<BR>The unemployment rate in this
10,000-person town was an unfathomable 38<BR>percent in July (including
documented and undocumented workers). Nearly all<BR>those who have lost their
jobs are farm workers, who often straddle the<BR>poverty line even in boom
times. The result is a cruel irony: in the region<BR>that produces more food
than anywhere else in the country, food lines have<BR>become regular fixtures,
drawing hundreds, sometimes thousands.<BR><BR>After three years of drought,
California's legendary water wars are flaring<BR>once again, and towns like
Mendota, San Joaquin, and Firebaugh are getting<BR>a first glimpse of what their
future might look like. Farmers blame the<BR>area's blight on a "man-made
drought" brought on by increasingly strict<BR>environmental regulations, but
that is only the beginning of the story.<BR>There's also the crushing confluence
of political negligence, drought, and<BR>a century's worth of unbridled growth.
Now, as residents wonder if normalcy<BR>will ever return, planners are forced to
consider a far uglier question:<BR>should it? Is a new "normal"
required?<BR><BR>That towns like Mendota even exist reflects the extraordinary
ambition that<BR>built the American West. A century ago, much of the San Joaquin
Valley was<BR>an undeveloped dust bowl, its few small farming communities
clustered<BR>around natural water sources. Today, it is a green expanse of
agricultural<BR>empires. Most of the water that has irrigated these seemingly
endless<BR>fields comes from northern California, diverted by an epic system of
dams<BR>and canals born from New Deal funds. It was one of the most ambitious
water<BR>systems ever built, and the San Joaquin Valley became, in the words
of<BR>historian Kevin Starr, "the most productive unnatural environment
on<BR>Earth."<BR><BR>The valley is home to a $20 billion crop industry; the San
Joaquin region<BR>alone produces more in farm sales than any other individual
state in the<BR>country. Mark Borba, 59, has a big stake in that business, just
as his<BR>grandparents did in the valley's development. Borba Farms started off
with<BR>about 20 milk cows and 30 acres of land in 1910, at a time when farmers
who<BR>had tapped an underground aquifer were kicking off a race to cultivate.
The<BR>farm now covers 10,000 acres, and Mark Borba is only one of 600 growers
in<BR>the Westlands Water District, a water-contracting group of farmers
and<BR>landowners on the far west side of the valley where Mendota and other
towns<BR>sit. By the time Borba took over his family's operation in the 1970s,
the<BR>valley was already supplying 25 percent of the country's
food.<BR><BR>Making that explosive growth possible is access to water delivered
through<BR>an increasingly byzantine system centered on the SacramentoSan
Joaquin<BR>Delta, a thousand-square-mile web of channels, islands, and levees
where<BR>the two rivers meet before flowing into the San Francisco Bay. From
there,<BR>giant dams and pumps suck the water southward through veinlike
aqueducts to<BR>25 million people and more than 5 million acres of farmland. But
not all<BR>water consumers are created equally. In fact, access to the water
is<BR>essentially based on a squatters' rights notion: "First in rights, first
in<BR>time." In other words, whoever signed up for a water contract first got
the<BR>best guarantees. Latecomers got junior rights, meaning they'd be the
first<BR>to get cut in a dry. Westlands, which has a contract for water
delivery<BR>with the federal government, is the most junior of the
bunch.<BR><BR>It was complicated and costly, but for a long time, the system
worked. Over<BR>the last three decades, however, the valley's explosive growth
has caused<BR>rivers to run dry, dead fish to accumulate near the water pumps,
and<BR>chronic water shortages. The levees near the bay are old, prompting
worries<BR>that a failure, perhaps following an earthquake, could cause salt
water<BR>from the bay to rush into the delta, crippling the water supply for
the<BR>entire state. And the delta smelt, an endangered species of fish no
bigger<BR>than an index finger, began disappearing as the massive pumps sucked
up<BR>fish along with the water it was sending south. Lawsuits over the
fish<BR>filed by environmental groups and water contractors multiplied,
and<BR>court-imposed restrictions and regulations began siphoning off more
and<BR>more of the 6 million acre-feet of water exported through the river
basin<BR>each year.<BR>Most people in the valley blame their water woes on those
lawsuits and the<BR>fish. Since 1992, when Congress established new federal
ecosystem<BR>standards, increasing amounts of water have been set aside for
wildlife<BR>restoration. Since then, Westlands has received on average about
half as<BR>much water as the 1.2 million acre-feet per year it ordered up in
its<BR>contract, forcing farmers to rely on expensive pumps that suck up
water<BR>from the aquefier and water transfers from their
better-connected<BR>competitors to the east. This year, Westlands is down to
nearly nothing,<BR>and its farmers are livid. Federal officials slashed the
district's<BR>allocation to zero at the beginning of the season; only after a
furious<BR>lobbying campaign did they succeed in bumping it up to 10 percent of
the<BR>water deliveries stipulated in their contract. A University of
California,<BR>Berkeley analysis claims that the economic impact of the water
reductions<BR>on the valley's agricultural production tops $48 million. That
figure will<BR>likely get worse once the water agencies begin implementing new
rules this<BR>summer designed to protect other fish such as sturgeon, salmon,
and<BR>steelhead trout. In a normal year, such a hit is difficult, says
Sarah<BR>Woolf, a Westlands District spokeswoman. After three years of
natural<BR>drought, she says, it's ruinous.<BR><BR>But Barry Nelson, the Natural
Resources Defense Council advocate behind the<BR>fish lawsuits, says the fish
vs. people argument is nonsense. Even after<BR>three years of drought, the
Central Valley Project (CVP) is still making<BR>half of its water deliveries to
farms in the valley. Westlands just isn't<BR>getting that water. "There's a myth
in the valley about the delta smelt,<BR>and it's really a tragedy," he says. "I
don't mean for a moment to suggest<BR>that those small communities on the west
side aren't seeing impacts; they<BR>are. They're seeing the impact of drought,
and those impacts are real and<BR>they're hard." Nelson contends that the fish
aren't the problem; it's the<BR>way the system is set up. Just adjacent to
Westlands, he says, four other<BR>contractors are getting a full 100 percent of
their water allocation this<BR>year, despite the drought. And while Westlands
has adopted some of the most<BR>water-efficient irrigation methods in the
business, other farmers in the<BR>valley with senior water rights are under no
pressure to conserve. The<BR>result is a patchwork valley, where a Westlands
farmer like Mark Borba is<BR>forced to fallow land while his neighbor has excess
water that he can sell<BR>at a hefty profit. Buying that excess and pumping
water from underground is<BR>sustainable to a point, says Borba. But the
expenses<AND the poor quality<BR> of the underground water<WOULD the drive
business into ground in the<BR> long term.<BR><BR>But that may be all that the
Westlands district can hope for. Climate<BR>models by the U.S. Global Change
Research Program, the state's water<BR>resources agency, and researchers at the
University of California, Davis<BR>all point to the same trend: the Sierra
snowcaps that supply the state's<BR>water are disappearing. If that's the case,
farmers should expect droughts<BR>more frequently, and Westlands may have to
come around to the notion that<BR>they will never receive all the water that
their contracts call for. "No<BR>drought comes to you with a label that says,
'Brought to you by climate<BR>change,' " says Nelson. "But in the American
Southwest and in California,<BR>we should be prepared for a drier
future."<BR><BR>To at least a few teams of researchers, ending the conversation
with a<BR>doomsday prediction for agriculture on the west side of the valley
is<BR>insufficient. Like the farmers and engineers who, a century ago, looked
at<BR>the desert and imagined farms, these teams, which pull together
researchers<BR>at federal and state agencies, California universities, and think
tanks<BR>into a planning group called the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP),
say a<BR>good plan and some new hardware is all the valley needs to conquer
its<BR>water challenge. They are likely to suggest building a new
"peripheral"<BR>canal that would transport northern water around the delta,
rather than<BR>through it, to restore its battered ecosystem.<BR>To farmers like
Borba, that's the kind of investment worth making. "I've<BR>traveled all over
the world<EGYPT, Australia, Brazil, China<and I?ve never<BR> seen an
agricultural resource like we have in the San Joaquin Valley. The<BR>soils, the
climate, the crop variability. We've got 300 crops we can grow<BR>here. You
can't find that just anywhere," he says. "So I have a hard time<BR>saying, for
lack of the will, that we should neuter the most productive<BR>agricultural
resource in the world. I don't think that's where America<BR>wants to
go."<BR><BR>North of the valley, where the canal would be built, not everyone is
so<BR>enthusiastic. Opponents, who beat back the idea in a 1982 referendum,
see<BR>it as a destructive, expensive water grab by southern users. They have
a<BR>point; according to the BDCP and the federal Bureau of
Reclamation,<BR>preliminary construction-cost estimates for the two biggest
projects under<BR>consideration are $13 billion, a price tag California is
hardly in a<BR>position to bear in its present state. Other critics, like
Nelson, say the<BR>drop in water supply caused by climate change would render
such<BR>mega-investments moot. The better bet, they argue, is an aggressive
push<BR>for water-conservation standards. Yet others, like the University of
the<BR>Pacific's Jeffrey Michael, who does business forecasting, note that
the<BR>issues facing Westlands are hardly valley-wide problems. Rather, he
says,<BR>farm employment this year has actually gone up, making it one of the
few<BR>success stories in a region pummeled by the mortgage crisis. Still,
support<BR>for the idea might be building steam. The BDCP has missed benchmarks,
but<BR>there's evidence the governor's office is behind the idea. State
officials<BR>recently announced they intend to start preliminary drilling for
ground<BR>tests this month, while state lawmakers recently unveiled five new
major<BR>water bills focused on the delta.<BR><BR>Even if that comes through,
though, there's no guarantee all of Westlands<BR>would reap the benefits. As
productive as the farms in the district have<BR>been, bad drainage underneath
means the soil fills up with salt, boron,<BR>selenium, and other minerals<TOXINS
that make plants shrivel just as<BR> quickly as a drought. A drainage system
could address the problem, but,<BR>again, nobody seems to want to pay for one.
Instead, starting in 2000,<BR>Westlands and the Bureau of Reclamation negotiated
a deal to permanently<BR>retire from farming 100,000 acres of land in the
district in return for<BR>compensation from the federal government. "There's a
reason some of the<BR>land in Westlands was the last land in California to be
irrigated," says<BR>Nelson, the NRDC analyst. "The land that was retired a few
years ago has<BR>already salted up. It looks like it snowed." That might be just
the<BR>beginning; federal agencies estimate the number should be two to four
times<BR>that amount.<BR><BR>All of this leaves the valley's west side caught in
a painful limbo until<BR>California answers big questions about where and how it
wants to make use<BR>of its resources. In the meantime, some economic planners
are eyeing the<BR>area as a potential clean energy source where almond farms
could be<BR>transformed into solar farms. Those plans, too, are preliminary. "It
took a<BR>century of bad decisions to get us here. The good news is, we are on
the<BR>verge of making some major changes on what we're going to do about
it,"<BR>says Jeff Mount, a water-geology researcher at UC Davis who supports
the<BR>peripheral canal proposal. "So, yes, the valley's farm economy itself
is<BR>probably going to shrink some. But that may not be a bad thing in the
long<BR>run. And it may be an inevitable thing."<BR><BR>Such talk makes
34-year-old Dora Chavarria wonder about her future. She was<BR>born in Mendota,
the daughter of a field worker who arrived there 38 years<BR>ago, worked the
fields, and saved enough money to open up an auto shop.<BR>She's climbed the
social ladder yet another rung, working at a program for<BR>immigrant families
in the Firebaugh school system. Chavarria recalls a time<BR>when she could be
proud of Mendota; when people filled the streets, when<BR>her father would drive
her around in trucks filled with tomatoes from the<BR>surrounding fields, when
musical acts would pass through town, and when the<BR>melon-capital claim rang
true. It's been a long time since that was the<BR>case; for more than a decade,
the streets have been empty and dangerous,<BR>she says, and getting worse as
people head for Las Vegas and Los Angeles in<BR>search of work. Chavarria
doesn't let her children out alone, and now her<BR>husband wants to leave,
too.<BR><BR>To keep the town alive, Mendota's leaders have, in their own way,
started<BR>to think about alternatives to agriculture. Mayor Robert Silva says
the<BR>best bet is the federal prison under construction on the outskirts of
town,<BR>a project he courted, thinking it will spark an economic revival as
hotels<BR>and restaurants spring up to accommodate prison visitors.As the town
waits<BR>to see if Silva's development predictions come true, residents face
a<BR>crushing tide. This summer, the town's only bank announced it was
shutting<BR>down because of insufficient deposits. As the public schools lose
students,<BR>officials worry funding cuts will follow. Most eerily, around the
outskirts<BR>of town, billboards and flags advertise the empty, unfinished
development<BR>of single-family homes with bright green lawns, constant
reminders that, on<BR>more than one front, foresight has been hard to come by in
the valley.<BR>Still, Chavarria is not ready to give up on Mendota just yet.
"It's just<BR>slowly dying, and we can't let that happen. This is my heritage,"
she says.<BR>"Change is good, and hopefully something better comes along. But if
we<BR>don't stay here to make that change, then the change is never going
to<BR>happen."</FONT><BR><BR></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>