<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:garamond, new york, times, serif;font-size:16px"><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1428287526525_55399" dir="ltr"><a href="http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/editorials/article17360846.html" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1428287526525_55563">http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/editorials/article17360846.html</a><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-size: 36px; font-family: Georgia;" class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1428287526525_55566"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1428287526525_55565">On water, Big Ag should ante up, too</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-size: 17px; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(85, 85, 85);" class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1428287526525_55568"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1428287526525_55567">All must do more; regulators need a cultural change</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-size: 14px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(153, 153, 153);" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="">BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-size: 12px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(153, 153, 153);" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="">04/04/2015 5:01 PM 04/05/2015 12:01 AM</span></div><ul style="list-style-type: none" class="">
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<li style="margin: 0px; font-size: 14px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(12, 118, 186); background-color: rgb(220, 220, 220);" class=""><b class="" style=""></b><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class=""><b class="" style="">Comments (3)</b></span></li>
</ul><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia; min-height: 19px;" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class=""></span><br class="" style=""></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="">As the rest of California comes to grips with the state’s historic new water mandates, there’s an elephant in the room. And it’s wearing a farmer’s hat.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="">Gov. Jerry Brown’s order for a <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article17115506.html" class="" style=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; color: rgb(12, 118, 186);" class="">25 percent cut in water consumption </span></a>homed in hard on towns and cities. From now into an uncertain future, the nice voluntary things many of us have been doing – the drought-tolerant flowerbeds, the slightly shorter showers – are going to have to be just the beginning of a much more water-conscious lifestyle.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="">Heaven knows, it is long past time for homeowners here to wake up and smell the Dust Bowl. But with groundwater tables shrinking and the Sierra snowpack fading toward zero, with new rules that are going to cramp everyone from cemetery owners to car washers, even those of us who have already taken a hit are rethinking old habits.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="">So why isn’t more being asked of the constituency that uses 80 percent of the state’s developed water?</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia; color: rgb(12, 118, 186);" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class=""><a href="http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article17268866.html" class="" style="">What about agriculture?<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;" class=""></span></a></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="">That’s the question that <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/california-chases-easiest-water-savings-not-biggest/" class="" style=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; color: rgb(12, 118, 186);" class="">keeps coming up</span></a>.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="">Farmers reply that they already have given for four crushing years at the office. When droughts hit, farms are among the first to feel the effects.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="">More than a half-million acres of California agricultural land were fallowed last year as federal allotments from the Central Valley Project, which allocates water from the state’s reservoirs, were slashed to zero. The state’s farm economy lost more than $2 billion. Seventeen thousand jobs went by the wayside, not counting the collateral damage, from truckers to dockworkers.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="">The toll is expected to double this year, with as many as a million acres of melons, broccoli, rice, lettuce and other crops in peril. Indisputably, agriculture has suffered.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="">But when the governor and others talk about this being a new era, they aren’t talking just about making ends meet until things get back to normal. Normal is gone. We need to re-engineer the way we manage water in every sector, and fast.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="">Already, planners and advocates are talking about <a href="http://www.laobserved.com/intell/2015/03/time_to_ratchet_down_on_water.php" class="" style=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; color: rgb(12, 118, 186);" class="">“net-zero” water ordinances </span></a>that would force developers to balance their additional water footprint by paying for conservation elsewhere, or to make projects self-sufficient with recycled water and rainwater collected on-site.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="">And conservationists are asking whether now is finally the time to require Californians statewide to retrofit properties with sustainable water systems, such as low-flow toilets and drip irrigation,<a href="http://www.slocounty.ca.gov/planning/water-amendments/retrofit.htm" class="" style=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; color: rgb(12, 118, 186);" class=""> as a condition of resale</span></a>.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="">These are systemic changes, and we’re all making them. We can’t afford to let agriculture be the exception.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="">Unfortunately, change has never been particularly welcome in California’s farm sector. And the painfully deliberate culture of the state’s water regulators, which would make a snail’s pace look like the Indy 500, hasn’t been giving them much encouragement.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="">For instance, one way that farmers are partially compensating for their lost surface water is by <a href="http://www.modbee.com/news/local/article15859400.html" class="" style=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; color: rgb(12, 118, 186);" class="">pumping groundwater</span></a>. Groundwater is precious. But in years wet and dry, and in farms and cities, Californians have tapped it to the point that we don’t have nearly enough now that we’re in this mess.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="">In the San Joaquin Valley, the aquifers have been sucked so dry that <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/article2594903.html" class="" style=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; color: rgb(12, 118, 186);" class="">the earth is sinking</span></a>. That’s one reason why the state last year <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article2609723.html" class="" style=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; color: rgb(12, 118, 186);" class="">passed a historic groundwater bill </span></a>to address the plunder.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="">Problem is, the <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/article2609999.html" class="" style=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; color: rgb(12, 118, 186);" class="">timeline is so slow </span></a>that decades are likely to pass before meaningful curbs are implemented. By that time, some places will be<a href="http://thevalleycitizen.com/critical-care-for-groundwater/" class="" style=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; color: rgb(12, 118, 186);" class=""> lucky to have any groundwater left</span></a>.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="">That timeline needs to be accelerated. Yes, regulating a giant collection of shrinking underground reservoirs is a huge task. And yes, sorting out historic water rights is eye-glazingly complex.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="">But even battleships manage to turn when the need is urgent. We should at least make the attempt.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="">The governor’s executive order last week offered a good start, requiring local agencies to pick up the pace on reporting and monitoring groundwater elevations, and threatening state action if they don’t comply by year end.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="">But other aspects of the new law need to be stepped up, too. For example, incredibly, even in this grinding drought, some agricultural investors are still planting almond orchards, and, in some cases, deliberately locating them just outside the borders of irrigation districts.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1428287526525_55547"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1428287526525_55548">It’s a trick, water attorneys say: Almonds are lucrative and the lag time in the groundwater law effectively gives them a free ride into the next decade. But this kind of rogue exploitation just steals from our future. Hastening the groundwater law implementation would put some brakes on it.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1428287526525_55546"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="">Other priorities need to be fast-tracked as well.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1428287526525_55545"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1428287526525_55544">For example, the state’s system, such as it is, for transferring unused water is <a href="http://californiawaterfoundation.org/uploads/1427918581-CWFSnowSurveyStatement(00285986xA1C15).pdf" class="" style=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; color: rgb(12, 118, 186);" class="">opaque and inefficient</span></a>.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1428287526525_55543"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1428287526525_55542">Counties should have more authority to regulate long-term agricultural installations – like new orchards – just as they would, say, new subdivisions.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1428287526525_55540"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1428287526525_55541">And as many as 40 percent of the state’s farmers, by some estimates, still use flood irrigation. Getting more drip irrigation in place, quickly, would be a huge opportunity to conserve.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1428287526525_55539"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="">Picking up the pace, however, is a bigger ask than it should be.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1428287526525_55537"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1428287526525_55538">From top to bottom, the culture of water regulation in California needs to somehow dig deep and start getting aggressive. This state’s <a href="http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/board_info/index.shtml" class="" style=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; color: rgb(12, 118, 186);" class="">Water Resources Control Board’s </span></a>online database is antiquated and spotty, and the board still is taking years and decades to complete work that ought to be done in a few months.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1428287526525_55536"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="">Whether it’s more staffing or more strategic direction, Brown needs to light a fire under his people and give them the tools to do real-time water management.</span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1428287526525_55399" dir="ltr">
</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; font-family: Georgia;" class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1428287526525_55535"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px" class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1428287526525_55534">These are not overnight projects, but we can’t stretch them out, either. Clinging to tradition is a luxury of the past. This slow-motion natural disaster we are in has moved into high gear, and we have to be nimble. Even the elephants.</span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1428287526525_55399" dir="ltr" class="" style=""><br class="" style=""></div></div></body></html>