Editorial: The Myth of California’s Wasted Floodwaters
A sign near Fresno, CA, licensed by Shutterstock
On February 13, 2023, Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order that waives the rights of the environment in favor of agriculture. The order encourages the State Water Resources Control Board to reduce limitations on water diversions and to store more water in California’s dams. Storing more water means limiting releases from Oroville and Shasta reservoirs, just to name a couple.
The order uses wording to give the impression that it was motivated by a desire to protect the environment. Instead, this order continues the destructive policy of setting aside more water for agriculture and less water for riparian habitats.
This order threatens water supplies that many animals and people rely on. In particular, the order threatens the amount of water that flows into the San Francisco Bay from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. This puts the already endangered Delta smelt and imperiled Chinook salmon under greater stress.
This executive order follows the shortsighted claims that come every year there is a flood in California. This claim is that water is being wasted by letting it flow through its natural riverways and out to sea. Proponents of this belief argue that this water should be stored for later use. For use by cities, but most importantly, for agriculture in the state’s most thirsty regions. These claims are made from both the left and right and are splattered on the pages of the LA Times, the Wall Street Journal, and many other less reputable publications too.
Californians are quick to cry flood and quick to cry drought. We refer to averages and normal years that are historically rare. We cling to this idea of normal because we dream of having as much water as we need at any given moment, no more, and no less. The environment has never abided by our specific desires. Whilst the farming of food is crucial to our survival so too is recognizing the limits of what the land can give up.
Shortages of water for agricultural use in the Central Valley and southern California are not new. Shortages are also not just the fault of drought. Rather, a large portion of the blame can be placed on the absence of regulation of agriculture in California. The absence of regulation, historically, allowed agriculturalists to own massive parcels of land. It also meant that agriculturalists could plant whatever crops they so desired in numbers that had no sane relation to the amount of water locally available. This continues today.
As far back as 1893, John Wesley Powell, working for the United States Geological Survey (USGS), warned of a coming crisis. He told irrigators in Los Angeles that there was not enough water to “irrigate all this arid region.” He went on to say that the irrigators were “piling up a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights.” They did not heed his warning and we are living out that conflict still. Entire rivers have been stolen from their watersheds. The proposed Pacheco, Del Puerto, and Sites Reservoirs, the Delta Tunnels, and the proposed raising of the Shasta Dam, all aim at the same end.
Proponents of storing and transporting more water to the Central Valley and southern California use the struggling small farmer for their cause. The plight of the small farmer should not be overlooked. Every year, I visit Tulare County to raft the Kaweah River. On the way there I navigate the featureless grid of backroads roads to find Marva’s fruit stand to buy oranges, lemons, and pomelos. Marva and her husband grow citrus on a couple of hundred acres with water from the Friant-Kern Canal. Many of the years I visited her were dry ones. She talked at length about the exorbitant cost of the water they had to source from elsewhere to keep their trees alive when their allocation from the canal was not enough.
But the Central Valley is not just made up of family farms trying to make a living. The Central Valley is also made up of billionaires like Stewart and Lynda Resnick. The Resnicks own roughly 175,000 acres and donated a quarter of a million dollars to Governor Newsom’s effort to fight his recall. It is made up of investment firms like Prudential and Manulife. These companies encourage the growth of water-guzzling crops to return greater profits to their investors. Many of their investors do not live in California or even the United States.
Fresh water is too precious to allow profits to dictate where the water flows. It is not fair to small farmers and it is not fair to ordinary taxpayers. These ordinary Californians are encouraged to time the length of their showers to conserve water. Water that ends up lining the pockets of people who are often far wealthier than themselves.
The signing of this executive order is a call to arms for Californians who care about rivers. There are many projects being pushed through right now that are disastrous to our rivers. Projects like Pacheco Reservoir and Sites Reservoir. Without continual vigilance by groups like Friends of the River, these projects will become concrete. Those with an economic interest in California’s water say these reservoirs are just banal necessities to our water supply. This approach is not sustainable.
Nature has its limits. Instead of making desperate and piecemeal attempts to store more water, Californians need to ask themselves, how much is enough? The extent to which we allow irrigation in the dryer parts of the state is out of balance with, and destructive to the environment. This has been apparent for many decades.
In 1925, Joseph Poland, a geologist with the USGS, began to record the rate of land subsidence in the San Joaquin Valley. By 1977 the land had subsided almost thirty feet. The land sunk thirty feet in a matter of half a century due to aquifer compaction. This was a direct result of irrigators pumping groundwater out of aquifers.
How we use water in California Joseph Poland in the Central Valley in 1977 standing beside the pole he used to measure land subsidence. Where he stands marks the 1977 measurement. 30 feet up on the pole you can see the measurement he took in 1925. Photo is in the public domain and provided by the United States Geological Survey
Once an aquifer has compacted there is no way to recover its original size. In 2014, thirty-seven years after the fact, California finally made a move to regulate the use of groundwater. Today, amid plans to build and raise dams, there is also discussion of replenishing aquifers as part of California’s water storage plan. This too will not solve the unending demand created by an unregulated agricultural sector.
William Mulholland, the man who brought water from the Owens River to Los Angeles, famously believed that every drop of water that entered the ocean was wasted water. This belief prevails today and ignores the pressing fact that the non-human world needs water too. We live in that world, we are part of it, and we rely on its health.
The hard evidence that healthy watersheds and healthy ecosystems support human existence and mitigate the effects of climate change is mounting. Rivers can only be healthy when they are allowed to flow into confluences, deltas, and out to sea.
California must pursue water policies that are deeply rooted in nature-based solutions like rehabilitating floodplains, forests, and wetlands. California must also regulate agriculture to ensure that it can survive and prosper through cycles of wet and dry years.
Instead, Governor Newsom has signed an executive order that promotes a fictional narrative. The story goes, if we can just store more water, California’s agricultural sector can continue to grow its profits exponentially. Grow its profits, at the expense of ordinary Californians.
Resources
Governor Newsom’s Executive Order
My State is 1,000 Miles Long, and Not Everyone Hates the Rain, by Mark Arax. This New York Times article explains how there is no normal when it comes to precipitation in California.
Manulife Acquires 1,400 Acres in Central Valley, The Land Report.
Farmland in demand, by Catherine Green. This LA Times article discusses the effects big money is having on small farmers and water in California.
This editorial references the following books that are highly recommended for further reading.
The Dreamt Land, by Mark Arax
Cadillac Desert, by Marc Reisner
Where the Water Goes, by David Owen
