Water Wars – The Battle Continues

For those of us in California driving up Interstate 5 or Highway 99, signs from angry farmers constantly remind us that water rationing is a very touchy political subject. Trump’s regulatory laissez-faire – climate change denial laced with open and virtually unregulated access to public waterways for everything from irrigation to waste disposal – is quite popular among the farming community here. Water = jobs = profits. The signs make that very clear, blaming Congress and the State for the water shortage. This isn’t a Trump-aligned state, and water rationing has become a way of life in California.

Some crops just cannot be justified anymore. For example, nut trees are exceptionally water intensive. They have been a mainstay of large swaths of California agriculture. Driving down the highway, there are acres and acres of dead and dying fruit, olive and nut trees, long since deprived of their traditional water allocations. Fault? Tree-hugging politicians in a liberal state? Big city voters pushing their environmental message, as Trump and friends allege, and running roughshod over a scattered and relatively population-sparse farm vote? Is this simply a liberal land grab aimed at using “biodiversity” as an excuse to save threatened species that really do not matter?

Unfortunately for most of the Western United States, there have been some rather massive climate changes. Despite one recent heavy rainfall, California has faced a permanent drought status, higher-than-normal and sustained higher summer temperatures, drops in rainfall and humidity and a wildfire season that used to have an April to November fire bracket… and now runs across the entire year.

If you haven’t noticed in whatever news source you routinely use, California is having one of the worst fire seasons in recorded history. As of this writing, according to Cal Fire and the U.S. Forest Service, California has lost an astonishing 1.344 million acres to 5844 separate wildfires, with death and destruction ranging from forests to standing communities. The imagery of these raging fires is just terrifying.

Like it or not, rising temperatures and decreasing rainfall have resulted in a significantly reduced level of sustainable snowpack among virtually all of California’s mountain ranges. That measurable reality simply means that there is even less water to be allocated for irrigation. The latest blow has been a determination by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP), which controls water resources in many parts of the state, to cut off even more irrigation rights.

The September 24^th Los Angeles Times examines this history and the current predicament: “The lush plains east of Yosemite National Park offer a window into a bygone California — a place where sage grouse welcome the arrival of spring with theatrical mating rituals and cattle graze on verdant pastures… For nearly a century, these lands have been made green thanks to annual flooding by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, helping maintain cattle forage and keeping alive a culture of ranching in southern Mono County… But those days may have come to an end in August.

“Citing climate change, the DWP this year shifted its irrigation policy, saying ranchers who lease grazing areas on its 6,400 acres near Crowley Lake should no longer bank on the promise of ample water when they renew… Officials say the change is necessary as decreased snowmelt leaves them little water to spare. But the move could turn grasslands brown, rattling ecosystems, the local economy and a way of life, ranchers warn.

“‘Without irrigation, we’d be looking at mostly cheatgrass and tumbleweeds, which are good for nothing,’ said Kay Ogden, executive director of the nonprofit Eastern Sierra Land Trust, as irrigation water flowed ankle deep across pasturelands edging U.S. 395… ‘Does L.A. have the right to destroy habitat and the livelihoods of families, friends and neighbors who have lived here for generations?’ she said.

“The DWP has for seven decades provided several lessees in the area about 5 acre-feet of water per acre per year, which made their pastures nutritious through the summer and added luster to the area’s hiking, biking and angling hotspots. (An acre-foot of water equals about 326,000 gallons, more than enough to supply two households for a year.)

“But as the agency prepares for a future with less snow, more rain and prolonged periods of drought, the prospect of flooding pastures with enough water to serve 50,000 families annually has lost its appeal.

“The DWP said it would have to spend about $18 million to replace the amount of water requested by ranchers and the lost hydropower it could generate — an unacceptable burden for its Southern California ratepayers of about $30 per family per year… Beyond that, water officials say, irrigation was never a guarantee tied to the leases held by ranchers, who pay an average $10 to $15 per acre per year to graze on irrigated pastures… As it drafts new 20-year leases for 10 longtime ranchers in area, the department says lessees should anticipate that little to no water will be available for them…

“Bob Gardner, chairman of the Mono County Board of Supervisors, summed up the tensions in a recent letter to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti… ‘We refuse to accept that climate change and ratepayer obligations justify the impacts to our natural environment and regional economy,’ he said. ‘Quite simply, LADWP’s arbitrary plan is nothing more than a veiled water grab.’

“On Aug. 15, the county filed a lawsuit against the city and the agency asserting that they violated the California Environmental Quality Act by altering management policies without first analyzing their potential effects, including the increased risk of fire on dewatered pastures… Three weeks later, the water district initiated its environmental review…

“‘The DWP never ceases to amaze me,’ grumbled [Mark] Lacey, one of several lessees in the area who have reacted to the coming water reduction by reducing their herds, sending cattle up to Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska and Oregon… ‘My operation is down by about 40%,” Lacey said. “That means I have three full-time employees — including myself — instead of five, and I’m spending a lot less on lunch, gasoline and auto parts at local businesses.’”

We’re witnessing water crises all over the world, from Cape Town, South Africa’s limping along on a little less than 14 gallons a day as an average urban water per consumer allocation to the massive droughts in Syria and Iraq where well over a million Sunni farmers, abandoned by their Shiite-controlled governments, turned to al Qaeda and ISIS to help them. Access to water is rapidly becoming one of the biggest continuing stories everywhere.

Chaos, war, bitterness, food shortages and shortfalls in urban sanitation requirements are clearly just the tip of the iceberg, you’ll pardon the pun. And while catastrophic floods and rain-heavy tropical storms decimate other parts of the world, hot, dry and deadly are the other side of the coin for a lot more people. Welcome to the future, and the less we do about climate change, the worse it is going to get. It’s already pretty ugly.

I’m Peter Dekom, and a future of too much water where we cannot use it versus not enough water where we need it most just might be the major issue for the 21^st century.