Mendota isn’t really that atypical of a Central Valley town. It’s not that much different than anywhere else in the region. It is slightly more dependent on agriculture than the big population centers in Bakersfield and Fresno, but so are many of the smaller towns in the Valley.
And Mendota has been hit hard. It has now come to be something of a symbol for the greater plight of the Central Valley. And all of the strange contradictions that lie at the heart of this region. The Valley is running out of water. Over the last 100 years, the Central Valley has grown to become the leading producer of fruit and vegetables in the country by using subsidized irrigated water from the state and federal governments. The water is drying up as there is pressure to conserve endangered species as well as from a powerful 3-year drought.
A few months back, McClatchy’s article looked at the terrible employment numbers and the desperate situation in this small town. The LA Times returns and goes over the same grounds with this town where unemployment is nearing 40%:
Farmers have idled half a million acres of once-productive ground and are laying off legions of farmhands. That’s sending joblessness soaring in a region already plagued by chronic poverty. … Lost farm revenue will top $900 million in the San Joaquin Valley this year, said UC Davis economist Richard Howitt, who estimates that water woes will cost the recession-battered region an additional 30,000 jobs in 2009.
Desperation is rippling through agricultural communities such as Mendota, 35 miles west of Fresno, where an estimated 39% of the labor force is jobless. It’s a stunning figure even for this battered community of about 10,000 people, which has long been accustomed to double-digit unemployment rates. (LAT 7/6/09)
Yet the question is always of water in Fresno County and the region. As Arnold Schwarzenegger came to find out when he held a town hall there, the farmers and the farmworkers want the water back pronto. The problem is that Mendota is situated in what used to be an extension of the California desert. The Central Valley wasn’t really so green until we greened it with an intricate network of water diversions and piped in federal water. The interesting thing is that while the government was building this infrastructure in the region, a growing conflict was burgeoning: Ted Nugent style “we don’t want the government to do anything” with a sense of entitlement to the water. From the Times article:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last month asked President Obama to declare Fresno County a disaster area to boost federal aid. But that’s not what the farmers say they want. At a recent town hall meeting in Fresno, while some women in the audience knitted, men in baseball caps and T-shirts shouted down officials from the Interior Department: “We don’t want welfare, we want water.”
Unfortunately, this has been and will be blamed on the Endangered Species Act, but even if we went through and ensured that every last Delta smelt was dead and pulverized, there simply isn’t as much water as there used to be. The last 100 years were particularly wet, and as we see climate change take its toll the future is uncertain. Will rainfall revert to the norm leaving the Central Valley a desert once again? Will the snowpack dissipate to such a level as to make runoff too early to capture?
These are just some of the questions, but at the same time, while many choose to term it differently, farmers are looking for a bailout. It’s not undeserved, they are hard working people who need help, but whether we put billions into their pockets or into water infrastructure it is still the government action that is the key. Sorry, Mr. Nugent, perhaps you should stick to the guitar.
But at this point the state simply doesn’t have the resources to begin new massive water projects. While there are some bonds outstanding, they are insufficient and not tasked to this particular question. Those bonds focus more on serving the water needs of the urban populations. But as the far Right seeks to drown the government in a bathtub, the water they are using to fill it up is coming from the Central Valley.
There is very little farming future in the central valley unless the fed/state embark on massive water projects. TNA species are but an indicator of scarcity in general. All these environmental crises, of which the water wars are just one, underscore the coming battles over the allocation of scarce resources. Does anyone seriously think that the govt will choose critters over people, when push comes to shove? I’m sorry for the farmers in Mendota, but only a little, like I’m sorry for myself, but only a little, because I live in a place that has many forest fires. Of course they don’t want welfare, but they are not entitled to water, either. The CVP has already effectively demolished anadromous fisheries in the north state – our values as a society are being reflected in the choices we make – we want what we want when we want it. But we may be at the end of water diversions and dam building in this state, which is good, but what will develop in that vacuum may be worse.
The lack of logic in these kind of people is simply stunning.
“Let the bastards freeze in the dark”–a bumper sticker in Texas in the 1970’s.
“Let the farmers in the Central Valley eat dirt”–a new
bumper sticker.
It seems that a grand compromise could be offered–revenues for the current shortfall combined with revenues for water projects. Alas, the CV Reps would probably
reject that.
But it is worth mentioning that Mendota suffers even when the local farmers get all the water they want. During full water deliveries, unemployment is 32%. The drought is an incremental factor, as is the recession. As ever, the story is complicated when you look closer.
It might be better to consider humanely transitioning the West Side economy out of agriculture. Maybe solar power could go there instead of protected desert.
For years the central valley water authorities took more water than they were allowed. One result is the 90% crash of our salmon. The farmers went to trees and vines rather than ground crops that needed to be picked to avoid problems with labor. Also they could sell their water for a profit. Desalinization systems and water purification systems need to be considered. The Delta is degraded and needs to be flushed with flow standards maintained all year. Arnie and his commissions have been a problem. The new canal is not acceptable.
The real problem is that unlike tax revenue there are no new
water sources upstream (north) of the Delta. Another problem is that Farmers are trying to grow permanent crops like Almonds and Pistachios in an area that can’t sustain the trees w/o imported water every year. We have a large number of unirrigated orchards in the Sacramento Valley and they are able to survive even in critical drought years on the low rainfall that does happen.
Also the explosive growth in SoCal has taken up all the available supplies.