Tag Archives: Farming

Environment

Astroturf Needs No Water!

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The water issues in this state are complex and often mind-boggling.  And of course, there are some people with gripes, some more legitimate than others.  It would be really nice if everybody could just sit at a table and talk honestly and openly about this, but I’m guessing that Westlands Water District doesn’t really want to sit at a table and say that they need the rest of the state to pay for the unsustainable agriculture in the western region of the Central Valley. And I really doubt that some of the construction (and even some labor) really want to say that they simply want the contracts to build a bunch of unnecessary projects.

So, barring that, you get astroturf, which really doesn’t need water. It can grow with just a bit of cash.  And, as Steve Maviglio has been pointing out, the Latino Water Coalition is just such a group.  Capitol Weekly has some juicy details of the “outraged water consumers”:

The Coalition was registered on Dec. 29 of last year by Soares. His firm, Kahn, Soares, & Conway LLP, billed lobbying clients more than $580,000 during the first six months of this year, over 80 percent of it to agricultural clients. The mailing address listed on the Coalition’s Web sites is identical to that of Soares’ firm, located on L Street across from the Capitol. (Capitol Weekly 10/1/09)

The “Coaltion” as they frequently misspell their own name on forms has hired comedian Paul Rodriguez to go around making speeches to crowds of angry people. Angry people usually bussed in, sometimes from out of state, sometimes from different regions. But boy are they angry. Angry at the Delta smelt, angry at the salmon, and angry at the fisherman for wanting their livelihoods to continue.  As for the politicians they are angry at, well that’s mostly reserved for Democrats and the mean meanies who won’t send the delta smelt to its extinction.

It works for the Republicans. The anger works, and directing the anger at the fish, and those who protect the fish, well that works too.  As Jon Stewart shows, this is really a part of a bigger scheme to simultaneously attack the environmental movement at the same time as they are attacking the president and the Central Valley Democrats.  And while I’m kind of uncomfortable standing up for a Blue Dog like Reps. Costa and Cardoza, the fact is that their records are being distorted on these issues.

But, why get real supporters, when you can simply pay some angry comic, like Paul Rodriguez, to rile up a crowd and then throw in Sean Hannity for some extra fun too?

I hope they enjoy the in-bus movie as they head back home from all the fun Latino Water Coalition rallies. I hear Baseketball is a thriller, and they use REAL astroturf on their field.

Environment

The Future of Water Policy?

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Over at KQED’s California, they have an interview with the AP’s Garance Burke about water policy in the state. It’s worth a listen.

As you may remember, the Democrats released a water plan last week and are focusing on the issue. However, as the comments point out, there is a substantial risk here.  Namely, the spectre of a peripheral canal.  The commission that would review the Delta issues would gain vast powers, powers that could even extend to the construction of a canal or an underground piping system to take water north to south around the Delta.

Environment

Water is the New Oil: Planning for a Changing Climate

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MendotaYesterday, the Democrats in both houses laid out their plans for we manage one of the most critical issues in the state in the era of climate change: the San Joaquin Valley/Sacramento delta water issues.  Rather than focusing on specific projects, Sen. Lois Wolk and others are looking to build a structure that can be a trusted arbiter as we look to divide what little water we have to a slew of purposes.

The legislation, which is to be fleshed out in a conference committee when lawmakers return to Sacramento later this month, does not specifically authorize any projects. Rather, it creates the Delta Stewardship Council, which would have the authority to pursue delta restoration work and a “water conveyance facility.”

Four of the council’s seven members would be appointed by the governor and two by the Legislature. The seventh would be the chair of the Delta Protection Commission.

The bills call for water conservation and delta protections. They would also set in motion a potentially explosive examination of water rights in the delta watershed.

“Neither the delta ecosystem nor the state’s water needs have been well served by decades of benign neglect,” said Silicon Valley Sen. Joe Simitian, author of one of five bills in the package and chair of the Senate Environmental Quality Committee. “The system of governance is broken and the system of conveyance is broken.”  (LA Times 8/6/09)

How critical is this issue? Well, let’s start with what we know:

• The Valley floor is sinking. Because we have taken too much water from the groundwater supply, the San Joaquin Valley has actually fallen several feet in some areas. The picture to the right is from Mendota back in 1977. It has gotten worse since. The USGS performed a study on subsidence back in 1999 showing some really bad side effects other than just the lowering valley floor.  After the floor falls, the aquifer permanently loses storage capacity, making the provisioning of water to crops even more difficult.

• Crops are dying in the fields. In some places, farmers are simply leaving their feilds fallow as there is not enough water to bring them to maturity. However, where you have longstanding crops, like fruit trees, the consequences of a couple really bad water years last much longer.

• Endangered species are being slowly killed off in the Delta. The Delta was once home to a number of species found nowhere else. However, as we have increasingly relied on pumping, we have not only killed many of them as they went through our pumps, we have also changed the salinity of the Delta, creating a slight, but important, change in the environment.

• The decreasing water flows to our creeks and rivers threatens our fisheries.

• Climate change will bring increased flooding and droughts.

• Apparently people need water to survive in cities.

These are, of course, only a few of the problems that we are facing with respect to water. And as it stands, there are a lot of parties involved, federal, state, and municipal water districts. And the chain of command is rather sketchy.  Few are looking at the region as a whole rather than just their little portion. If this package of bills gets through, at least that will change.

But one thing that should be made clear to every Californian is that water is prescious.  We should not waste a single drop. Despite the fact that consumer usage accounts for only around 20% of overall usage, we need to ensure that we aren’t using more than we absolutely need. While water is a fundamental right of living, and should be kept cheap, we should understand just how much value it truly has. One of the bills in this package, AB 49 would require 20% conservation from all users. This is a laudable goal as we move forward into a changing climate.

The package of bills isn’t a complete solution for all of our water woes, but it is a good step in the right direction, especially for the Delta.  However, we cannot sit back and just figure the Legislature is on this. Sure, they are working on the issue, but we need to keep up pressure on our leaders to enact sensible comprehensive legislation that deals with how California thrives in a changing climate in the 21st Century.

You can check out the full package at the Senate’s atrocious website. (Seriously Senate people, this is supposed to be California, the innovation state. Can’t we get a website from this century?)

California, Economy, Environment

We Must Change The Way We Live

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In the 1930s two crises hit the Great Plains at once – 50 years of overfarming marginal lands had destroyed the topsoil and created what we know as the Dust Bowl, and at least twenty years of economic pressure to overfarm (to pay debts and make up for collapsed prices) had created an untenable financial situation for the farmers. Either one was going to end in disaster – the land would give out or the overuse of credit would end in deflation and ruin. As it happened, the crises both occurred at exactly the same time, producing a social catastrophe from which several states have still not recovered.

California now faces the same problem. For 60 years we have based our economy on the production and consumption of sprawl. This worked well enough until the late 1970s, when those who had prospered the most from this model decided to stop reinvesting profits in the state and in society, and took their ball and went home. The next 30 years were dominated by even more sprawl, financed by massive amounts of debt and by eating the state’s seed corn by slashing the government programs that built prosperity in the first place.

This was always bound to end in disaster, and as we are well aware, that disaster – in the form of economic depression and government bankruptcy – is now here. But the massive sprawlconomy binge had another set of costs whose bill is now coming due – water.

California had an unusually wet 20th century, and we exploited that to the fullest. To have a society built on sprawl and consumption, we needed to siphon as much water as possible to give not just to the new housing developments, but to the sprawling farms. Sprawl is a farming phenomenon as well – wasting land and water resources on resource-intensive crops grown to enrich shareholders, instead of sensibly using land and water to grow crops for subsistence and food security. California was in a water bubble, just as the state was experiencing a financial bubble. We have been living well beyond our means.

Ultimately the water bubble was going to burst. And just as in the 1930s Great Plains, it is bursting at the same moment as the economic bubble. For the least year or so you could drive down the backroads of the Salinas Valley, Salad Bowl Of The World, and see shuttered warehouses and laid off packing workers.

Now that water is less available the agricultural recession is shifting into higher gear. The highest unemployment rates in California are in our agricultural counties – 22.6% in Imperial, 14.3% in Tulare, 13.7% here in Monterey County. (Note: those stats are for nonfarm jobs, and yet the correlation between ag and the rest of the county economy is obviously very strong.)

The water crisis is now about to come to the rest of California. Sitting here in Monterey, in summer-like weather in January, I am inclined to believe the claims that this is the worst drought ever in the state’s recorded history:

California teeters on the edge of the worst drought in the state’s history, officials said Thursday after reporting that the Sierra Nevada snowpack – the backbone of the state’s water supply – is only 61 percent of normal.

January usually douses California with about 20 percent of the state’s annual precipitation, but instead it delivered a string of dry, sunny days this year, almost certainly pushing the state into a third year of drought.

The drought exacerbates the problems caused by our overuse of water resources. To prevent a total environmental collapse in the Delta massive reductions of water flows will be required. And for those of us who live in counties that don’t get our water from the Delta – places like Sonoma, Marin, and Monterey – the situation is going to be worse. Water managers in those counties are planning to 50% cutbacks in urban water use, which is an amount that will dramatically change how we live. We could let every lawn die and stop hosing down every driveway and still not get anywhere close to 50% reductions.

The Monterey Peninsula has been under Stage 1 water rationing for ten years now. You rarely see water wasted here, and new development has been at a standstill (how many towns have vacant lots and abandoned homes within a mile of the beach as we do?). But a 50% cut will force dramatic changes in how we live, as it will around the state.

Those changes ARE coming. There is no way around the fact that the way California was organized in the 20th century – politically, economically, and especially in terms of our land use and water use – is over. Done. Gone.

The question for us now is will we try to actively transition California to a more sustainable future? Or will we do nothing and let the chips fall where they may? The first option at least allows us a chance of rebuilding widely shared prosperity by funding local food, sustainable farming, and urban density. The latter would produce widespread immiseration while allowing a small aristocratic elite to enjoy a semblance of the 20th century lifestyle.

The choice is up to us.

Blog Roundup, Budget, education, Environment, Health Care, San Francisco

October 3, 2007 Blog Roundup

OK, I’m back, and today’s Blog Roundup is on the flip. Let me know what I missed.

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Wingnut myths never die

Sometimes I miss where I
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The CA Dem leadership’s
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Inmigración

The Art of the Possible

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Schools

Environment

Other (not less
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Blog Roundup, Budget, Environment

July 17, 2007 Blog Roundup

Today’s Blog Roundup is on the flip. It includes the experiences of a couple bloggers with arguments against impeachment (or evasions regarding the same), a few pieces on our environment (including our farms and fisheries), land use, another attempt at treating our gay and lesbian citizens fairly, and a smorgasbord of other items.

As always, let me know what I missed in comments.

Impeachment Experiences

Environment and Land Use

Basic Fairness

All The Rest