Water woes undercut good harvest

Issue Date: August 22, 2007

By Kate Campbell
Assistant Editor

Processing tomato harvest is going extremely well--the crop is coming in at a million tons a week. So far, tomato growers and other are getting through this season, but there is real concern about tight water supplies next year.

California farmers, especially those in the San Joaquin Valley, are operating on the razor's edge. Lack of water--due to dry weather conditions last winter along with this year's regulatory and judicial actions--have cut farmers' margin for error to zero. Irrigations must be perfectly executed to ensure enough water will be there to finish the crops and get them harvested.

There's just barely enough water to get through the 2007 growing season, farmers say. But they worry more about next year. There may not be enough water in the system right now to begin work for the 2008 crop year. Some are predicting a "train wreck" if there aren't heavy rains to compensate for potential water supply cutbacks.

San Luis Reservoir near Los Banos is the transfer facility for the state and federal water delivery systems. It has a capacity of about 2 million acre-feet. Currently the level is at about 20 percent of capacity.

The Bureau of Reclamation, which shares operation of the reservoir with the California Department of Water Resources, said low point, the level when water transfers to irrigation districts and cities are halted, should not be reached this year. Instead of drawing further from San Luis, federal irrigation deliveries will be made directly from the Delta-Mendota Canal.

"We won't hit the legal low point, which is where the level is so low water quality suffers and Santa Clara (water district) can't use it," said bureau spokesman Jeff McCracken, who added that the bureau still has about 80,000 acre-feet in the reservoir.

"The irrigators will get their contracts fulfilled," he said. "We just won't rely on San Luis any further. We'll continue supplying water until the farmers say they're done growing our food."

Cotton acreage may see the biggest cutback next year if farmers shift to other crops due to tight water supplies in the San Joaquin Valley.

California farms and ranches use roughly 30 million acre-feet of water a year on about 10 million acres. Historically, the state's water infrastructure was developed to provide for irrigation. With improvements in water management technology and field practices, farmers are now producing more food per acre with the same, and often less, water.

Population growth and environmental requirements, however, have increased pressure on the state's water infrastructure and heightened scrutiny of irrigation practices. DWR has found that "agricultural water use, when considered on a broad regional scale, for the most part, is very efficient."

Fresno County diversified grower Dan Errotabere said farmers in his area are harvesting their crops and planning for the 2008 crop year.

"The only way I see how to do this is have some of your ground worked up and ready to go, but maybe not pre-irrigate," Errotabere said. "We'll try to do a minimal amount of work until we get a sense of what the winter looks like. There will be some expenditures on the unknown. There's no way of avoiding it."

The question hanging over farmers now, with so much uncertainty, is how much to invest with such big unknowns, he said.

"Well water coupled to canal water is going to have to fit a plan," said Errotabere, who is a director of Westlands Water District, which supplies water to about 600,000 acres of farmland in western Fresno and Kings counties that produce more than 60 different crops.

Experts say relying on pumped groundwater is not a long-term solution for California agriculture. It is estimated that at the current rate of pumping, Westlands farmers would run out of groundwater within two to three years.

Farmers throughout the state are saying that what gets planted next year will be different from what was planted in 2007. Cotton acreage could be affected because it's one of the last crops planted in the spring. Safflower may replace processing tomatoes because it's a less water-intensive crop.

"In addition, what's waiting for us is the unknown effect of court decisions affecting delta smelt," Errotabere said. "That could add a new wrinkle to our water management efforts."

The issues related to pumping water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta for export to agriculture and about 25 million California residents are being heard this week in U.S. District Court in Fresno. The court proceeding is part of an ongoing lawsuit over state and federal water project operations and the threatened delta smelt.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court by the Natural Resources Defense Council, California Trout, BayKeeper and DeltaKeeper and the Bay Institute. The U.S. Department of the Interior and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are named as defendants.

California Farm Bureau Federation, along with Westlands Water District, San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority, Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District, state water contractors, Kern County Water Agency and the California Department of Water Resources all are intervenors in the court action.

The hearing before U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger in Fresno marks the next step in considering interim actions to protect the smelt. In May the federal court decided the 2004 biological opinion issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service did not provide adequate protection for the declining species.

A new biological opinion is expected sometime in mid-2008, but Wanger must now address the question of what actions, if any, must be taken until that new biological opinion is available to guide delta pumping operations.

Parties involved in this current suit have proposed a range of actions related to pumping water from the delta, which could potentially have serious impacts on future water deliveries to California farms and homes.

After the delta pumps used to convey water to southern areas of the state were shut down in May, irrigation water on the spot market jumped from a range of $40 to $200 an acre-foot to between $500 and $700 an acre-foot. Experts say it's hard to tell what an acre-foot of water will sell for now because currently there's no water for sale.

At Costamagna Farms in western Fresno County, Frankie Costamagna said he's harvesting flat out and expects to continue taking off processing tomatoes through about Oct. 1. Statewide, the processing tomato crop is estimated at about 12 million tons, compared to about 10 million tons last year. Reports from the California Tomato Growers Association are for good quality and yields.

"Water is really tight right now," Costamagna said. "We're using groundwater to finish out the last of our crops. As long as everything goes OK with our wells, we'll get through. But when we're done with this year, we'll have zero water under our contract to start next year.

"We'll just keep running our wells and hope they hold up," he said. "But we're going to be going to crops that use less water and we've already told our tomato processors that our production will be down by 50 percent compared to this year, maybe as much as 75 percent.

"There's no way we can guarantee we can produce the same volume of tomatoes next year without having confidence that we'll have water," he said. "We're finishing the last irrigation on the cotton right now, but had to use well water to get by, which can drastically reduce yields."

(Kate Campbell is a reporter for Ag Alert. She may be contacted at kcampbell@cfbf.com.)

Permission for use is granted, however, credit must be made to the California Farm Bureau Federation when reprinting this item. Top