Agriculture Today - September 2007
ESA enforcement takes water away from Fresno County farms
Delta smelt decision cuts Delta exports to west side
Driven by a tough, unyielding Endangered Species Act, a federal judge in Fresno on Aug. 31 ruled that water cutbacks will occur for western Fresno County farmers and others to protect the ESA-listed Delta Smelt.
Federal District Court Judge Oliver Wanger’s ruling likely will result in a loss of as much as 50 percent in 2008 supplies, making this one of the largest single court-ordered reductions in California water history. The decision followed several days of testimony in late-August to determine how best to operate the pumps supplying the water and at the same time protect the Delta Smelt, a 2-to-4 inch long fish with a dwindling population. The hearing was in response to an earlier court ruling that operation of the pumps do not comply with the federal ESA and threatens the existence of the Delta Smelt. A group of environmental organizations filed the earlier suit and ask for a reduction in 2008 deliveries to as low as zero percent. Other plans submitted by State and federal agencies that oversee the pumping operations had suggested deliveries from five-to-55 percent of contract water allocations.
As of Agriculture Today’s deadline, water district and agency officials were calculating the estimated water supply impacts to CVP farmers on the Valley’s west side. Already chronically water short in most years, preliminary water supplies could be as little as 20-to-45 percent with average precipitation, and a dramatically low 10-to-30 percent in dry years. The allocation will likely be determined by Old and Middle River Flow Control Variables in the San Joaquin River.
“We know that endangered-species laws provide no flexibility. We know that our water system is broken. But we haven’t fixed either problem. That’s unacceptable,” said California Farm Bureau Federation President Doug Mosebar, following the ruling. Mosebar call the decision a “sad and troubling” development that underlines the limitations of endangered-species laws and the problems posed by an inadequate water system.
It’s sad that many honest, hard-working people will suffer because our water system is broken. It’s sad that our laws give more weight to fish than to people. It’s troubling that we have reached this point,” said Mosebar.
The impacts from the decision will be far-reaching. Family farmers and their employees may be the first to suffer, but the aftershocks will also hurt small-business owners, truck drivers, packinghouse workers, rural communities—all the people whose jobs are tied to the farm economy in the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California, Mosebar added.
Moreover, consumers will feel the pain as well. “We have to remember what irrigation water is used for. It’s used to grow food to feed our communities at an affordable price. As California grows, we will need more food to sustain our people. Cutting water to some of the most fertile farmland in the world will make California and the U.S. more dependent on food imported from other countries. Many of those countries don’t have our strong environmental and food-safety standards,” Mosebar said.
Testimony at the trial showed that many factors affect the health of the Delta Smelt, an ESA-protected fish that was the focus of an environmentalist lawsuit. Farm Bureau and other farm and water organizations said during the two-week trial that cutting water pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta would harm people and not help the Smelt.
We knew the judge was going to take away some of our water but we were holding out hope that he would have given more time to the scientists to continue working toward a science-based solution,” said Dan Nelson, executive director of the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority, which represents federal Central Valley Project (CVP) water users in western Fresno County..
“Even though the judge’s ruling applies only to next year, it is still devastating news for our farmers,” Nelson said. “Thousands of acres of orchard and vine crops that represent a long-term investment by farmers are in jeopardy. What happens if a farmer is not able to secure a water source to irrigate his crops? It is possible that these crops could dry up and die.”
Annual water requirements for permanent crops, including almonds, grapes, pistachios and others in the CVP south of Delta farming region total 500,000 acre-feet or more. The court-mandated reduction in CVP deliveries to farmers means less water for other crops such as lettuce, tomatoes and other fruit and vegetable crops. Those crops could potentially be fallowed to meet the water needs of permanent crops.
“Rural communities rely on their local farms for their financial survival. Any cut in the irrigation supply to these farms will continue to damage these communities and they simply can’t afford it,” Nelson added.
Scientists say the State and federal pumps only account for five-to-15 percent of the causes that are affecting the Smelt population. Other factors representing a greater effect on Smelt numbers are loss of food supplies and the introduction of foreign plant and fish species that have dramatically altered the environment.
"Scientists testifying on behalf of the environmental groups that asked for these cutbacks admitted that they don't know how many Smelt there are or how these new restrictions will affect the abundance of the species," said Jason Peltier, chief deputy general manager of Westlands Water District, in western Fresno County. "The state and federal agencies responsible for protecting the Smelt don't know what's doing more harm to the Smelt - salinity, invasive species, the decline in the Smelt's food supply, in-Delta water diversions, or operations of the projects. And the agencies admit that they don't know whether reducing the pumping will actually do anything to increase the number of Smelt. Yet, the environmental groups want to impose these immediate reductions in the State's water supply, without any regard to the damage this will do to the economy, to public health and safety or to other endangered species."
The decision is one more illustration of California’s inadequate infrastructure for managing its feast-or-famine water supply. “Our water system has been stretched beyond its limits. We need to forge a sensible plan to fix it,” CFBF’s Mosebar said.