By Philip Erro

Published in Community Alliance

Amid the present controversy about whether the west side of the San Joaquin Valley should receive Northern California water pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, few voices have addressed domestic food security.

California has an enormous federal water project called the Central Valley Project (CVP) that transports Northern California water south. As conceived and built, the CVP allocated 85% of its water to agriculture and 15% to urban uses. That held true until the passage of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act of 1992 authored by U.S. Rep. George Miller and Sen. Bill Bradley (presidential candidate in 2000). That law addressed the environmental damage caused by the CVP diversions of the Trinity and Sacramento river flows from their natural river channels primarily to farms by allocating 11% of CVP water to fisheries and wildlife habitat. The 11% of CVP water was taken from agriculture, with virtually no effect on the Firebaugh area and western Sacramento Valley agricultural water users but a huge impact on western San Joaquin Valley farms.

From 1968 until 1992, the Westlands Water District in western Fresno County received 100% of its federal water allocation, with the exception of three severe drought years. From 1993 to the present, the Westlands Water District has received an average of 68% of its contracted water allocation. This year, its allocation has dropped to 10%, amounting to 2.2 inches of water.

I do not have a quarrel with salmon and other wildlife getting back some of the water nature once gave them. I do not believe humans can survive without sharing water with other species. My complaint is how it was determined which agricultural water users would bear the environmental burden. That "decision" was left to California water law, which holds that the oldest water rights are the firmest. The rationale has been that if a water district or municipality constructed a dam and canals, its investment would be safeguarded against some other entity claiming the water it had developed.

The most reliable water rights in California are those established before 1914. People who owned land next to rivers were entitled to river water for their homesteads and small farms. Those rights are called riparian water rights. Other people devised ways to convey river water in canals or aqueducts to their distant farms or cities. These are called appropriative water rights.

Appropriative water rights seekers became increasingly bold and clever. In the late 1800s, Henry Miller and Charles Lux acquired enough appropriative water rights to irrigate 750,000 acres of dry plains in the San Joaquin Valley. In 1913, the City of Los Angeles appropriated water from the Owens Valley on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains to supply its growing urban population. In the same year, the City of San Francisco appropriated water from the Tuolumne River in Yosemite.

Subsequently, the California legislature perceived the need to regulate these appropriative water rights and passed the California Water Commission Act of 1913 to authorize the right to divert surface water for use on land that does not abut a surface stream or river. To assure the passage of the California Water Commission Act, the legislature wrote into the law that people and entities that had established their riparian and appropriative water rights prior to enactment of the law would be guaranteed the highest water use priority. Hence, the people with pre-1914 water rights in California have the most reliable water rights.

In the Firebaugh area, many farmers had riparian and/or appropriative water rights long established before the Department of Interior completed the construction of Friant Dam in 1944. That dam diverts San Joaquin River water north to Madera County and south to eastern Fresno, Tulare and Kern counties, taking San Joaquin River water from Firebaugh area farmers. Faced with this appropriation of their river water, these farmers demanded and obtained high priority "exchange rights" through which they were placed first in line to get Northern California water pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta through the Delta-Mendota Canal to their area.

Based on the amount of water Firebaugh area farmers received before Friant Dam was built, they receive 41 inches of water (like 41 inches of rainfall) from the Delta in "normal" years and 31 inches of water in drought years. With an average of 7 inches of rainfall, Firebaugh farmers have an average 48 inches of combined surface and rainwater in normal rainfall years and 38 inches of combined surface and rainwater in drought years like this year.

North of the Delta in the western Sacramento Valley, farmers established their surface water rights before 1914 and have extremely reliable CVP surface water allocations, valley-wide averaging 12.5 inches in normal rainfall years and 9 inches in drought years. This year, they are receiving 12.5 inches of water. Rainfall in the Sacramento Valley averages from 16 inches in Sacramento to 30 inches in Redding. Using the lower end of the rainfall scale, western Sacramento Valley farmers receive an average of at least 28.5 inches of combined CVP surface and rainwater in normal years and 25.5 inches of combined CVP surface and rainwater in drought years. They actually have more surface water than the Federal Central Valley Project provides because of locally developed surface water serving Glen, Colusa and Yolo counties.

The Delta is not getting enough freshwater from Northern California this year to supply fish and other life forms because the amount of water needed to flood 2,200,000 football fields one foot deep is being delivered north of the Delta to western Sacramento Valley farmers. In addition, of the little freshwater being exported from the Delta this year, Firebaugh area farms are getting 630,000 football fields one foot deep of water because of their high priority water rights. These water allocations are prejudicial to the Delta environment, Delta farmers and other Delta water users, Bay Area water users, Southern Californians and particularly the west side of the San Joaquin Valley.

The western Sacramento Valley grows primarily rice for export, some almonds and walnuts, some oil seed crops like sunflowers, little tree fruit, little lettuce and other fresh produce, and virtually no citrus. Similarly, the Firebaugh area grows little if any citrus, hardly any lettuce and other fresh produce, little tree fruit, some melons, some almonds and cotton. By contrast, the west side of Fresno and Kings counties grows winter and summer lettuce, fresh corn and peppers, almonds at a 50% higher yield per acre than western Sacramento Valley orchards, pistachio nuts, blueberries, cherries and clementine oranges.

There are two factors that account for this contrast in regional food variety and production. The soils of the 300,000 acres along I-5 in western Fresno and Kings counties to which I refer allow water and roots to move easily between soil particles on the one hand but retain moisture and nutrients on the other. These soils are well suited for growing lettuce and other fresh produce; nut, fruit, and citrus trees; grape vines; berries; beans; and grains like wheat. The other factor that makes this area so productive is the micro-climate. There are fewer winter freezes of shorter duration than in the Sacramento Valley and the eastern San Joaquin Valley. There is little winter and spring fog that blocks sunshine and allows fungal damage to occur. And there are fewer spring rains that reduce the pollination of almonds, greatly boosting almond yields in this area.

Wouldn't it make more sense to take 600,000 football fields one foot deep of water from the combined 2,830,000 football fields one foot deep of the western Sacramento Valley and Firebaugh allocation to grow the rich variety of foods that are grown in western Fresno and Kings counties than to stick with the rigid water rights? This would deliver 24 inches of CVP water to 300,000 acres of premium soils located in a prime Mediterranean climate instead of this year's 2.2 inches of CVP water. With 24 inches of water, a west-side almond farmer would have enough water to grow 100 acres of almonds for every 200 acres he had, leaving 100 acres fallow; a lettuce farmer could grow two lettuce crops on the same parcel, provided he had at least 6 inches of winter rainfall.

And do not forget the fish. We could repatriate 400,000 football fields one foot deep of Sacramento and Firebaugh water to the Trinity River to boost salmon production. High-yielding fisheries can provide protein and high-quality fats for our diet.

If we are serious about domestic food security in the United States, we will allocate surface water where the best soils and climates are and to the rivers that grow the most edible fish. We need to think more like President Franklin Roosevelt did when he envisioned the Central Valley Project. He delivered water where it would grow food for the entire nation.

Sources: Introduction to Water in California, David Carle, University of California Press; California Water Institute, Fresno State University; San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority; and Westlands Water District.

*****
Philip Erro isÿan advocate for peace, clean air, solar energy, the homeless and sound water policy. A native of Fresno and son of a sheep rancher, Phil and his wife have planted almonds on a 300-acre familyÿfarm on I-5 in western Fresno County.