Farmers face low water year

Reservoir levels drop as California braces for dry conditions

Elizabeth Larson
Capital Press

May 9, 2008

After two years of thin snowpacks, California 's water conditions are causing increasing concern for agriculture, with hundreds of thousands of fallowed acres this year and concerns about what farmers may face in the next.

After a promising start to the snow season, the Department of Water Resources' last snow survey of the year on May 1 showed the state's critical snowpack is averaging only 67 percent of normal statewide because of record dry conditions.

DWR's electronic sensor readings show northern Sierra snow water equivalents at 88 percent of normal for this date, central Sierra at 61 percent and southern Sierra at 60 percent.

Despite better moisture conditions in January and February, DWR reported that March and April 2008 combined are the driest in the northern Sierra since 1921, the first year that records were kept.

As a result, parched soil is taking up water content, DWR's May 1 report stated.

That has resulted in dwindling water runoff into streams and reservoirs, which now measure only 55 to 65 percent of normal, DWR reported.

Conditions have resulted in dropping levels in the state's reservoirs, including Lake Oroville , the principal storage reservoir for the State Water Project, which DWR reported is at 48 percent of capacity, and 58 percent of average storage for this time of year.

That, coupled with court orders, likely will result in a tough water year. The Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley , Central Coast and Southern California may only receive 35 percent of their requested allocations from the State Water Project this year, DWR reported.

However, the Bureau of Reclamation reported late in April that farmers north and south of the Delta will still receive from the federal Central Valley Project a 45-percent allocation, the same amount announced earlier in the year.

For farmers in some areas of the state, actions already have been taken in order to deal with less water.

Sarah Woolf, spokesperson for the Fresno-based Westlands Water District, said last year's conditions led to the fallowing of 200,000 of the 600,000 acres served by Westlands, the state's largest irrigation district.

"Our growers made a lot of decisions in the winter regarding how much acreage they could and could not plant based on the Wanger decision and the knowledge that our water supply was going to be short because of that decision."

The Wanger decision is a federal court ruling handed down last year that will limit water exports from the Bay-Delta in order to protect endangered delta smelt populations.

Mike Wade, executive director of the California Farm Water Coalition, agreed that acreage is being scaled back around the state.

"People started making these decisions last Sept. 1 after the Wanger decision," he said.

Water, he said, is being shifted from annual to permanent crops.

Looking at the snowpack and the reservoir levels leads Wade to believe the state may be in the second year of a drought - but no one wants to say the word, he added.

The question is, what will conditions be in 2009 if the state's water storage has been depleted, Wade said. He estimated conditions could look similar to those in 1990 or 1991.

What's shocking, said Wade, is it only took California two years to get into a critical situation.

While it's good news that the Central Valley Project's allocation will remain stable, it's too late to benefit farmers in Westlands, said Woolf, where it's too late to add to crop plantings.

Woolf said there are just too many impacts on the delta - both natural and environmental - for farmers to feel comfortable with increasing plantings.

The state legislature didn't manage to get a delta restoration bill through this year, but Wade said the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan is moving forward, although a draft of it likely won't be released until next spring.

Still ahead, Judge Wanger is due to look at delta exports with regards to the crashing salmon population.

Woolf said any resulting decision likely will affect next year's water supplies.

The 2008 snowpack is better than last year's, but that isn't saying much. In 2007 the state's snowpack amounted to a dismal 29 percent statewide average, which caused state reservoirs to be drawn down and they lost the cushion gained over a few good wet years.

This year, DWR reported that the snowpack's depth and water contact has declined since April, when - despite a dry March - water content was just short of 100 percent of normal.

The snow season had started with extremely high snow levels in the Sierras, at one point measuring more than 120-percent of normal.

Elizabeth Larson is a staff writer based in Lucerne . E-mail: elarson@capitalpress.com.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted
material  herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have
expressed  a  prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit
research and  educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

Source:  http://www.capitalpress.info/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=41484&

SectionID=67&SubSectionID=616&S=