Water:  Our Common Crisis

By Phil Hayworth

Pioneer Press

Fort Jones , CA

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

page #E9, column  1

pioneerp@sisqtel.net

On the surface, the little town of Cedarville just 20 miles east of Alturas in Modoc County would seem to have few things in common with Scott Valley and the Klamath Basin .

After all, they're hundreds of miles apart and the water issues facing Cedarville's 1,500-person farming community are really unique to its Surprise Valley , a massive rift situated just west of the Nevada state line, paralleling that state's Washoe County and stretching 50 miles from Lake City to the north to Eagleville to the south.

Indeed, Cedarville and Surprise Valley have far less water than Scott Valley and Klamath.

The valley's three lakes are "alkali" lakes, each one land locked and, by late summer, typically dried out and whitened by the salt that leeches up from ground. Geologists admit that the quality of the ground-water there can't compare to the pure, sweet H2O that feeds the fields of Siskiyou and Klamath counties. Their fields, while abundant with alfalfa hay when watered, still aren't nearly as verdant or productive as the fields in the Scott and Klamath areas - even to the untrained eye. 

But Surprise Valley has more in common with the State of Jefferson than meets the eye, admits University of California at Davis geologist Graham Fogg.

"You know, they write poems about lakes and rivers and trees - all the things that you can see on the surface," he said, "but they never write poems about underground water. But 95 percent of circulating water is underground. You can't see it, but it's there."

That underground water comes down the Sierra Nevadas and the Carson Ridge and other hills and peaks in the area, down into underground aquifers, then moves throughout Central and Northern California and Nevada's underground water systems, filling aquifers along the way and moving in mysterious patterns and along geologic gradients in ways and quantities that not even the best science has yet fully quantified. So it's not surprising that scientists and water experts to this day still don't know exactly how much of that water makes it to Siskiyou County or Klamath County, Fogg said. He said surprisingly little is known about just how much water California has in its aquifers, let alone Nevada and Southeastern Oregon .

But there's one thing he's sure of: we're all connected, and the water problems faced by one community are typically related to those faced by others.

Outsiders come to town 

The crowd gathered last Saturday at the Cedarville Community Center nodded their heads in agreement. Nearly 300 locals, Nevadans and academics from California and beyond converged on Surprise Valley last week for a three-day symposium entitled "Common Ground."

The symposium, sponsored by the Modoc Forum, a nonprofit organization led by Ray and Barbara March, owners of the Modoc Independent News, wrapped up on Saturday with a discussion panel featuring Pulitzer Prize winning author Gary Snyder along with author Darryl Babe Wilson, Berkeley publisher Malcolm Margolin, geologist Eldridge Moores and UC hydrologist Graham Fogg.

But several Surprise Valley residents, farmers and ranchers, along with the entire Modoc County Board of Supervisors, criticized the gathering because they said the panel of experts was made up of out-of-towners. Indeed, panel experts such as Beat-era poet Gary Snyder and maverick Berkeley book publisher Malcolm Margolin are not your everyday fare in Cedarville, and with symposium sessions entitled "Honoring the Land and the People On It" and "Western Water Crisis," Modoc locals expected the event to be more a Hippie Love Fest than an objective discussion.

Ray Page, president of the Modoc County Cattlemen's Association, sent a widely circulated letter to supervisors calling symposium goers "zealous environmental types who will pay big bucks to come and listen to ideas from out-of-town, disingenuous, environmentally oriented experts."

The implication was that the panel knew far less about water issues facing Modoc than Modoc locals. The Marches twice requested financial support for the forum from Modoc County supervisors, who refused. Supervisor Patricia Cantrall of Likely likened the notion of the symposium to a city-versus-country ideological fight and the Battle of the Alamo .

" Modoc County is very, very conservative and we have our set ways," Modoc Supervisor Dan Macsay reportedly told local media. "When you see outsiders come in and want to talk about our county, I don't think people like it. Why do we need these people? I think Modoc County 's done good by itself."

Developers buying up Water Rights

But not all those in and around Modoc County agree that everyone in the valley is benefiting from water rights and use.

"Look, developers are coming in here and buying up ranches and shipping that water out to places like Nevada ," said Bob Fulkerson of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada.

For example, developer Sam Jaksick is on of the largest landowners in Modoc County and is in the process of developing a 12,000-home project west of Pyramid Lake in Washoe County , Nevada , called Winnemucca Ranch - a 6,000-acre spread just 30 miles north of the bustling city of Reno . The project, Fulkerson said, would require Reno to annex the area and likely pump water from Surprise Valley and other areas far from Reno and Washoe County . He said developer Jaksick is buying up land in Modoc and in other places around California and Nevada . He wonders if Jaksick's political influence - and money - isn't partly why Modoc County officials and Modoc land owners are so set against the idea of "outsiders" telling them how and to whom to sell their land.

Jaksick's latest project, Fulkerson said, is an egregious example of development planning - and greed -- gone mad.

"The City of Reno has land-use plans for up to 1.2 million people, but the area has only enough water for 600,000," he said. Right now, 90 percent of water serving Reno comes from the Truckee River . If population doubles, places like Surprise Valley will have to quench their thirst. 

To prevent scenarios like those faced by Surprise Valley from spilling over into other California counties - and perhaps even counties in Eastern Oregon -- Fulkerson's group, along with the members of the Great Basin Water Network and others, filed a lawsuit in March seeking to overturn a Special Planning Area designation allowing Reno's annexation of the Winnemucca Ranch property. They're also gathering signatures to put a citizen initiative on the Nov. 4 ballot to ban "leap frog" annexations and water importation from outside the county.

If the planned development - and subsequent water importation from California - goes through, said Steve Bradhurst of the Central Nevada Water Authority, "Its effect will ripple across the West" and the water resources from other communities like Surprise Valley could be tapped for development and profit, leaving the poor and politically powerless high and dry.

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