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HOW MUCH WATER DOES WESTLANDS
HAVE THIS YEAR?

 COMMENTS OF LESTER SNOW
GOVERNOR’S PRESS CONFERENCE
MENDOTA, CALIFORNIA
JUNE 19, 2009

QUESTION: Mr. Snow, in a letter to Senator Feinstein you seemed to indicate that the Central Valley has most of the water they usually get; Westlands at 86 percent of their normal water supply. Could you explain how that translates into a disaster?
 
DIRECTOR SNOW: Well, actually, that’s not what the table, or the letter, indicated. What has happened is that Westlands and a lot of the other districts have gone to heroic efforts to try to replace the water that they would have gotten from their normal allocation. Actually, one of the things that has happened is a lot of the farmers have had to pump the groundwater that they normally wouldn’t pump, creating concerns about subsidence, and also pumping lower quality water, which means their production of their crops are going to fall off.
 
So while the numbers look better than 10 percent of the pure allocation, they’ve had to take heroic means to achieve that higher level, just to preserve their crops. So I think maybe the point is more accurate to say it’s not a 10 percent supply, but they don’t have the water they need for the historic production that they have in this region.