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New report reveals retiring toxic farmland would save water, money
“California needs to balance water demands with the realities of its supply, which means retiring inappropriate farmland,” said Adam Scow, California Director at Food & Water Watch. “Retiring toxic farmland in Westlands is a commonsense step toward protecting our overstretched and dwindling water supply.”
New report reveals retiring toxic farmland would save water, money
by Dan Bacher
For years, I have been encouraging the state and federal governments and environmental groups to conduct an analysis of how much it would cost, in terms of both money and water, to retire toxic land on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley versus keeping the land in agricultural production.
Since much of the political cheerleading for the Bay Delta Conservation Plan to build the Delta tunnels is based on the assumption that this drainage-impaired land will continue to be irrigated, this is a key question that should have been answered before any plans for new conveyance or controversial Congressional "drought" legislation were developed.
Unfortunately, the political and economic power of the Westlands Water District and the State Water Contractors have enabled them to capture the regulatory apparatus, so the state and federal agency officials wouldn't dare commission a study that would show that the costs of keeping the land in production are more than those of retiring the drainage impaired land.
While the state and federal governments have failed to do this long-needed report, three groups - the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN), Food and Water Watch and Restore the Delta (RTD) - have stepped up to take this challenge on.
The groups recently funded a new report by EcoNorthwest, an independent economic analysis firm, that estimates that 300,000 acres of toxic land in the Westlands Water District and three adjacent water districts could be retired at a cost of $580 million to $1 billion. The report's authors are Austin Rempel and Ed MacMullan of ECONorthwest.
The report, released on July 14, reveals that spending $1 billion to take selenium-laced, unsustainable lands out of production and cutting the water contracts that accompany them actually saves Californians money, along with saving water and the environment. Land retirement makes a lot more economic sense than spending $67 billion to build Governor Brown’s Delta tunnels, which are largely designed to keep supplying subsidized water to corporate mega-farms on the west side of the San Joaquin.
"Retiring this land and curbing the water rights associated with it would result in a savings to California of up to 455,000 acre-feet of water – for reference, the City of Los Angeles uses 587,000 acre-feet in a typical year," according to a news release from three groups. "This course of action also is significantly less expensive than Governor Jerry Brown’s plan to build a massive tunnel system to divert water from the Sacramento River for the benefit of corporate agribusiness."
The report sums up the problems of irrigating drainage impaired land, after noting that farmers produce more than 250 different crops in the Central Valley with an estimated value of $21 billion per year:
"Despite the region's overall productivity, large swaths of land, primarily in the San Joaquin Valley, are unsuitable for irrigated agriculture. The soils in these naturally dry areas have high levels of salts, selenium and boron, trace elements that - when combined with irrigation water - can poison crops if allowed to remain on lands without proper drainage. Related problems include contaminated waterways, increased toxic runoff into the Delta, and deformities in birds and fish."
In light of this land's unsuitability for irrigated agriculture, Food & Water Watch, the California Water Impact Network and Restore the Delta (RTD) are calling on the Obama administration to retire up to 300,000 acres of selenium-tainted land and reduce the annual supply of water in the San Luis Unit, which includes parts of Westlands, San Luis, Panoche and Pacheco water districts, by 455,000 acre-feet. This water is typically pumped from the South Delta via the federal Bureau of Reclamation's Central Valley Project (CVP).
The groups say the Delta is "suffering from poor water quality" because of the removal of fresh water to irrigate water-intensive crops such as almonds and pistachios in the Westlands Water District, located on the hot and dry western side of the San Joaquin Valley.
“California needs to balance water demands with the realities of its supply, which means retiring inappropriate farmland,” said Adam Scow, California Director at Food & Water Watch. “Retiring toxic farmland in Westlands is a commonsense step toward protecting our overstretched and dwindling water supply.”
This study was issued as California growers continue to expand their water-thirsty almond acreage in the state during the drought while the Brown administration mandates that urban families slash their water usage by 25 percent. (http://www.eastbayexpress.com/SevenDays/archives/2015/05/15/californias-thirsty-almond-acreage-grows-by-150000-acres-during-record-drought)
California’s 2014 almond acreage was estimated at 1,020,000 acres, up 50,000 acres from the 2013 acreage of 970,000, according to a recent survey (PDF) conducted by the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). During the current drought, the total almond acreage has expanded by a total of 150,000 acres. Much of this new almond acreage went into production on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley.
The report also comes as the Obama administration and Westlands engage in secret negotiations over the fate of this toxic land.
"Central to the discussions is millions of dollars in debt owed by Westlands to U.S. taxpayers for the faulty and incomplete construction of the Central Valley Project, which supplies water to the district," noted Scow.
The groups said the disastrous consequences of industrial-scale cultivation of seleniferous lands were exposed in 1983, when thousands of migratory waterfowl were deformed or killed outright at Kesterson Wildlife Refuge due to deliveries of toxic drain water from Westlands Water District agribusiness operations.
A recent draft settlement revealed that the Obama administration has proposed guaranteeing Westlands nearly 900,000 acre-feet of water per year for fifty years, while letting the district off the hook for $365 million of its debt. The groups said the proposed deal would provide for the continued irrigation of more than 250,000 acres of selenium-tainted lands, allowing toxic runoff to continue plaguing the San Joaquin River and the Bay-Delta/Estuary. A final settlement proposal is expected soon.
The Environmental Working Group estimated that annual subsidies to Westlands range from $24 million to $110 million a year.
“Discharge into the San Joaquin River harms Bay-Delta drinking water supplies, family farms, fish and wildlife,” said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta. “Everyone knows land retirement will need to happen eventually because there will come a point where the drainage-impaired lands will become unfarmable.”
The three groups noted that the retirement of these poisoned lands and the “paper water” that goes with them would greatly reduce the toxic drainage currently poisoning the San Joaquin River and the San Francisco Bay/Delta Estuary.
In addition to calling for land retirement, the groups are urging Governor Brown and the State Water Board to stop the “paper water” claims that run with the land – the disparity that exists between water rights claims and water that actually exists. Currently, the State Water Resources Control Board has allocated water rights claims that exceed available water from the Delta watershed by a factor of five.
“The retirement must be accompanied by a proportional reduction in water contract amounts,” said Tom Stokely, Water Policy Coordinator of C-WIN. “UC Davis has demonstrated that California water demands are vastly out of balance with the realities of our supply: it’s no more than ‘paper water.’ To guarantee Westlands a fifty-year water supply, as the current settlement does, would be an unfair and irresponsible giveaway to heavily-subsidized, corporate farms in Westlands.”
In a previous land retirement deal, Westlands’ water supply allocation was not reduced. A concern shared by the three groups is that under the deal, "corporate farms might sell their taxpayer-subsidized water for private profit at the expense of the environment," said Stokely.
“We cannot permit Westlands to transform itself from heavily subsidized corporate farms into a water broker at the expense of taxpayers and the San Francisco Bay/Delta Estuary,” said Barrigan-Parrilla.
In addition, given the likelihood that land retirement would eliminate farm jobs tied to that land, the three groups recommend that those farmworkers "be compensated fairly for their losses and that public funds be made available for that purpose."
The groups also emphasized the cost savings to Californians represented by retiring these toxic land. “Spending one billion dollars to take these selenium-laced, unsustainable lands out of production and cutting the water demand that goes with them saves Californians water money,” said Scow of Food & Water Watch. “Retiring these west side lands makes a lot more sense than spending $67 billion to build Governor Brown’s outdated tunnels to support corporate agribusiness.”
Read the EcoNorthwest Report: http://www.econw.com/our-work/publications/estimated-costs-to-retire-drainage-impaired-lands-in-the-san-luis-unit
For more information about the Westlands Water District, read Lloyd Carter's excellent Golden Gate Law Review article, "REAPING RICHES IN A WRETCHED REGION: SUBSIDIZED INDUSTRIAL FARMING AND ITS LINK TO PERPETUAL POVERTY," at: http://www.lloydgcarter.com/files_lgc/Golden%20Gate%20Law%20review.pdf
Background on C-WIN, RTD and Food & Water Watch:
The California Water Impact Network (C-WIN, online at http://www.c-win.org) promotes the just and environmentally sustainable use of California's water, including instream flows and groundwater reserves, through research, planning, media outreach, and litigation. http://www.c-win.org
Restore the Delta is a 20,000-member grassroots organization committed to making the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta fishable, swimmable, drinkable, and farmable to benefit all of California. Restore the Delta's mission is to save and restore the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary for our children and future generations. http://www.restorethedelta.org
Food & Water Watch works to ensure the food and water we consume is safe, accessible and sustainable. So we can all enjoy and trust in what we eat and drink, we help people take charge of where their food comes from, keep clean, affordable, public tap water flowing freely to our homes, protect the environmental quality of oceans, force government to do its job protecting citizens, and educate about the importance of keeping shared resources under public control. http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org
by Dan Bacher
For years, I have been encouraging the state and federal governments and environmental groups to conduct an analysis of how much it would cost, in terms of both money and water, to retire toxic land on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley versus keeping the land in agricultural production.
Since much of the political cheerleading for the Bay Delta Conservation Plan to build the Delta tunnels is based on the assumption that this drainage-impaired land will continue to be irrigated, this is a key question that should have been answered before any plans for new conveyance or controversial Congressional "drought" legislation were developed.
Unfortunately, the political and economic power of the Westlands Water District and the State Water Contractors have enabled them to capture the regulatory apparatus, so the state and federal agency officials wouldn't dare commission a study that would show that the costs of keeping the land in production are more than those of retiring the drainage impaired land.
While the state and federal governments have failed to do this long-needed report, three groups - the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN), Food and Water Watch and Restore the Delta (RTD) - have stepped up to take this challenge on.
The groups recently funded a new report by EcoNorthwest, an independent economic analysis firm, that estimates that 300,000 acres of toxic land in the Westlands Water District and three adjacent water districts could be retired at a cost of $580 million to $1 billion. The report's authors are Austin Rempel and Ed MacMullan of ECONorthwest.
The report, released on July 14, reveals that spending $1 billion to take selenium-laced, unsustainable lands out of production and cutting the water contracts that accompany them actually saves Californians money, along with saving water and the environment. Land retirement makes a lot more economic sense than spending $67 billion to build Governor Brown’s Delta tunnels, which are largely designed to keep supplying subsidized water to corporate mega-farms on the west side of the San Joaquin.
"Retiring this land and curbing the water rights associated with it would result in a savings to California of up to 455,000 acre-feet of water – for reference, the City of Los Angeles uses 587,000 acre-feet in a typical year," according to a news release from three groups. "This course of action also is significantly less expensive than Governor Jerry Brown’s plan to build a massive tunnel system to divert water from the Sacramento River for the benefit of corporate agribusiness."
The report sums up the problems of irrigating drainage impaired land, after noting that farmers produce more than 250 different crops in the Central Valley with an estimated value of $21 billion per year:
"Despite the region's overall productivity, large swaths of land, primarily in the San Joaquin Valley, are unsuitable for irrigated agriculture. The soils in these naturally dry areas have high levels of salts, selenium and boron, trace elements that - when combined with irrigation water - can poison crops if allowed to remain on lands without proper drainage. Related problems include contaminated waterways, increased toxic runoff into the Delta, and deformities in birds and fish."
In light of this land's unsuitability for irrigated agriculture, Food & Water Watch, the California Water Impact Network and Restore the Delta (RTD) are calling on the Obama administration to retire up to 300,000 acres of selenium-tainted land and reduce the annual supply of water in the San Luis Unit, which includes parts of Westlands, San Luis, Panoche and Pacheco water districts, by 455,000 acre-feet. This water is typically pumped from the South Delta via the federal Bureau of Reclamation's Central Valley Project (CVP).
The groups say the Delta is "suffering from poor water quality" because of the removal of fresh water to irrigate water-intensive crops such as almonds and pistachios in the Westlands Water District, located on the hot and dry western side of the San Joaquin Valley.
“California needs to balance water demands with the realities of its supply, which means retiring inappropriate farmland,” said Adam Scow, California Director at Food & Water Watch. “Retiring toxic farmland in Westlands is a commonsense step toward protecting our overstretched and dwindling water supply.”
This study was issued as California growers continue to expand their water-thirsty almond acreage in the state during the drought while the Brown administration mandates that urban families slash their water usage by 25 percent. (http://www.eastbayexpress.com/SevenDays/archives/2015/05/15/californias-thirsty-almond-acreage-grows-by-150000-acres-during-record-drought)
California’s 2014 almond acreage was estimated at 1,020,000 acres, up 50,000 acres from the 2013 acreage of 970,000, according to a recent survey (PDF) conducted by the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). During the current drought, the total almond acreage has expanded by a total of 150,000 acres. Much of this new almond acreage went into production on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley.
The report also comes as the Obama administration and Westlands engage in secret negotiations over the fate of this toxic land.
"Central to the discussions is millions of dollars in debt owed by Westlands to U.S. taxpayers for the faulty and incomplete construction of the Central Valley Project, which supplies water to the district," noted Scow.
The groups said the disastrous consequences of industrial-scale cultivation of seleniferous lands were exposed in 1983, when thousands of migratory waterfowl were deformed or killed outright at Kesterson Wildlife Refuge due to deliveries of toxic drain water from Westlands Water District agribusiness operations.
A recent draft settlement revealed that the Obama administration has proposed guaranteeing Westlands nearly 900,000 acre-feet of water per year for fifty years, while letting the district off the hook for $365 million of its debt. The groups said the proposed deal would provide for the continued irrigation of more than 250,000 acres of selenium-tainted lands, allowing toxic runoff to continue plaguing the San Joaquin River and the Bay-Delta/Estuary. A final settlement proposal is expected soon.
The Environmental Working Group estimated that annual subsidies to Westlands range from $24 million to $110 million a year.
“Discharge into the San Joaquin River harms Bay-Delta drinking water supplies, family farms, fish and wildlife,” said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta. “Everyone knows land retirement will need to happen eventually because there will come a point where the drainage-impaired lands will become unfarmable.”
The three groups noted that the retirement of these poisoned lands and the “paper water” that goes with them would greatly reduce the toxic drainage currently poisoning the San Joaquin River and the San Francisco Bay/Delta Estuary.
In addition to calling for land retirement, the groups are urging Governor Brown and the State Water Board to stop the “paper water” claims that run with the land – the disparity that exists between water rights claims and water that actually exists. Currently, the State Water Resources Control Board has allocated water rights claims that exceed available water from the Delta watershed by a factor of five.
“The retirement must be accompanied by a proportional reduction in water contract amounts,” said Tom Stokely, Water Policy Coordinator of C-WIN. “UC Davis has demonstrated that California water demands are vastly out of balance with the realities of our supply: it’s no more than ‘paper water.’ To guarantee Westlands a fifty-year water supply, as the current settlement does, would be an unfair and irresponsible giveaway to heavily-subsidized, corporate farms in Westlands.”
In a previous land retirement deal, Westlands’ water supply allocation was not reduced. A concern shared by the three groups is that under the deal, "corporate farms might sell their taxpayer-subsidized water for private profit at the expense of the environment," said Stokely.
“We cannot permit Westlands to transform itself from heavily subsidized corporate farms into a water broker at the expense of taxpayers and the San Francisco Bay/Delta Estuary,” said Barrigan-Parrilla.
In addition, given the likelihood that land retirement would eliminate farm jobs tied to that land, the three groups recommend that those farmworkers "be compensated fairly for their losses and that public funds be made available for that purpose."
The groups also emphasized the cost savings to Californians represented by retiring these toxic land. “Spending one billion dollars to take these selenium-laced, unsustainable lands out of production and cutting the water demand that goes with them saves Californians water money,” said Scow of Food & Water Watch. “Retiring these west side lands makes a lot more sense than spending $67 billion to build Governor Brown’s outdated tunnels to support corporate agribusiness.”
Read the EcoNorthwest Report: http://www.econw.com/our-work/publications/estimated-costs-to-retire-drainage-impaired-lands-in-the-san-luis-unit
For more information about the Westlands Water District, read Lloyd Carter's excellent Golden Gate Law Review article, "REAPING RICHES IN A WRETCHED REGION: SUBSIDIZED INDUSTRIAL FARMING AND ITS LINK TO PERPETUAL POVERTY," at: http://www.lloydgcarter.com/files_lgc/Golden%20Gate%20Law%20review.pdf
Background on C-WIN, RTD and Food & Water Watch:
The California Water Impact Network (C-WIN, online at http://www.c-win.org) promotes the just and environmentally sustainable use of California's water, including instream flows and groundwater reserves, through research, planning, media outreach, and litigation. http://www.c-win.org
Restore the Delta is a 20,000-member grassroots organization committed to making the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta fishable, swimmable, drinkable, and farmable to benefit all of California. Restore the Delta's mission is to save and restore the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary for our children and future generations. http://www.restorethedelta.org
Food & Water Watch works to ensure the food and water we consume is safe, accessible and sustainable. So we can all enjoy and trust in what we eat and drink, we help people take charge of where their food comes from, keep clean, affordable, public tap water flowing freely to our homes, protect the environmental quality of oceans, force government to do its job protecting citizens, and educate about the importance of keeping shared resources under public control. http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org
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