Summary: California is currently in the midst of a severe drought that poses substantial risks to agriculture, endangered species, and human society. Water scarcity has caused tensions to ignite among various groups within California. With the drought ongoing, Californians must consider new ways to preserve their limited water resources.
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By Laurie Ristino and Joseph Simpson
California is experiencing one of the worst droughts on record, resulting in a state of emergency since January 2014. But California’s water troubles resonate beyond its borders. The drought foreshadows a drier state of affairs in much of the West as climate change takes its toll. The tensions in California over competing water uses exemplify what is at stake for the region ecologically and economically.
California contributes about one-half of the nation’s fruit and vegetable production and is also the top dairy-producing state. At the same time, agriculture only contributes 2% of California’s massive gross domestic product (GDP). In order to produce this bounty, however, the agriculture sector uses about 40% of the state’s water.
California is mostly desert. Its agricultural prowess largely relies on irrigation, especially in the epicenter of agricultural production: the Central Valley. Efficient movement of water has allowed cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego to boom even though they naturally receive little freshwater.
Near the end of 2012, California fell into an unusual dry spell. After a dry 2013-2014 winter, the drought forced farmers to uproot valuable walnut and almond trees and sell off cattle they could no longer husband. The drought also caused a year-long fire season and water shortages in many communities, especially poor and rural communities in the Central Valley.
Although the state has water reservoirs, farmers cannot access most of the water because of competing interests, including endangered species. The delta smelt, a three-inch fish that has been a listed species since 1993, is the current poster-child in the fight between endangered species and California’s farmers. In 2007, a federal judge granted protection to the delta smelt by limiting the use of irrigation pumps. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service evaluated the delta smelt’s habitat after that case and concluded that the best way to protect the fish is to allow free flow of water in the fall during the fish’s spawning season. This restriction allows 660,000 acre-feet of freshwater to flow directly into the ocean each year. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the restrictions in March 2014.
In August 2014, the California legislature passed bills that gave the state management rights to valuable groundwater sources, further circumscribing farmers’ ability to water their crops. Additionally, the Central Valley has seen a boom in fracking. Not only is the fracking process freshwater-intensive, resulting in further competition for the resource, but farmers worry that fracking fluid will leach into groundwater that the drought has forced farmers to rely on. To no avail, some state legislators requested that Governor Jerry Brown issue a moratorium on fracking in the Central Valley until science proves the process is safe.
Meanwhile, municipal governments have asked citizens to cut down on water use, and some water districts offer rebates for residents to replace their grass with drought-tolerant plants. As a result, water conservation in urban communities has continued an upward trend compared to a year ago.
Conserving water, however, does not refill lakes, streams, and reservoirs. In an example of the ecological chain reaction that occurs when habitat is lost, migratory birds that fish in these waterways in the winter will find smaller populations and higher concentrations of salts and chemicals. Tens of thousands
of agricultural workers may join the 17,000 workers who already lost their jobs. And the U.S. Department of Agriculture expects food prices to remain high for years to come.
Water is the fundamental building block of life. Its deepening scarcity in our Westand in swaths of the globewill continue to undermine economies and impact species, including us.
Laurie Ristino is an associate professor at Vermont Law School where she serves as Director of the Center for Agricultural and Food Systems and teaches courses in agricultural law. Before joining the Vermont Law faculty, Professor Ristino was senior counsel with the Office of General Counsel, United States Department of Agriculture.
Joseph Simpson, JD ’16, from Chino, California, is a second-year JD student and staff editor at the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law . He graduated from Iowa State University in 2013 with majors in History and Political Science. He is interested in land use law and hopes to use his knowledge to preserve natural ecosystems, especially the underappreciated desert.
The post All Dried Up: Tensions Rise over Water Shortage in California appeared first on Vermont Journal of Environmental Law.