California forced to model new waterways

Drought reveals value of sustainable agriculture as it exposes threats from polluting practices.

By Genevieve Slocum

Dried up Lake Oroville in March.

California’s current drought emergency may prove to be a moment of truth in the American West’s long history of fierce competition over water, forcing swift prioritization and conservation measures. Agricultural needs have been contending with out-of-control urban sprawl in some of the driest areas of the country, as well as with industrial and municipal water needs. The situation will only get worse as global warming’s impacts deepen changes in weather patterns, say experts.

Perhaps nothing makes the case for local food security—and new pathways to agricultural resilience—like the climate-related struggles of California’s Central Valley farmers, who produce a large portion of our national food supply. With Sierra Nevada snowpack at about 60 percent of normal, farmers can no longer count on this once-reliable, year-round, slow-release water supply, a source of roughly 75 percent of the water they used for irrigation.

Diminished water supplies threaten every kind of farm that depends on irrigation. Total estimated revenue losses for 2009 could reach $1.6 billion out of a $30 billion-a-year ag industry, according to the Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics at the University of California. Losses in revenue, employment, and income are expected to be 30 percent. The hardest hit will be the lowest-level workers on these farms. “Farm workers are typically low-wage workers with few alternatives for other work. As such, job losses as a result of Delta exports will be concentrated among a group poorly equipped to absorb the effects,” notes the Giannini Foundation. Unemployment was already a reported 25 percent as of April 1. Income losses will occur disproportionately among this group, the foundation believes.

As climate change accelerates, many experts predict a warming trend coupled with extreme fluctuations in precipitation—more droughts and more precipitation. Newly vulnerable, food production will rise and fall with the swings in rainfall. Agricultural water supply will be noticeably less secure with 25-40 percent less snow predicted to contribute to the region’s snowpack by 2050.

More rain, more drought

Additionally, most of the precipitation California now gets as snow will become rain in the near future. In contrast to water slowly released from snowpack, much of this rainfall will be gone by the time it’s needed, leaving flooding, erosion and finally drought in its wake. Mountain snowpack is a phenomenon that has historically buffered farmers worldwide against the violent whims of an unpredictable climate, giving growers some natural insurance against routine dry times. Reduction of year-round mountain snow cover will make summers drier, droughts worse and winter floods the norm.

Climate change is bound to impact everyone in California in years to come, as snowpack loss has already proved a prime example. Upstream hydrologic changes affect the entire water supply below, including water quality in estuaries. Even small changes in temperature could have a devastating effect on statewide water supply.

As decreased river flows pump up salinity downstream, the delicate balance between the San Francisco Bay Delta estuaries and infusions of freshwater from the mountains will be threatened. According to the National Resources Defense Council, the frail levee system throughout the delta is already vulnerable. If it failed, the vast water supply filtered through the delta could suffer massive inflows of salty sea water. Not only would drastically reduced freshwater inflows threaten the estuary and other vital ecosystems downstream, but the drinking water supply for millions of people would be at risk.

Dry cracked earthen canal in the Suisun Marsh, Fall 2008.

Experts say that California will see dropping agricultural output in any possible scenario. Droughts have always spurred innovation in irrigation efficiency, but such advances can only go so far before they plateau.

Reports Peter Henderson for Reuters, “California water planners in a draft report see three different scenarios for the state by 2050. In the most unfettered, suburbs sprawl ever-farther, replacing productive farms with water-soaking lawns and the population doubles – as does urban water use. In the best-case scenario for water use, the population increases about 20 percent, but denser housing and conservation help keep urban water roughly steady.”

Between a rock and a dry place

Gary Grant, a research hydrologist for the U.S. Forest Service, sees the slowly, steadily recharged groundwater supplies of the Cascades as the future oasis of the West. He believes the geology of each region has enormous impact on its sensitivity to climate change, ultimately determining where the region’s water supply comes from. The Sierra Nevada, source of most of the water needed by central California farms, is pure granite. The range has no capacity for groundwater storage beneath it, hence the sole reliance by downstream farmers and communities on its snowpack storage.

Late-summer flow in northern California and western and central Oregon, by contrast, comes from a vast groundwater supply below the Cascade Range, thanks to its composition of young, permeable volcanoes. This region’s water source will likely be far less vulnerable to climate change than exposed snowpack. This is because the form that precipitation takes (rain or snow, in variable intensity) matters little, as long as there is adequate net precipitation to recharge the subterranean water levels. Water supplies are therefore not directly related to seasonal precipitation and their reliability can span moisture gaps, a coveted quality in a world where water is ever scarcer and more valuable.

“In the not-so-distant future, clean water will be the single most important commodity produced from national forest lands. It will totally eclipse lumber,” Grant told Science Findings, the Pacific Northwest Research Station’s newsletter. As that future approaches, national forests will have a vital role to play in filtering and delivering the West’s groundwater. What’s important is the ability to look for and channel the water that can realistically and easily be stored in its watershed the longest. Building dams for water storage can be an additional solution, but often a costly and controversial one among various economic sectors. Agriculture and industry have long been notably fierce contenders for water supplies that fall under human control.

Riding the carbon wave

Organic farming has long been a useful buffer against drought, since organic soils usually contain a much higher organic matter fraction, helping absorb and hold moisture. Resilience only helps to a point, however, as many farmers, extension agents, and organic certifiers are finding out. It does little good when there is simply no water to be had. Most farmers to the west of the San Joaquin Valley rely solely on federal water supplies, which have been all but cut off this year.

“Organic farmers are definitely good at conserving water, and in an invasive pest issue they’re certainly more resilient,” says Claudia Reid, policy and program director at California Certified Organic Farmers. “But when the government delivers 0 percent of the water allocation, all the resiliency in the world doesn’t help. The farms closing down are, for now, limited to the west side of the Central Valley, and given the recent rains, an increase to 5 percent delivery is expected in some areas, but the drought is still a very serious problem.”

Roots of Change, a California-based nonprofit whose goal is to create a sustainable food system for California by 2030, believes that any plan to reshape agriculture must look realistically at the situation and accept the new limits imposed by climate change. President Michael Dimock hints at the possibilities for a new paradigm to be born of the crisis, writing, “neither the federal nor state government can mitigate the impacts of this drought without cooperation and balanced consideration of human health, ecological and economic consequences.”

Less water, more quality issues

Diminished groundwater flow also brings with it new vulnerability to water pollution, formerly mitigated by dilution. This is a critical concern for communities with less water and lots of confined livestock facilities. Concentrated livestock operations may leach nitrate nitrogen into underground aquifers, which contaminates wells and drinking water.

Rising nitrate levels point to problems inherent in an ever more consolidated livestock industry. Merced County has the most dairy cows in the state, with 335 dairies, which in 2007 produced 29 million pounds of manure. The county ranks second for the number of poultry operations, with 45.

Dairy industry waste was not seriously regulated before 2007, and failure to line waste ponds is still not an uncommon violation. Industry consolidation has led to farm waste in the county similar to that of a small city. To make matters worse, the biggest cheese processing plant in the country is also in Merced County, and a permit has allowed it to discharge 1.2 million gallons of salty wastewater over the last 18 months.

As with tempering excessive water use, the central tension at stake in cleaning up agricultural waste is the cost to California’s economy. Livestock and cheese industries and large farms provide a huge number of jobs to the valley and surrounding areas. Cleaning up the industry, in addition, forces many businesses to pass on “greening” costs to consumers. Many stakeholders, however, realize that they can’t sever the vital artery of regional water resources and the fragile ecology that supports them, while still demanding business as usual. Something has to give.

Industry, agriculture, citizens and lawmakers alike will soon be forced to deal with the immeasurable value of water, which deceptively appears to be the simplest, most infinite resource. For true change to happen, popular opinion must rally around a fundamentally new outlook, and the understanding that water use is not free, particularly in times of skyrocketing demand. Indeed, water has been called the “solvent of life” – nothing lives without it.

Genevieve Slocum is editorial assistant in the communications department at the Rodale Institute. She was recently accepted into Columbia University’s Masters of Public Administration in Environmental Science and Policy program, and plans to change the world one plate at a time.

Dimock, Michael and Richard Rominger. “Response to drought is a dry run for a response to climate change.” Roots of Change: Feb. 11, 2009. http://www.rocfund.org/blogs/michael-r.-dimock-s-blog/response-to-drought-is-dry-run-for-a-response-to-climate-change

Henderson, Peter. “Climate change accelerates water hunt in U.S. West.” Reuters, Mar. 10, 2009.

“How the West Will Warm.” National Resources Defense Council. http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/gww/fgww.asp.

Howitt, Richard E., Duncan MacEwan, and Josue Medillin-Azuara. “Economic Impacts of Reductions in Delta Exports on Central Valley Agriculture.” Agricultural and Resource Economics Update. The Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics, University of California. Vol.12, No. 3: Jan/Feb 2009.

Knowles, Noah and Daniel R. Cayan. “Potential effects of global warming on the Sacramento/San Joaquin watershed and the San Francisco estuary.” Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 29, No. 18: 2002.

Lamb, Jonah Owen. “Overrun by waste: Large agriculture operations add billions to our economy but what price are we paying?” Merced Sun-Star, Mar. 21, 2009.

Thompson, Jonathan. “Running dry: Where will the West get its water?” Science Findings, Pacific Northwest Research Station. Issue 97: October 2009.