Farmers will do their share: San Diego County's agricultural community preparing for mandatory water cuts

By: ERIC LARSON - Commentary | Sunday, October 7, 2007 12:41 PM PDT ∞

It may seem early to make mention of New Year's resolutions, but San Diego County's farmers have already had theirs imposed for 2008. Beginning Jan. 1, farmers are facing a mandatory reduction in water use to 70 percent of the amount used during the previous year.

The cut is the product of three hits taken by the Southern California imported water supply: eight years of drought on the Colorado River, a record dry year in California, and a recent court ruling that the pumps that send water south from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta must be restrained from January to June in order to protect the endangered delta smelt.

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is the wholesaler that manages the imported water that sustains our region. In their view of the current water situation, reserves must be protected in the event of ongoing dry weather and continued restrictions on pumping. They have curtailed nonessential water deliveries and are making a public call for voluntary conservation. They have also made it clear that farmers who participate in the Interim Agricultural Water Program will have to comply with the Jan. 1 mandate.

Cuts will hurt crops

The IAWP came into existence in 1994 when rapidly rising water prices were squeezing farmers. In a mutual agreement, the farmers consented to a reduced level of reliability in exchange for a reduced price from Metropolitan. The agreement called for farmers to accept a 30 percent cut in deliveries in the case of shortage or a water supply emergency before mandates would be imposed on the residents of the community. For 13 years Metropolitan has kept their word and now farmers will keep theirs.

At this time farmers are taking a look at their operations to see where water can be saved. Even though most every farmer can find some level of savings through improvements to their irrigation systems and management, farm water conservation is far from new. With water accounting for a large portion of farmers' overhead, conservation has been essential for years. The next increment of savings driven by the cutbacks will surely result in lost production.

It may come as a surprise to most residents who have a freeway or beach orientation that San Diego County has the 12th largest farm economy among all counties in the nation. With nursery crops and avocados leading the way, the local economic impact is more than $5 billion annually. While most anything can be grown here because of the favorable climate, it was the arrival of imported water in 1947 that really gave farming a boost.

Search for solutions

With no way of knowing what the future imported water picture looks like, farmers are viewing the reductions as open-ended. With the exception of rainfall in flood proportions, this is how it will be. If farming ---- and most all things economic ---- are to prosper in California, there is much work to be done on the future supply of water. Locally we can begin by supporting desalination and water recycling. Neither is the sole answer, but each will help take pressure off our dependence on imported supplies.

On a statewide basis there has to be the public and political will to improve the infrastructure that has served us well for decades but now is overmatched. In wet years there is a lot of water in California but too few places to store it. If we are to survive the dry years, we have to harvest the wet years. That means we need more surface and groundwater storage capacity. Critically important is fixing the Delta to protect it from collapse. California's water supply depends on the Delta, and water must be moved efficiently through or around the Delta without harming the environment.

In addition to supporting those remedies, every water user in the county has the power to make a significant contribution through conservation.

Look to landscaping

We have excelled in minimizing water usage inside our homes, but more than half of the water used in this county is put on the landscape. The fact that we have chosen to have irrigated landscape in our communities isn't bothersome because we all love a great landscape and likely agree it adds to our quality of life. There are good messages endorsed by the water agencies about planting "California-friendly" plants that use amounts of water in keeping with our climate.

Planting the right plants can be important, but how the landscape is irrigated is even more important. If a landscaped area that is now being overwatered every day of the week is reduced to an efficient once- or twice-a-week irrigation, the savings can be huge. If you add up the water loss that each of us can attest to from our own inattention or what we observe daily in wayward sprinklers and waste, we're talking more than gallons. Now multiply that by years. We're talking thousands of acre-feet. It's not the landscape. It's the amount of water put on it.

Conservation by the public is critical. If voluntary conservation fails, the cuts to farmers will go deeper. Each step beyond the 30 percent reduction to farmers will surely mean a greater loss of farming and a possible permanent loss of farmland.

While farmers in San Diego County are preparing to shrink their businesses to comply with mandatory cuts in water, it's time to pull together and solve the water problem. As a community we have decided that recycling is good. We have decided that reducing emissions from our cars is good. We have decided that conserving energy is good.

Now we have to decide that conserving water today and working toward a reliable water future are also good.

Eric Larson is executive director of the San Diego County Farm Bureau.

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