Despair as California's Central Valley dries up

[ensho]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090318/sc_afp/environmentwaterusdrought_20090318090753


"Now we know how the Indians felt," sighed Jim Diedrich, a farmer who said he was betrayed by the government as California's Central Valley reels from a serious drought.

-snip-

"We've got zero water this year," explained Diedrich, 66, who has spent 50 years working the land.

Like many other farmers in California, he had to leave idle most of his land in Firebaugh, 145 miles (230 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco. Gone are the 50,000 tons of tomatoes he would have sold for four million dollars.
-snip-
----------------------------------------


an aside: fruit and nut trees will go up in value and may require guarding in the future.

[denem]

1. The dustbowl arrives, right on time?

[TwilightGardener]

2. Um, sorry, dude--the state not handing you irrigation water for cheap

in the middle of a drought isn't the same as what we did to the Indians. What an ass.

[Obamanaut]

3. Throw money at it, then print more. That should fix it. nt

[Kalyke]

4. I'd love to give them some of our rain.

I'm in Knoxville, TN and it rained all but four days the entire month of December.

It rained Thursday through Monday and is expected to sprinkle again today.

Ugh.

[Cleita]

15. I'd love to have some of your rain too. n/t

[MadHound]

5. This is what happens when you continue to live and farm in a semi-arid area

The Central Valley was never meant to be a breadbasket. Southern California and much of the Southwest was never designed to have millions of people living there. Yet after we started damming the rivers and diverting the water to these areas, people thought that this ride would continue forever, never giving a thought to when the water would dry up. Well, guess what, it's dried up. Yes it sucks, and it will probably get much worse and affect the entire country to one extent or another. But if people are smart about this they will stop trying to live in a desert area and move to more habitable climes. If not, well, it's just going to get worse.

[EFerrari]

13. Joan Didion writes about water wars around Sacrament that go

back to the 19th Century, iirc. They knew.

[MadHound]

16. They knew, but at least there was some natural restriction on the numbers that were able to settle

With the damming of the Colorado and the diversion of other rivers, people thought that the water would last forever and started moving out in droves to California. After eighty years of continuous and unsustainable population growth we've now got a problem that's not only going to effect California, but the rest of the country.

The best thing to do would be to start moving people out of the southwest altogether, in a quick and sensible matter, and let the area repair and recharge itself. But that's not going to happen and we're going to keep trying band aid solutions until the whole area collapses catastrophically.

[EFerrari]

24. Gotcha. n/t

[truebrit71]

32. ...or build de-salination plants...there is an abundant supply of the salty variety of water...

...but that makes too much sense...

[Xithras]

23. The Central Valley is not a desert in the normal sense.

Most of the Valley was floodplain, forest, and marshland before people came in. Tulare Lake, once the largest lake in the U.S. east of the Mississippi, existed in the now bone-dry farm "deserts" southwest of Fresno. When John Fremont marched up the Valley in the mid-1800's, his journals recorded the land as being a "paradise". When the Mormons marched west looking for a remote place to settle and create their society, they sent Jim Bridger ahead to scout out their original destination...the Central Valley. Bridger returned and suggested that the instead go to Salt Lake...the Central Valley was so fertile, full of game, and beautiful that he knew that it would eventually attract large numbers of non-Mormon settlers. Whenever John Muir crossed the Central Valley on his way to Yosemite and the Sierra's, he always recorded it as being full of wildflower meadows that stretched as far as the eye could see, blackberry bushes that stretched for miles end to end, rivers so full of fish that you could walk across their backs, and riparian forests that rivaled any forest back east.

It's true that the region doesn't get an incredible amount of rain, but the Central Valley is one of the flattest places on Earth and was crossed by a maze of rivers and streams running out of the four ranges that flank its edges. The huge amount of water flowing through the incredibly flat ground kept the water table between two and five feet below the surface, and the land thrived because of it.

Then white people came. We cleared the land, cut the trees (only 2% of the original forest remains), dammed the rivers, drained the wetlands, and converted it into a giant grid of farms. It was only then that people started thinking of it as a desert. Before that, people thought of it as paradise.

The Valley isn't dry because of geology or the weather, it's dry because we killed it. It's dry because we ship half of its water to San Francisco and Southern California. It's dry because we straightened and levied its river channels so the rivers can't water the plains anymore, so that water just runs out into the ocean. It's dry because, to this very day, we continue to pump water out of its lower spots to prevent "productive farmland" from returning to its natural marsh. It's dry because we clearcut the forests and cleared natural groundcover that once held moisture in the ground during the hot summer months.

Nature didn't make this area a desert, humans did. Nowadays we just teach our children that the area was naturally a desert to propogate the myth that we have somehow "improved" it, and to hide the fact that the Central Valley is one of the most degraded and environmentally sterile eco-regions on the planet.

[doodadem]

38. Absolutely, Xithras!

You have a very good handle on the situation.

My husband and I were talking earlier about Boswell, which basically brought about the end of Tulare Lake. Huge industrial farming, but not even edibile crops. They grow cotton (which takes huge amounts of water), and corn for corn syrup (completely tasteless to try to eat as unprocessed corn). They have bought out untold numbers of small farmers in the Valley--farmers that used to grow edible crops, and bought up all the water rights all over the place.

The other major tragedy in all this is the wetlands and marshes that have been destroyed. This area is now #4 on the list of 25 most endangered locales for such habitats. They were wintering grounds for all kinds of migratory flocks, like Snow Geese and Ross Geese.

We are planning on building a wild duck aviary over the summer. I hooked up with a guy in Oregon, who is going to send me breeding pairs of Pintails, Wood Ducks, Mandarins, Teals (Green Wing, Cinnamon, Spotted), and Hooded Mergansers. Pintails are one of the species that normally winter in the Valley. We are supposed to have Wood Ducks here all the time, but never seen any. My long-term goal is to put in a pond to better attract them. I tried to get government assistance on that (Fish and Wildlife, USDA, etc.), and Ducks Unlimited. We were just too small an operation to interest either one.......

[Xithras]

40. Tulare Lake was one of the greatest environmental crimes in US history...and it's forgotten today.

A lake three times the size of Tahoe, larger than the San Francisco Bay, and bigger than Lake Champlain was simply deprived of water, drained, and erased from existence so it's floor could be used as FARMLAND. Can you imagine the protests and riots if someone tried to drain Tahoe or Champlain? The smaller Salton Sea was manmade, and yet people have fought hard to keep it alive. Do you remember the legal fights and protests to save Mono, a lake only a third the size of Tulare? Environmentalists have a long tradition of fighting hard for our bodies of water, but Tulare had the misfortune of being located in a remote area at a time when environmentalists were more interested in creating national parks than in saving marshlands. Nobody spoke up for Tulare as it was being eradicated, so today it's simply forgotten. Restoring it would be as easy as letting the water flow again, but no group has even tried to push the issue. It's a forgotten crime.

The real tragedy is that extremely few people outside of the Central Valley environmental community are even aware that it ever existed in the first place. I just noticed that it doesn't even merit a real Wikipedia page, just a brief summary of its history. Mark Twains writings about Tulare don't even merit a full sentence.

I do wish you luck with your birds, and I can sympathize with the lack of help you experienced. I own land along the Stanislaus River further north which was once native habitat to the critically endangered Central Valley Riparian Brush Rabbit. I contacted the group responsible for trying to restore the population and invited them to release a few on my property to establish another breeding population. In spite of the fact that my property was once riparian rabbit habitat, and the fact that the sliver of riparian forest along the river edge hasn't been modified and is rarely accessed by people, they never even bothered to call me back.

[Baikonour]

28. Hard to keep people out of a beautiful state with perfect weather year round. n/t

[MadHound]

34. It really wasn't that hard until the advent of diverted water hit the state

LA was nothing more than a cow town in the late 1800's, and most of California's population was further north around Sacto and SF, where the water was. However with the advent of diverted water to the area in the '20's, '30's and '40's, the Southern California area, along with the rest of California saw a huge jump in population.

Many other areas of the Southwest, Phoenix, Las Vegas, etc. have followed the same trend, small little towns until water was diverted to their area and then they boomed.

You can only fool Mother Nature for so long, then she will extract her price, usually a high one.

[Winterblues]

6. When three quarters of the globe is water it is ridiculous

that we can't make it work for us..Desalinization projects are being done all around the world but not here..??:crazy:??

[MadHound]

9. Because they are quite expensive, energy intensive, and pollute both the air and water

n/t

[coffeenap]

12. If we, as humans, made it a priority, we could bring down the costs

to the planet and to people. Humans seem to always take the quick route. Using ground water should have been something we did until we figured out how to harvest the sea water. Just as burning buried fuels should have been temporary until we learned how to harness the sun. When will we ever learn....

[MadHound]

14. Sure, we can bring down the monetary costs,

However that still leaves the costs to the environment, which are quite high.

We really should never have settled the southwest in the numbers that we did, and the most sensible and environmentally responsible thing to do would be to decrease the population there to sustainable levels as quickly as we reasonably can.

However that's not going to happen, and thus we'll continue to degrade not just our environment, but that of the world, all so that we can make the desert bloom.

[RaleighNCDUer]

19. Of course, we COULD use tidal power to run the plants in a non-polluting,

sustainable way, but it makes so much more sense to burn up one precious resource to develop another precious resource.

[MadHound]

22. Never can be totally non-polluting

Even if run with tidal power, what are you going to do with the quandry of all that salt? Put it back in the ocean, or take it out, you're going to adversely effect the salinity levels of the ocean one way or the other.

[RaleighNCDUer]

25. If returning the salt to the ocean is problematical I'm sure they could sequester

it on land - possibly even mine it for usable salts and minerals which would additionally reduce the costs of the facility. Simply removing it from the ocean would not affect salinity at all. If you take a gallon of salt water and remove a cup of salt water from it, the salinity of what remains is unchanged.

[Xithras]

35. There are closed system solutions that are even better than that.

As an example. Let's say that San Francisco were to switch to a completely desalinized water system. That system would remove x+y amount of liquid from the ocean every day, splitting it so that the water (x) goes to the users, and the salty sludge (y) gets piped down the road. To where?

The wastewater treatment plant receives water in the form of liquid waste from the city, and that water is the used effluviant from x. Aside from some small evaporative losses from amounts used to water cars and green lawns, the amount coming back in from the city is largely the same as the amount going out to the city. We pump the water out to the faucet, someone drinks it, later on they pee it out into a toilet, and it gets flushed back to the treatment plant. After treatment and purification, that water gets dumped back into the ocean as fresh water.

Simple math tells us that the solution lays there. If the y sludge is mixed back in with the treated water x, the result should be an x+y liquid that is very close to the consistency of the seawater originally removed from the ocean.

[RaleighNCDUer]

36. Now that is cool. Is there an operational pilot of that kind of closed

system currently running? I've not heard of one, myself.

[Xithras]

37. No. Thye've been proposed, but nobody has built one yet.

The issue tends to be that we like to build our seawater intakes and sewage discharge points as far apart as possible (for obvious reasons). While systems like this have been proposed many times, nobody has built one because of the costs associated with laying the connecting pipes.

[Xithras]

26. Desalinization for non-coastal areas isn't really an option.

Don't get me wrong, I DO think that it should be pursued by coastal cities, but the real energy cost and impediment to desalinization is gravity. One gallon of water weighs 8.3 pounds. Every foot that water has to be lifted costs energy, and we're talking about lifting a LOT of water. Since desalinized water is coming from sea level, 100% of its users will be at an elevation higher than the source.

That's where the real energy costs of desalinization come from.

[Winterblues]

31. You do know what they are doing in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Sahara?

It is a major project going on over there.
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[RaleighNCDUer]

33. That is absolutely true, but the significance is that if we had coastal

desalinization plants providing water to the coastal cities - where 70% of the population lives - then the water from other sources would be sufficient for the interior, for the most part.

Imagine what a difference it would make if LA was not diverting Colorado River water. If the desalinization plants can take care of the densely populated San Diego/Los Angeles stretch, then the central valley could take care of itself and maybe even eventually replenish its aquifer.

[tularetom]

7. Fuck him. He's been getting rich off taxpayer subsidized water for 50 years

never recirculating just pouring his nutrient and pesticide laden tailwater into the drain. And now there ain't enough to go around. In my younger days I used to deliver propane to assholes like Mr Diedrich. Never conserve, never plan for the future, just rape the land and then whine about government interference as you stand in line waiting for the next government handout.

Boo fuckin hoo.

[Cleita]

8. Considering that most of the central valley is Republican, no doubt they

were instrumental in the recall of Grey Davis and then voted for Arnold, twice probably, and they now have Governor inept who doesn't have a clue as to what to do about this problem. Seems to me that they are reaping what they have sown. The Central Valley in its natural state is desert any way. The environmental damage done by farming and bringing water to the valley is becoming a problem because of the pollution both in the soil and air. Children in the valley suffer from a high rate of asthma and other respiratory ailments because of the environmental pollution. It's time to let mother nature take it back. There are places better suited to growing crops than there.

[Critters2]

10. Gee. Farming a desert doesn't work. Who knew? nt

[FredStembottom]

11. It's starting to look like my part of MN is permanently drier, too.

I see changes in the foliage - and suspect changes in the fauna - of central Minnesota. All towards drier, more Kansas type of climate. We have been in some level of drought for about 10 years now.

Meanwhile, just to the south - less than 100 miles - southern MN and about half of Iowa have been drowning in unprecedented repeat flooding. Small towns half washed away by formerly tame little creeks and rivers!

I have always told climate change scoffers that "global warming" doesn't mean higher temps so much as it means weather craziness.

Now, unfortunately, I see the craziness coming true here in my beloved state.

My current prediction is that rattle snakes will soon be discovered in the Mpls/St.Paul area. The super cold winters we used to have always kept the northern edge of the rattle snake habitat south of us - right in that new flood zone. For eons.

Now that the winters are warmer and we have a new dry zone north of the new wet zone - I expect to hear TV News reports of migrated rattlers any day now.

Purely my own theory, however. I am not a scientist but I play one in my mind.:blush:

[ensho]

17. thanks for the report - for the last couple of yrs. have seen different

bird species in Key West. ones never seen before.

changes, changes.

[RaleighNCDUer]

18. You know how the Indians felt, when their land was taken away to

be given to you?

[bridgit]

20. People, people!! There is nothing to worry about till the greens of 5 star golf course' turn brown

[doodadem]

21. We are in the lower Sierra Nevada's

We're in the mountains above the Valley, east of Fresno. We're about done with our annual monsoons for the year. It's always feast or famine here--rain, rain, snow, rain from about Nov. into April, and then nothing for the rest of the year. Our ranch is knee high in lush green grass and wildflowers right now. I mow the grass I have to around the buildings and so forth, and 3 days later, it doesn't look like I did anything. I blocked off a goodly portion of it, and turned our two miniature donkeys in on a gradual basis to clean it up. They are excellent weedeaters, as are the goats.

It all comes down to how much snowpack they got up in the Parks above us this winter. That's what trickles on down to the Valley below. I heard it was pretty good. But seems like no matter how much they get, the big industrial farms will never have enough. They have been known to make entire big lakes disappear, for godsakes!

Fruit and vegetables are going to get more and more expensive and scarce. Self-sufficiency is the way to go. I just planted a bunch of new fruit trees, and getting the vege gardens ready for planting now.

[timtom]

27. I'm telling ya..

there will be a mass reverse migration to Oklahoma.

[TwilightGardener]

29. Nobody's that desperate.

[Neurotica]

30. Similar tale in Australia - farms drying up in this month's Nat'l Geographic

One farmer featured in the article has a dairy farm. Ten years ago he had five farmhands to help out. Today, it's just him, his wife and his kids. Five years ago he had 500 cows. Today he has 70. He's trying to sell his farm but can't during this multi-year drought. There is no longer any grass on his farm -- in just the past 5 years it's been transformed into a desert scrubland.

Of course, Australia has an arid climate. However, it's the rapidity of the change that is occurring that is so shocking.

[handmade34]

39. shaking my head...

"Now we know how the Indians felt" when colonizers stripped them of their land and their rights, Jim said. "We've got the same treatment." ????

Not even close. Agribusiness has exploited and abused our land. Sustainable farming means working with the environment, not abusing it.