Water Grab
Photo: Malcom Carlaw
How a Secret Meeting in 1994 Left California Cities High, Dry and Thirsty
California’s devastating drought is showing no signs of abating, and Governor Gavin Newsom has asked people to cut back on water consumption. That would be a good idea – except he’s asking the wrong people.
In late March with a disastrously dry summer looming, Newsom ordered urban agencies to implement emergency water conservation plans. He stopped short of imposing statewide conservation mandates, arguing that local agencies should have the latitude to address local shortages.
That lackluster response is unlikely to do anything substantive to stem the approaching crisis. More to the point, Newsom’s demands only applied to cities. He blithely ignored the water-guzzling 800-pound gorilla in the room: industrial agriculture. Urban ratepayers consume only about 10% of California’s developed water. Agribusiness – which includes the sprawling agricultural complexes of the San Joaquin Valley – takes 80%.
The industrial farm lobby argues this is as it should be, citing the “enormous” contribution agriculture makes to California’s economy. But agriculture only accounts for 2 percent of the state’s GDP.
Also, California corporate agriculture’s go-to crops aren’t the staples needed to feed the nation – grain, vegetables, and fruit. They’re almonds and pistachios: luxury export crops with extreme water demands. Almonds alone use 13% of the state’s total developed water supply, or between 4.9 million to 5.7 million acre-feet a year. That’s enough water to supply up to 32 million Californians – roughly 80 percent of the state’s entire population.
How did we end up with such a skewed system? It’s all about the State Water Project (SWP), the massive conveyance system that was launched in 1960 to ensure reliable water deliveries to two sectors: cities and agriculture, in that order.
But a not-so-funny thing happened in 1994 during a secret meeting in Monterey between state regulators and major irrigators. The conclave’s participants decided to eliminate the “urban preference” directive from the operational mandate of the SWP. In other words, cities would no longer be first in line for water allocations during drought. Cutbacks would be shared by cities and farms equally.
Then something even more appalling happened. In the same meeting, the State ceded control of the Kern Water Bank, a vast, rechargeable aquifer designated as an emergency reservoir for urban drought relief, to the Kern County Water Agency (KCWA). Almost immediately, KCWA transferred 58% control of the water bank to Stewart and Lynda Resnick, Beverly Hills billionaires and heavyweight Democratic Party fundraisers who – among other ventures – cultivate 130,000 acres of almonds, pistachios, and pomegranates in the San Joaquin Valley. The Resnicks’ farming operations use more water than every household in the City of Los Angeles combined.
It's never been clear why so much was given away to agribusiness in the “Monterey Amendments” of 1994 – or why nothing has been done to rectify the situation in the 28 years that followed. And it’s especially puzzling because “progressive” governors such as Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom have perpetrated these inequities, depriving urban ratepayers and the environment of essential water just to benefit a handful of wealthy growers and hedge funds.
But the current crisis has put us at a tipping point. It’s now clear that the drought isn’t an anomaly: it’s a harbinger of the New Normal. As climate change advances, California will become drier and hotter. Water will become scarcer – too scarce, certainly, to squander on wasteful and harmful agricultural practices that benefit the few at the expense of the many.
State Water Project deliveries were originally restricted to annual crops that could be fallowed quickly as necessity dictated. That changed with the Monterey Amendments. Hundreds of thousands of acres of almonds and pistachios were subsequently planted, perennial crops with high water demands year in and year out, droughts notwithstanding. That’s why urban ratepayers are now being scolded for “excessive” toilet flushing while water still flows to the vast nut orchards of the San Joaquin Valley.
A recent poll conducted by the UC Berkeley Institute of Government Studies Poll and the Los Angeles Times found that most Californians think agricultural water consumption should be limited. Governor Newsom, take heed: voters understand the stakes even if you do not. Be fair and be effective. Put the water burden where it belongs – on industrial agriculture.