RED ALERT: Repito, You Can’t Allocate Water Out of Thin Air: Central Valley to Lose 40K Ag Jobs, $1.15B; 600,000 Acre Ft. of Water ALREADY Requested from Water Bank THAT DOESN’T EXIST (VisaliaTimesDelta)

Jan.23, 2009 in Drought, Prop Management, Public Works, Water Conservation, Water Crisis, Water Industry, Water Management

(Jan. 22, 2009, Visalia Times-Delta)

Don’t be fooled: The latest rain offers no real relief from dry conditions that could cost Central Valley agriculture more than 40,000 jobs.

That was the message delivered Wednesday to the State Board of Food and Agriculture in a session on water conditions that increasingly are putting a squeeze on agricultural operations.

“The Cliff’s Notes version of what’s going on is we’ve had two dry years and there’s nothing on the horizon that’s going to change that in 2009,” said Lester Snow, director of the Department of Water Resources.

That means the State Water Project may only be able to deliver 15 percent of farmers’ allocation, and some San Joaquin Valley growers said they expect that deliveries from the federal Central Valley Project could drop as low as zero.

Bureau of Reclamation spokeswoman Lynnette Wirth said the agency hasn’t provided farmers any allocation notice; that’ll come in mid-February.

If both the state and federal projects only manage 15 percent allocations, with a 50 percent increase in groundwater pumping, then the Central Valley will lose more than 40,000 jobs and $1.15 billion in income, said agricultural economist Richard Howitt of the University of California, Davis.

Smaller allocations could push the job losses toward 60,000, from farm workers to the waitress who serves lunches to farm truck drivers, he added.

“These are jobs lost by people who can least afford it and can least afford to move to other areas,” Howitt said.

While the impact likely would be more concentrated in the western side of the San Joaquin Valley, Howitt said he plans to look at prospects for water-supply reductions for the eastern side of the Valley, too.

In addition to boosting groundwater use, allocation reductions also could lead to increased cross-valley water transfers from east to west, he said.

The state has requests for 600,000 acre-feet from its water bank system, but is having trouble finding willing sellers because of the uncertainty, Snow added.

He also said other options are more difficult to tap this year. Court action has restricted pumping out of the Delta to protect struggling fish species, and state budget problems have crimped the pipeline that usually delivers state grant aid.

Even when there is snow or rain, the ground is so dry that it soaks up much of the precipitation that in a normal water year would end up in reservoirs.

“Even when you get an average year, if it’s after a couple of dry years, you don’t get average runoff,” Snow said.

Last year left reservoirs critically low, and combined with 2007, the state now is nearly dragging the bottom in the record books.

“When you look at two-year records in our history, it ranks in the lowest 10 percent,” Snow said.

(Original Article Here)