Newsom’s drought actions insufficient

(San Jose) Mercury News

Four words sum up Gov. Gavin Newsom’s latest effort to ease the impact of the drought: too little, too late.

California needs to take far more aggressive action to ensure a reliable source of water for 2022 and beyond. Newsom’s administration is targeting unreasonable waste by urban users, who consume 20% of the state’s water. It’s time for him also to get aggressive with Big Agriculture, which sucks up the other 80%.

Proposed rules for urban users recently unveiled by the State Water Resources Control Board would prohibit things such as watering landscaping within 48 hours of rain, spraying down sidewalks and washing vehicles with a hose that lacks a shut-off nozzle.

These commonsense rules should have been implemented seven months ago when Newsom declared a drought emergency after the state had endured another dry winter that left reservoirs at record lows. Instead, the state water board will take public comment on the proposed rules until Dec. 23 and won’t finally vote until Jan. 4.

Clearly, the state also needs to put teeth into conservation rules. Californians have yet to meet Newsom’s executive order in July calling on urban users to voluntarily reduce water use by 15% compared to 2020. The time for talk and voluntary guidelines is over. We are now in a drought that covers 85% of California. Scientists are predicting that La Nina conditions this winter will likely result in another dry year for the state.

But even if Californians were to meet the governor’s 15% target, that would represent only a 3% reduction in the state’s water use. The only way to achieve meaningful cuts involves making smarter use of the water sent to Central Valley farmers.

California farmers have adopted innovative irrigation techniques to make more efficient use of water. But then they throw away the savings as almond growers continue to plant new orchards, gambling that they can pressure the state into releasing supplies to meet their needs during drought years. Central Valley farmers have tripled their orchard acreage from 870,000 acres in 2014 to 1.6 million acres in 2020, reaping big profits by exporting 65% of their crop to China and India.

It’s irresponsible for California to continue diverting vast amounts of its limited water supply for this purpose when increasing numbers of Northern California communities are at risk of running out. More than 1 million Californians already do not have access to safe drinking water.

Central Valley farmers are similarly irresponsible with their limited groundwater supplies. Following the state’s last drought, the Legislature in 2014 passed new laws designed to stop the kind of overpumping that led to thousands of wells going dry and subsidence that caused land to sink nearly 2 feet per year in the San Joaquin Valley.

The laws require water agencies to develop plans to make groundwater resources sustainable by 2040. It was a clear signal to the Central Valley’s farmers to stop routine overpumping of critical aquifers. But they continue to drain groundwater supplies and dig wells deeper and deeper to irrigate fields. Thousands of wells have gone dry in the last year, and hundreds more are projected to go dry in the months ahead.

This ongoing abuse is unsustainable. California farmers have shown for the last decade that they will not make responsible use of the state’s limited water supplies. The state Constitution allows for the governor and Legislature to step in and prevent “unreasonable use of water” in the “interest of the people.”

It’s time for real action.