Westside growers’ plight is cut and dry

Standing on his farm that spans the vastness of west Kings County, Ernie Taylor can see the impact of drought in the fields and the tawny landscape of the Coast Range behind them. Taylor grows cotton west of Riverdale near Five Points. The crop he planted in April is barely a foot high, and it won't see a drop of irrigation this summer. It will simply be left alone to parch and perish in the unforgiving Valley heat.

"We just don't have enough water to finish it off," Taylor said.

For the first time in 26 years of his farming there, Taylor is having to abandon 300 acres of cotton, half of what he farms in the Westlands Water District, which has recently announced a rationing plan for lack of water.

"We knew we had to make cuts. The question was where. We've just got to cut our losses," Taylor said. "There's nothing else we can do about it."

This year is shaping up to be what some say is the worst drought year in modern history, and the long-standing dry spell -- coupled with a court ruling and skyrocketing fuel and fertilizer costs -- has hit hard the state's biggest industry: agriculture.

In April , U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger in Fresno ordered reduced deliveries from the Sacramento-SanJoaquin River Delta, which supplies water to Westlands, to protect endangered fish. The court intervention comes on top of rainfall that fell far below normal since March.

Foreseeing the water crisis, Westlands, the nation's largest water district, last week decided to cut irrigation supplies by one-third for the next three months. Then came an announcement by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which runs the Central Valley Project through the California Aqueduct, that allocations from the delta would be further reduced to 40 percent from 45 percent.

On Wednesday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a statewide drought emergency and directed the state Department of Water Resources to speed water transfers to areas with the most severe shortages.

Dry conditions are especially causing worries to the San Joaquin Valley, where lack of water is taking tolls in its agricultural crops by forcing farmers to abandon crops. Many fear business losses and subsequent major job losses.

In Kings County, government leaders have been renewing a local drought emergency declaration every fortnight since last June, when Kings County got its first emergency designation by the governor.

"This is like a perfect storm that has happened in a negative way," said Kings County Supervisor Tony Oliveira. "There's the physical drought. There's the legislative drought with the court ruling. And there's the economic drought with the cost of pumping water.

"Kings County had a record ag revenue this year, but the costs of operation are so expensive and water so short, it would put them on a critical path," Oliveira said. "Unless they do everything right, farmers can really get hurt."

Despite the worst drought since the Great Depression, the value of Kings County's crops -- partly driven by extremely strong commodity prices -- hit a record high of $1.76 billion in 2007.

But growers are practically on a "survival mode," and it's not just in the Westlands district, said Kings County's Agricultural Commissioner and Sealer Tim Niswander.

Anticipating a short water supply, many growers have changed their crop patterns this year to move away from water thirsty crops, one of the reasons why cotton acreage is down this year. But they are still pumping more groundwater to make ends meet.

For example, Lemoore farmer Craig Pedersen, anticipating the water crisis, planted more drought-resistent safflower on 40 percent of his acreage instead of wheat. Because of the dry spring, he's been running wells to irrigate his crops.

"We're trying to survive on our wells, which is extremely expensive right now because of the diesel cost," he said. "We are seeing the productivity of the wells go down, too, because everybody is feeding off on their wells."

Good news for Pedersen and other farmers elsewhere in the county is that the Kings River is expected to have a relatively normal run this summer.

"We're about 30 percent short of a normal year," said Don Mills, district manager. "It looked like a good year on March 1, but we've since had to cut our allocation by 20 percent."

On the Westside, growers may not even have the option of supplementing their needs with groundwater because of its high salinity. In the best case scenario, they can blend it with a tight supply of surface water.

Also many Westside growers have switched to permanent crops like almonds and pistachios from annual crops like wheat. They are now struggling to keep the trees alive.

Some have faced a tough decision of walking away from their crops they have already planted. It has been reported that even J.G. Boswell, the country's largest privately held farming operation, based in Corcoran, have set aside some alfalfa and cotton amid the water shortage, although company officials declined to give interviews this week.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's ongoing analysis of the grazing land preliminarily indicates a near 50-percent loss of feed volume this year, Niswander said.

"We may see an increase in unemployment," Niswander said. "We'll see how this plays out as summer progresses. But the water supply now doesn't appear promising."

Niswander said his office will begin surveying growers this week to see how many are actually affected by the drought.

Officials with Lemoore Naval Air Station, which gets water from Westlands and is thus subject to the same water supply reduction, said this week that their operation will be fine.

"Our current projection is that available supplies will meet demand, although we will necessarily monitor and manage usage very closely," said Dennis McGrath, base spokesman. "We do not anticipate impacts on our operations."

But that assurance comes with extensive conservation measures planned to be taken by the Navy. Through the conversion of the turf into xeriscape and uses of drip irrigation and low-flow devices, the Navy hopes to reduce consumption by 15 percent this year, McGrath said.

With Hanford and Corcoran dependent on groundwater, the impact for Kings County was expected to be mostly ag-related. But some communities may face a more direct impact to their water supply.

Avenal, a city of 16,000, depends solely on California Aqueduct water, although it remained unclear this week how it is bracing for a tightened water supply this summer. City officials did not return phone calls this week.

The threat on the east side of Kings County is not as serious as the Westside, said Andrew Hemans, manager of the Lakeside Irrigation District, which receives water from Lake Kaweah.

The district canals will have a four- to five-week run of irrigation water this summer, and Hemans had his share of complaints.

"It's not as good as we like it," Hemans said. "It's a bad situation because of the high diesel cost, as far as pumping groundwater goes. With the year being so rough, it's going to be tough for the guys to finish off their crops."

The impact may go well beyond the farming industry, given the urban growth experienced throughout the state. Southern California painfully faced the grim truths of drought Wednesday, when Los Angeles water officials approved a water conservation plan limiting homeowners from watering lawns for more than 15 minutes a day, requiring restaurants to serve water only when requested and encouraging hotel guests to reuse their towels.

The state has yet to impose uniform restrictions, leaving it to water districts to allocate supplies locally, but Pedersen says change is a matter of time.

Kings County Supervisor Oliveira says urban expansion is another issue that is making the drought situation much graver. "We talk about a regional growth plan in the Valley, but where's all that water coming from?" Oliveira said. "Ag is the easy target."

Meanwhile, both optimism and fear could be heard in the voice of Pedersen as he talked of the drought year against the backdrop of his safflower field irrigated by well water.

"We find a way to survive. We farmers can be creative," Pedersen said. "But the scary part for us is what if commodity prices retract. I'm really fearful. Fuel costs aren't going to go down in the foreseeable future; fertilizer costs are going up dramatically. And this is just the beginning of the drought."

The reporter can be reached at 583-2429.

(June 6, 2008)