It's bound to be a strange sight for speeding motorists: Hundreds or even thousands of people dressed in blue and walking alongside Interstate 5 on their way from Mendota to the San Luis Reservoir.

That's the vision organizers have for the March for Water, a four-day trek beginning Tuesday to protest the lack of irrigation water in the parched western half of the San Joaquin Valley.

Drought and environmental cutbacks in water deliveries from the Sacramento River Delta will terminate 60,000 ag jobs and lead to $1.6 billion in lost revenue in the coming months, according to a University of California, Davis, study.

The reason? Three years of below-average precipitation and a court ruling in 2007 that curtails pumping deliveries to many Westside growers in order to protect the endangered Delta smelt fish.

That has left virtually everybody in the ag industry angry and frustrated.

And motivated to march.

Though next week's event is spearheaded by the California Latino Water Coalition to protest unemployment as high as 40 percent in some Westside communities, many others in the industry have gladly jumped on the bandwagon.

The event may be going on in Fresno and Merced counties, but it includes plenty of local participation -- everybody from Kings County supervisor Richard Valle to a farm labor contractor with contracts in Kings County to Lemoore farming couple Phil and Rhonda Brooks.

Brooks Farms happens to be in the Westlands Water District, which learned earlier this year that is would be getting no surface water deliveries from the federal Central Valley Project.

Like other farmers in the same predicament, Phil Brooks, Rhonda Brook's husband, left much of his land empty and unplanted to use the well water on his valuable almond trees.

Thirty-plus years of farming in her family made participation in the march seem natural for Rhonda.

She plans to support the marchers with food and water.

"I mean, the whole nation is eventually going to be affected by this. I'm not just thinking of my family, but the whole ag industry and anybody that's affiliated with it," she said.

Hanford resident Russell Waymire used to farm on the Westside, but he saw the writing on the wall and sold out in 1998.

When Westlands officials warned the district's growers in February that they wouldn't be getting any water, Waymire was long gone, having shifted his farming operation to central Kings County where the well water is better and the water situation is less precarious.

"We just figured the risk of ever having a zero allocation was too great," he said.

Now, Waymire does consulting for Westside growers trying to buy water on the open market.

He said he plans to stay with the march all four days as work permits.

"I'm going to have my laptop with me. We've got to go and just help each other. To me, this is for the Valley," he said.

The march strikes an emotional nerve for PIedad Ayala, a Clovis-based farm labor contractor who grew up in Avenal and has crews working in Kings County and several other counties stretching up and down the state.

Except the number of his people with work has shriveled along with the drought.

"It's pretty sad that we have to go through this. Zero percent water for our farmers? Come on. Where is our government? I really don't get it," he said.

Ayala said construction workers unable to find jobs are coming back to the fields only to find that there aren't many openings there either.

"Give us the water back. As soon as they turn the pumps on, I can get back to my day job," Ayala said.

The reporter can be reached at 583-2432.

(April 11, 2009)