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Tag: water supplies
A Real 'Infrastructure Week' Is Coming -- And May Last A Decade

A Real 'Infrastructure Week' Is Coming -- And May Last A Decade

Soon enough, America will once again mark "infrastructure week" — except that next time, the catchphrase popularized by former President Donald Trump might become more than a late-night-comic's punchline. Now that President Joe Biden and Democratic congressional leadership have enacted the American Rescue Plan, providing $1.9 trillion to support families, health care and education needs, their anticipated next step is the fulfillment of Trump's unkept promise to rebuild the country's transportation, energy and environmental systems.

Whether Trump ever intended to actually create or even propose a real infrastructure program is as mysterious as anything else about his state of mind. He was once a construction executive, after all, and he did sincerely try to put up that idiotic border wall.

But like so many other notions connected with his presidency, "infrastructure" never amounted to anything, its failure owed to his own incapacities, his corrupt administration and his party's ideological fixations. While he watched TV and munched fries, his transportation secretary greased her own family's company — and his other appointees attempted to misuse the "infrastructure" concept to neuter environmental regulations and sell off public lands.

Still, Trump had the right impulse. As he surely knew, rebuilding all the things that have helped make America great, from roads and bridges and ports to electrical grids and broadband networks, is exceptionally popular. No survey ever taken on the topic has showed anything but wide, enthusiastic public support for very large expenditures on such projects, from Republicans, Democrats and independents. In 2019, Gallup's Frank Newport wrote, "Every bit of polling evidence I have reviewed shows that Americans are extremely supportive of new government infrastructure legislation," a point he reiterated last December. Infrastructure schemes have drawn sufficient congressional support to pass in some form during almost every recent administration.

Certainly, Biden understands this fundamental fact of American politics well, as he demonstrated by adopting the slogan "Build Back Better." He hasn't been in this business for a half-century without learning anything. What he also knows, however, is that the negligence and half-measures of decades past have left our systems in terrible condition, requiring an enormous investment over the coming decade to make any progress toward modernization.

Almost routinely, the American Society of Civil Engineers warns us that the nation's infrastructure systems overall deserve no better than a grade of "D+" or "woefully inadequate." Nothing has improved over the years, and we have endured a long series of disasters, from Hurricane Katrina to Frozen Texas, that have demonstrated how accurate that dismal engineering assessment is. Not long ago, the World Economic Forum pointed out that the United States ranks 13th in the world in the quality of its infrastructure, falling behind our competitors. (Trump was right about that, too.)

When natural disasters occur and essential defenses fail — like the Texas power grid or the New Orleans levees — we receive a dual warning about our future in a world of climate change. We need new and more resilient structures for transportation, energy production, water distribution and environmental protection — and we need to create those facilities while reducing carbon throughout the economy. Biden and his allies in Congress understand the intertwined problem, which is why his plans address both priorities.

Will Republicans sign up for an ambitious plan to build a 21st-century America? The president can and will remind them — and their constituents — that his vision will create millions of well-paid jobs and sustain economic growth for years to come. Building national capacity, from the Erie Canal to the interstate highway system, has been the American way from the very beginning.

Neither full employment nor patriotic duty is likely to persuade the current Republican leadership in Congress, whose mentality on such matters tends to resemble that of a termite. Fortunately, the Democrats can push through a mighty infrastructure bill under the reconciliation rules, again without a single Republican vote if need be.

That would be a political gamble, but the result could be a Democratic reign as long and fruitful as the period that followed the New Deal. It's a bet worth making before the next election.

To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

More California Farmland Could Vanish As Water Shortages Loom Beyond Drought

More California Farmland Could Vanish As Water Shortages Loom Beyond Drought

By Dale Kasler, The Sacramento Bee (TNS)

FIREBAUGH, Calif. — His almond trees have turned a ghostly gray, and his grapevines are shriveling.

After two years without water, Garrett Rajkovich’s farm in western Fresno County is dying. It might never be farmed again. Approximately 1,200 acres face the prospect of permanent retirement.

“This was a beautiful, thriving orchard five years ago,” Rajkovich said during a recent stroll through his almond grove.

Rajkovich’s troubles represent an extreme case, even by the standards of California’s epic drought. Unlike many farmers, he didn’t have groundwater as a backup when deliveries of surface water from the federal government dried up. But what he’s going through represents a taste of things to come.

Land retirement is coming to California agriculture. The drought will end someday, maybe even this winter, but farmers will still face long-term shortages of water. The driving force: a new state law regulating the extraction of groundwater.

The relentless groundwater pumping that has kept hundreds of farms going the past four years is coming to an end. California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, set to take effect in 2020, will limit how much groundwater can be extracted over the long haul. While details of what constitutes “sustainable” pumping are still being fleshed out, water policy experts say many farmers will gradually have their water supplies curtailed — and the nation’s leading agricultural state will farm fewer acres.

“It’s not a question of if — it’s a question of how much and where,” said Chris Scheuring, a lawyer and water expert at the California Farm Bureau Federation.

Many of the state’s farmers are already feeling long-term water problems. Westlands Water District, which serves farmers over a vast swath of land in Fresno and Kings counties, plans to retire tens of thousands of acres as part of a tentative deal with the U.S. government over issues related to drainage problems that have degraded the soil.

The new groundwater law is expected to further shrink agriculture’s presence. As many as 300,000 acres could permanently disappear from agriculture, said farm economist Vernon Crowder, a senior vice president at agricultural lender Rabobank.

That’s not a huge amount in a state with nearly 9 million irrigated acres of farmland. But it’s not trivial, either. It’s enough acres to grow the entire $1.2 billion California tomato crop. The concept is unsettling to people such as Don Cameron, a member of the state Board of Food and Agriculture and a champion of water-conservation efforts.

“It’s the topic people don’t want to talk about,” said Cameron, who raises tomatoes, pistachios and grapes in the Fresno County community of Helm.

The subject is particularly touchy in the San Joaquin Valley, the heart of California’s $54 billion-a-year agricultural industry. Experts at the University of California, Davis estimated that farmers have been draining the valley’s underground water reserves by as much as 5 million acre-feet per year during the drought to help compensate for staggering shortfalls in water deliveries from the State Water Project and the federal government’s Central Valley Project.

What’s more striking, perhaps: Even before the drought began four years ago, the valley’s aquifers were being depleted by 1 million to 2 million acre-feet per year, according to data compiled by the state Department of Water Resources. An acre-foot is 326,000 gallons.

Pumping has been so extensive that portions of the valley floor are literally sinking, a phenomenon known as subsidence. As land subsides, the aquifers gradually lose much of their ability to be replenished by rain.

In other words, this is a deep, systemic problem that will squeeze farmers long after the drought ends.

“When the drought is over, we’re going to be looking at places that don’t have much water in their wells,” said Ellen Hanak, an analyst at the Public Policy Institute of California. “People are doing the math and reading the writing on the wall.”

Some experts say the groundwater restrictions will be especially rough on small farms, which won’t have the financial cushion to keep going. Jim Verboon, who grows walnuts on 100 acres of land in Kings County, looks at his larger neighbors and wonders how he’ll make it.

“I don’t know if this groundwater law, the way it’s crafted, is in my best interest or in any small grower’s best interest,” said Verboon, a third-generation grower. “There’s a certain amount of land in the San Joaquin Valley that’s not going to be farmed, except in very wet years.”

Land retirement isn’t a new concept. Farmland has been disappearing in California for decades, usually giving way to urban development. An estimated 765,000 acres of irrigated farmland vanished between 2000 and 2012, about half of it in the San Joaquin Valley, according to the state Department of Conservation. That represented about 8 percent of the valley’s agricultural base.

Nonetheless, farmers get angry about land going idle, either permanently or temporarily, because of water problems.

They generally accept the idea that groundwater pumping needs to be reined in. But they argue the problem wouldn’t be nearly as bad if the Endangered Species Act were relaxed, less water were set aside for fish, and more surface water were delivered to the valley from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

“We are not understood. We grow a lot of the nation’s food,” said Mark Sorensen, a raisin and blueberry grower in Caruthers and president of the Fresno County Farm Bureau. “I’m not sure those on the coast, in the Bay Area, Los Angeles understand that concept. The surface water is key.”

If the land-retirement process isn’t managed properly, Hanak said, the valley could be left with vast stretches of land simply going to dust. That would compound the region’s air pollution problem, already among the most severe in California, she said.

And unless some other uses are found for the land, there could be economic impacts throughout rural California. Although farm employment has held up surprisingly well in the drought, UC Davis economists say the temporary idling of 540,000 acres this year erased 10,000 farm jobs that would have been created if water were plentiful.

Take land out of production for good, and the job losses likely will mount.

“When we’re out of business, guess what? They’re not getting a paycheck here,” said Rajkovich, who employed two dozen full-time employees when his Firebaugh farm was fully active.

UC Davis farm economist Richard Howitt said the farm economy won’t collapse, however. Most growers have survived the drought and kept revenue strong by concentrating their water supplies on high-dollar crops such as almonds and pistachios.

That trend will intensify in the coming years, Howitt said. Between groundwater restrictions and climate change — which is expected to shrink the Sierra snowpack — farmers will be pressed into progressively harder choices about what to plant and how many acres to leave idle.

“We’re going to have to live within a smaller water footprint, which means we’ll have to learn to live with a smaller farming footprint,” Howitt said.

What will that look like?

Farmers hope they can keep as many acres in agriculture as possible. They’re working on projects to capture winter stormwater more effectively, and to recycle the water they put on their crops. Some believe they can cope with the groundwater legislation by fallowing more fields in dry years and minimizing the amount of land that gets permanently retired.

Not far from Rajkovich’s dying orchards, the Panoche Water and Drainage District is working on pilot projects to desalinate and reuse the water drained off its fields. The goal is to reduce dependence on groundwater.

District general manager Dennis Falaschi envisions a string of desalination plants up and down the valley. The plants might not generate enough water to produce a crop, but they could prevent someone’s almond orchards from dying of thirst.

“That can keep 300,000 acres of trees alive,” Falaschi said.

But land retirement is already a reality in some parts of the valley, where farming has given way to new uses. On West California Avenue outside Mendota, on land that used to produce tomatoes and cotton, sit a pair of solar energy farms and a medium-security federal prison.

The newest of the facilities, a 626-acre solar farm built by First Solar Inc. of Tempe, Ariz., opened in June. Made up of 750,000 photovoltaic cells, the plant has a 61-megawatt capacity and generates enough juice to light up 10,000 homes.

“You’re going to see more,” said Jose Gutierrez, a deputy general manager at Westlands Water District.

©2015 The Sacramento Bee (Sacramento, Calif.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Garrett Rajkovich is surrounded by dead Thompson seedless grape vines due to no water allotments for the Firebaugh farmer, which has resulted in permanent farmland retirement. (Randy Pench/Sacramento Bee/TNS)