Third Year of Drought Would Put Heat on the State’s Irrigation Systems

California’s successful plea for federal drought aid for a project to protect Sacramento River spawning grounds drew a snort of disdain from one Eastern congressman this week who chided the state for seeking to keep “yuppies supplied with salmon mousse.”

But the fact is that California has endured two consecutive years of drought. It has weathered the prolonged drought as gracefully as it has, however, because 90% of the state’s agriculture is irrigated. Most of the 250 commercially grown crops are watered by an extensive federal-state system of reservoirs, canals and pumping stations developed over nearly half a century.

The question that California water watchers and farmers are now asking is whether that system can handle a third year of abnormally dry weather. The Department of Water Resources estimated Thursday that the state’s 151 major reservoirs are less than half full and hold less than 70% of the water they normally have in early August. And 41 of the state’s 58 counties already have reported water shortages of some kind.

Moreover, there is only a 50% chance of a winter wet enough to refill the reservoirs and begin to recharge the vast underground lake beneath the San Joaquin Valley, said Bill Helms of the department’s drought information center. (The state last December predicted that 1988 would be a wet year.)

“One more dry year will pull down water supplies where we, too, will face the kinds of drought problems the rest of the nation has experienced this summer,” warned Leland H. Ruth, president of the Agricultural Council of California, which represents grower-owned cooperatives.

Ruth’s warning may be premature. But the vulnerability of California’s crops--worth more than $16 billion in farm earnings last year--is demonstrated in the situations faced this year by two farmers. Bob Moore of Lincoln, northeast of Sacramento, scrounged only enough water to grow less than a quarter of his normal rice crop, while Peter Groot, a nurseryman in Irvine, has cut his water needs by 30% in two years and got by this year on Colorado River water.

Moore, a third-generation farmer, grew rice on 900 acres in 1987, despite low rainfall and a tiny snowpack. But this year, the creeks that feed the Placer County Water Agency dried up, leaving Moore and his neighbors to tap what other sources they might have. Moore was able to pump from two drinking-water wells on his farm enough to flood 200 acres.

The small rice stand is flourishing, despite extremely hot weather, he said. “Oh, it’s beautiful. It’s going to be as good a crop as we’ve ever raised.”

Good as it looks, however, and as good as the price will be for it in this year of smaller rice supplies worldwide, Moore knows that 200 acres will not come close to covering costs. Recovery will probably take four years, he said.

“If we don’t have a good winter with lots of snow this year,” he said, “not only would areas like this lose crops, it would be a disaster for the state.”

Moore’s concern for what this winter will bring in as rainfall and leave as snowpack finds an echo at the other end of the state. On the southeastern edge of Irvine, Groot has received every drop of water his family’s flourishing El Modeno Garden nursery ever needed, but he worries about the future. El Modeno and the scores of other nursery operators, citrus growers and dairy and specialty farmers who make up Southern California agriculture owe their continuing prosperity to Colorado River water.

“There has been no cutback (in water deliveries) this year,” Groot said, “but the Metropolitan Water District (which supplies the area) classifies agriculture as an interruptible service. And last May they notified us that they might interrupt deliveries next year or allocate deliveries.”

The nursery’s crops have growth cycles ranging from a few months to seven years, he said. “So if all of a sudden you get a substantial cutback in water, it’s traumatic. What can you do?”

What Groot has done over the past two years is install a computer-controlled irrigation system that has cut water needs by 30% by metering out water to maximize penetration and eliminate runoff. Now he worries about what will happen if there are cutbacks.

“If next year they say squeeze another 25%, I don’t where I’m going to get it,” he said. “The efficient grower will get hurt far more than the person who has been very inefficient.”

Groot said that while agriculture may use most of the state’s water overall, in Southern California it takes about a 10% share. To make an impact, he said, any major cutbacks would have to come from urban users.

“I think we have to plan for more storage,” he said. “If we have another year like ‘76-’77, we’re supposed to have a shortfall of half a million acre-feet (of water).”

Meanwhile, the drought’s toll already is real enough for California poultry growers whose flocks were decimated by oven-like temperatures, cattlemen who slaughtered early for lack of feed and dry-land farmers dependent on annual rainfall.

“As a hedge against next year,” said Helms of the drought center, the state is buying 110,000 acre-feet of water this year from the Yuba County Water Agency’s Bullards Bar Reservoir on the Yuba River to maintain storage at giant Lake Oroville, which can hold 3.5 million acre-feet but now contains just 1.8 million.

More upbeat news came this week from the heart of California’s agricultural economy, the well-irrigated San Joaquin Valley. There, farmers have received about 85% of their normal deliveries of water from the federal Central Valley Project and the State Water Project. They made up the difference by pumping, “at four times the cost,” from the region’s huge aquifer, said Robert E. Leake Jr., general manager of the Fresno Irrigation District.

“Our ground water basin is in pretty good shape, so we could survive another couple of dry years without material affect on our growers,” Leake maintained. Growers would likely have to pump more and dig deeper wells, he added, “but the water is there.”

As for the so-called fish curtain that caught the ire of Rep. Robert S. Walker (R-Penn.), the project would modify Shasta Dam--now at 56% of normal capacity--so that the coldest water behind it can be released into the Sacramento River whenever the downstream spawning grounds warm to the danger point, as this year, threatening the winter run of salmon. The $3.9-billion drought-aid legislation allocated $5.5 million for work on the temperature-control project, which is expected to begin operation in time for the 1990 run.

So the question for California is what this winter will bring in the face of some major impending changes in the state’s water needs picture, said Mike Henry of the California Farm Bureau Federation. First, he said, the surplus Colorado River water Southern California has been drawing will soon be diverted into a new Arizona canal system while California has plans to build only one new major storage reservoir--Los Banos Grandes on San Luis Creek in eastern Merced County. Second, demand for water in the state is growing because of rapid urban growth, especially in such farming areas as Modesto, Fresno and Bakersfield.

“And against those two knowns,” Henry said, “is the big unknown: next year’s snowpack.”