Cutbacks to Farmers Bring in Bumper Crop of Worries

For Antelope Valley farmers, the news that the state Department of Water Resources will halt all agricultural deliveries from the California Aqueduct has been a particularly bitter pill to swallow.

In recent years, farmers had been weaned away from pumping ground water and encouraged to use aqueduct water so that the ground-water supply could be replenished.

Now, despite slight improvement in the ground-water supply, officials say increased pumping could have dire results on a water table that has fallen as much as 100 to 150 feet in the last 60 years.

Nonetheless, the cutoff of aqueduct water will force many Antelope Valley farmers to return to their wells. But they may find the process expensive and the supply less than adequate.

“This area was pumped pretty hard years ago,” said John Calandri, who runs a 1,000-acre onion farm in Lancaster. He recently tried to pump water from one of his wells and found he had to drill 40 feet deeper because he was pumping nothing but air.

Almost all of the farms in the Antelope Valley, which include 5,500 acres of alfalfa, 2,000 acres of onions and 1,400 acres of fruit trees, have wells on their property they can fall back on, said Gary Mork, a Los Angeles County agricultural inspector.

But the farmers face increased energy costs for pumping the water, and some farmers who can’t get sufficient water will have to cut down on the acreage they plant.

“There are going to be some guys hurt this year, without a doubt,” Calandri said.

Workers at the fruit orchards owned by the Scattaglia-Crystalaire Packers in Littlerock are overhauling wells that had been idle for several growing seasons. On farms and orchards across the valley, they are servicing the pumps, brushing out the inside of the wells and surging water through them in preparation for the state water cutoff.

“The wells haven’t been used in three or four years since we started using state project water,” said Louis Scattaglia, a partner in the firm that grows and packages peaches, nectarines, plums, pears, apricots and cherries. He is not sure how efficiently the wells will operate, or how deep into the ground-water basin he’ll have to go to draw water.

Scattaglia estimates that in a worst-case scenario, his revenues could drop by two-thirds, or $2 million, this year. If it doesn’t rain at all, he will lose a 105-acre orchard that is dependent on runoff from the San Gabriel Mountains.

“Those trees will just die, and that will be the end of it,” he said.

But he holds out some hope that the state won’t completely cut off water to fruit tree growers. “There’s a possibility they’ll give us enough water to sustain the trees until next year,” he said.

Rough times lie ahead not only for the grower, but for his employees as well. If his trees aren’t producing fruit, he may have to lay off employees and he won’t be able to provide work for seasonal pickers.

“We won’t go broke, but it will be a hardship,” he said.

Arthur Stout, who manages 50 acres of peach trees at the Latter-day Saints Church Farm in Littlerock in the southwestern portion of the Antelope Valley, says he is in good shape.

His farm is already equipped with a drip system, which is the most efficient way to irrigate, but also the most expensive to install. The inch-wide pipe, which resembles the thin black tape used by electricians, has small pinholes every 8 inches and is buried under the soil to provide 100% water penetration with no evaporation.

In addition, Stout’s local well pumps water with a high level of nitrates, which makes it unfit for drinking but adequate for agricultural use.

But some of his neighbors, who use the less efficient flood or furrow irrigation methods, are not so lucky.

“Those are the ones who may be hurting,” he said. “They’re the ones who may be cut back to sustaining amounts of water,” a level where the fruit tree is given enough water to be kept alive, but not enough to produce fruit.

Many Antelope Valley farmers feel they are being made into scapegoats. Most of the water used in the Antelope Valley goes not for agriculture, as it did years ago, but for the plethora of housing developments that now cover the valley floor, Stout said.

“So who do they cut first? Agriculture. Makes a lot of sense,” he said. “I’ve been here for 21 years, and the orchard since 1948. Now, there’s a drought, and they want to cut my water?”

The San Fernando Valley’s handful of remaining farmers, who this week began plowing their fields and planting the corn they will harvest in early summer, also face cutbacks, but not nearly as severe as those in the Antelope Valley.

A Department of Water and Power spokeswoman said they would be subject to the same 10% cutback in March and 15% cutback in May as residential users.

Robert Dedlow, co-owner of Kenter Canyon Farms, which has small plots of five acres each in Tarzana and Agoura that grow varieties of lettuce, herbs and other specialty crops, said he will be able to live with the reduction.

“We figure that we can conserve 10% and are perfectly happy to do it,” he said.

But other farmers say they will be hard-pressed to comply even with that level of water reduction.

“It’ll be a mess if we don’t get the water we need,” said Felix Tapia, who with his two brothers runs Tapia Bros. Farms, a 100-acre plot of land nestled along the Ventura Freeway in Encino.

“When corn is calling for water, there is nothing you can do but give it to it, or kill it,” said Joe Cicero, who is the third generation of his family to farm in the Valley. Other than investing in an expensive irrigation system, the only way farmers say they can reduce their water usage is to leave some of their land unplanted.

“There’s really no way we can conserve water except if we cut the acreage,” said Tapia, who has been farming in the Valley most of his life. “It’s hard to see how I’ll save water with the few acres I have. It’s hard enough to make a living as it is now.”

CUTBACK BASICS * Use toilet displacement bags. * Use low-flow shower heads. * Use less water in bathtub. * Use low-flow aerator faucets. * Brush teeth with a glass of water. * Shave with basin filled. * Wash dishes with basin filled. * Wash car with bucket and sponge. * Repair leaking faucets.