75% Water Cut to Farmers : U.S. Action Harshest in Calif. History

Federal authorities announced today they are cutting water to farmers by 75% and will reduce supplies to cities by as much as half, emergency actions they said are required by California’s fifth year of drought.

The cuts are the most severe ever in California by federal water officials, and only the third time in the history of the Central Valley Project that the contractors’ full supplies have been ordered reduced, said Don Paff, a regional director for the Bureau of Reclamation.

The cuts are expected to critically hurt the “very fertile west sides of the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys,” said Clark Biggs, a spokesman for the California Farm Bureau Federation. “The water there will be severely restricted.”

California has a total of about 85,000 farmers, a figure that includes all people who earn more than $1,000 annually from farming. Biggs said the Farm Bureau has about 45,000 members, who include virtually all the state’s major and full-time farmers. He added that about 20,000 farmers account for about 90% of the productivity of California’s $16-billion-a-year agricultural output.

Most of the federal water is used by farmers, although some cities and industrial districts also receive some federal supplies. Farmers receive about 5% of their water from the state, about 20% from the federal government, and the rest from local agencies and ground-water supplies.

Paff said the latest cuts have been ordered because of inadequate rainfall and reservoir storage, a poor snowpack in the Sierra Nevada and the expectation that the dry spell will continue.

“It’s going to be a very tough year,” Paff said.

On Feb. 4, representatives of the state government water system in California, the State Water Project, said they were immediately cutting off all irrigation water to farmers and reduced supplies to cities by about half.

Both state and local officials said their planned cuts could change with dramatic improvements in precipitation throughout the state. But they acknowledge that such an improvement is unlikely.

“I don’t think there’s any capability of banking any more (water). The bank is dry,” Paff said.

The federal announcement came a day before Gov. Pete Wilson is scheduled to announce his drought-emergency plans at a Capitol news conference, said Wilson spokesman Franz Wisner.