Growing Rice in California

Kevin Roderick’s article “State’s Growth Threatens Way of Life in Rice Town” (front page, April 7) is in actuality more an editorial than reporting. Unhappily, the article is one more in a string of unsubstantiated attacks on California’s rice industry.

We have informed The Times’ editorial staff and several of its reporters, both verbally and in writing, of the following: a) rice growers are not the biggest water users in this state, and if The Times will simply check with independent, authoritative sources, this could be cleared up so its readers won’t continue to be misled, b) rice growers have sacrificed tens of thousands of acres to help out with the drought already, yet The Times won’t demonstrate how other bigger agricultural and urban users of water have sacrificed as much,c) with the exception of selected guest columnists (Marc Reisner stands out), The Times remains the only major metro paper in the nation to never really get its facts straight about rice growing in this state, causing us to believe there is some purposeful intent here, and d) The Times knows full well that the struggle it appears to be fashioning between southern state urban interests and rice growers is specious; there is plenty of water for all urban uses in this state. The issue is only which segments of agriculture will be allocated water in drought years.

Rice growers have been one of the few, if not the only, water users to inform the governor and the Department of Water Resources that its industry will cooperate in meeting urban and emergency environmental water needs. We’ll confess, however, it is getting difficult to keep all growers agreeable to this commitment when press headlines claim that the Metropolitan Water District and other Southern California water purveyors refuse to cut back at all, or at least they continue new water hook-ups.

JOHN ROBERTS, Executive Director

California Rice Promotion Board

Sacramento