CALIFORNIA ALBUM : High Water Prices Deal a Withering Blow to Growers : Ranchers in San Diego County are letting trees die because of irrigation costs. Some are selling their land.

Steve White trudged sadly through the avocado grove he planted near here almost 15 years ago and heard a rasping crow overhead, an irritating speck in the blinding afternoon sky.

“They only circle over a dead animal,” White said, setting his jaw. “Maybe they sense death here.”

There is death here, whole orchards of it. Thousands of trees are sagging helplessly, their leaves wilted and leathery, their branches limp.

It has come to this in the northern portions of San Diego County, last year’s leading agricultural county in Southern California. It is a fertile area with a threatening flaw: it rests at the distant end of the state’s water pipeline, and farmers are paying dearly.

After six years of statewide drought, soaring water rates are forcing many farmers to shut off the spigots that make possible half of California’s avocado crop, as well as lemons, oranges and other fruit and vegetables.

Tens of thousands of avocado trees have been chain-sawed down to stumps. Some discouraged farmers are selling out altogether; others are offering pieces of their land for housing development, hoping to survive until better days.

“We’re in a grave crisis here. We’re in serious trouble with water,” said David Owen, executive director of the San Diego County Farm Bureau.

Consider Raul Sanchez, who for 17 years leased a 200-acre farm in Carlsbad, employing up to 300 field hands to harvest tomatoes, squash, cucumbers and green beans. But no more.

His $150,000 water bill for 1989 rose to $180,000 last year, compounding other financial problems and finally breaking him. His workers have vanished, only a few finding other farm jobs. The landlord has ordered Sanchez to leave.

The earth, usually so alive this time of year, is barren, and wind stirs up the dust.

“Nobody wants to finance us, the city don’t want to supply us with any more water,” said the genial Sanchez. He has an unpaid $50,000 water bill and wants to start anew, somehow, somewhere, if he can only get credit. He is 58 years old.

For many farmers, the increasing cost of water is the last straw that could force them out of agriculture.

“People are getting tired, they’re getting beat down,” said Mike Horwath, past president of the county Farm Bureau. “It’s a never-ending battle to protect your right to feed the nation.”

Water has always been expensive here, but the latest whopper bills have stunned even the most seasoned farmers.

Except for a water district in San Mateo County, farmers in San Diego County pay more for their water than anywhere else in the state, according to agriculture and water officials.

Many farmers in the vast San Joaquin Valley pay roughly $15 or $16 per acre-foot for water that is subsidized under a federal program to support certain farm commodities. Some valley growers pay as little as $5 an acre-foot.

There is no such subsidy in San Diego County, so the average farmer in Valley Center in northeastern San Diego County had paid $475 per acre-foot--a sum that jumped to $540 last month.

Local agricultural water costs range from $460 per acre-foot in Rainbow to nearly $700 in Encinitas, figures that generally have risen rapidly over the past few years.

“There are signals that by year 2000, water will cost $1,000 per acre-foot,” said Escondido avocado farmer Warren Henry, who has cut down 15,000 of his trees--20% of his total--to slash his water bill. “It sends shivers through us.”

An acre-foot is 325,872 gallons, enough to cover an acre of land with a foot of water. It takes 1 million gallons of water a year to maintain one acre of mature avocado trees yielding 6,500 pounds of fruit, Henry said.

The county’s great distance from its water source is a curse in what otherwise is a farmer’s paradise of gentle climate, bountiful land and a cornucopia of crops.

San Diego is 500 miles from the massive State Water Project pumps at Tracy on the eastern edge of San Joaquin County, and it is about 240 miles from the Arizona pumps that transport Colorado River water.

The power it takes to pump water that far swells water bills, and the drought has made the situation worse.

First, the state is charging more for the water it sells to the mammoth Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. In turn, the MWD sells the more expensive water to the San Diego County Water Authority, which apportions it to 18 municipal and agricultural water districts throughout the county. The districts charge varying rates to their customers.

A second factor is the enormously expensive program--hastened partly by the persistent drought--to build more water storage facilities and improve the Southland’s intricate water delivery system.

Mark Baker’s parents moved to Escondido in 1941, and as he watched his father cultivate citrus and avocados, he dreamed of making the land bloom.

He bought property in Ramona 20 years ago, and in partnership with his two brothers, Baker nurtured 8,300 avocado trees on 112 acres. But over the last six years, his water bills more than tripled, from $600 a year per acre to $1,950 most recently.

Finally, in January, the brothers decided to shut off the sprinklers and let nearly all the trees go. About 7,500 trees are slowly dying--or, as Baker cushioned it, “living off the grace of whatever rain we get.”

Once, he used to visit the groves several times a month, enjoying the rows of tall trees, but now the scene is too harsh to behold.

“I don’t want to go up there to see it, OK?”

Beyond the personal, agriculture officials are alarmed about the future of the local avocado crop, which in 1991 was valued at nearly $132 million.

“I think we’re on the verge of a major destruction of the avocado industry. It just doesn’t pay any more,” said Gary Bender, farm adviser for the University of California Cooperative Extension.