Central Valley Farmers Face 10% Cut in Water Deliveries
Despite last winter’s punishing storms and raging floods in Northern California, a months-long stretch of dry weather has forced federal water authorities to announce a 10% cut in deliveries to Central Valley farmers.
As a result, the growers and some Bay Area urban customers will get only 90% of the supplies they had anticipated.
“No one is using the word ‘drought’ but, in a nutshell, you could say that,” said spokesman Jeff McCracken of the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the Central Valley Project.
The bureau blamed abnormal “bone dry” conditions in late winter and so far this spring for the cutback. Officials said this marked the first time in the 50-year history of the water and hydroelectric project that contract allocations had to be revised downward.
Dangerously full Northern California federal reservoirs were drawn down drastically in January for flood control, but those releases have not been replenished by the usual amounts of rain and snow expected in February, March and April.
McCracken said the reduction will apply to growers in the Central Valley and to about 2 million residents of Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties who buy water from the federal project.
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