Wetlands Sprout in Former Cotton Fields

The immense flatland on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, like a beguiling trickster, has found a way to defy even the will of America’s cotton kings.

Even as their endless fields stand out as testament to the marvels of industrial agriculture, a toxic dose of selenium and other salts collects in the thick clay underground. A byproduct of irrigating land that was once ocean bottom, the contaminated water must be siphoned off to huge drainage ponds. If not, the cotton fields would wither.

But the drainage lakes--more than 3,000 acres of poisonous gumbo evaporating in the sun--have become a deadly trap for millions of migratory birds charmed by the deceiving blue waters that break up the miles and miles of green-and-black checkerboard.

Now, after a decade at odds with government scientists, regulators and environmentalists over the extent of these killing fields, cotton wizards such as J. G. Boswell II believe they have engineered a solution.

The big growers have crafted a new wetlands area that really isn’t a wetlands but rather a 307-acre bird farm where American avocets and black-necked stilts hatch chicks in an island free from selenium peril.

The compensation habitat, as they call it, stands out as a strange place in a strange land. Built in the manner of a bowling alley, it boasts 34 lanes of sparse brush and land interspersed with 34 lanes of nurturing water.

“When people see the design, they say, ‘Wait a minute, this doesn’t look like a wetlands habitat,” said Tom Hurlbutt, manager for water resources for J. G. Boswell. “We tell them, ‘We didn’t want to build a wetlands habitat. We’re trying to produce birds.’ ”

Growing birds or growing cotton, it is seen here as all part of the same vision that has made Boswell the richest farmer in the world. And just like crop yields and bales-to-the-acre figures, they say they have the bird calculations to prove their success:

More than 3,000 avocet and stilt nests so far this year, double the number of nests last year on the compensation habitat. And more important, no deformed embryos--the handiwork of selenium--have been found over the past three years.

The deadly ponds that edge America’s finest cotton fields are hardly gone, though. But while Boswell and the other big growers continue to drain their most troublesome land, they say they have found a way to keep the birds out of the contaminated ponds--a daily “hazing” campaign complete with shotgun blasts and fast-moving hover boats.

Last week, some of the same government scientists and regulators who forced the big cotton growers to concede the toxic offshoot of their fields, got to see the two-pronged program up close. After a four-hour bus tour across cotton, safflower and wheat fields in various stages of dress and a pork loin and tri-tip barbecue under the shade of Boswell’s Homeland ranch, they still weren’t convinced.

“I was impressed by the number of birds nesting on the new habitat. They seem to love it,” said Doug Barnum, a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

“But there are questions that remain to be answered about the quality of water they’re using and the selenium levels over the long haul. And I’m not sure that one habitat is going to be enough to compensate for all the damage from the [contaminated] ponds.”

This no man’s land reaching across Fresno, Kings and Kern counties may have been a forbidding place--howling desert one day, stinking swamp the next--but it succumbed long ago to the vision of a handful of pioneering families.

When the largest lake west of the Mississippi got in the way, they drained it. When the fields needed to be groomed for irrigation, they leveled the rows so precisely that they never rose or fell more than an inch or two over miles.

Even when the lake returned every 15 years or so, as it is wont to do after a record rainfall, they got Uncle Sam to help cover the crop loss.

Over three generations, the Boswell family tamed four rivers, harvested tens of millions of dollars in federal crop and water subsidies and transformed the cotton industry with innovations in growing and ginning. But one pest, seemingly intractable and as ancient as Mesopotamia, continued to plague them: salt.

Their task was complicated by a layer of solid clay that trapped the poisonous drainage, which then bubbled up to the roots of the cotton plant. It was like a flower in a pot without a hole.

Boswell and others constructed an elaborate system of underground pipes, canals and pumps to siphon off the salty water. They formed a special body--the Tulare Lake Drainage District, with its own staff and a $3-million budget--to operate the evaporation ponds.

For a long time, everything seemed just fine. Then, in the early 1980s, scientists discovered an environmental nightmare at Kesterson National Wildlife refuge near Los Banos, 90 miles from Tulare Lake. The water that fed the refuge--drainage from cotton and alfalfa farms to the north of here--was killings thousands of migratory birds. Chicks were being born without eyes, beaks, legs.

Kesterson was closed in the wake of a story on CBS’ “60 Minutes” in March 1985. Meanwhile, scant attention was paid to the ponds in Tulare Lake, filled with an even deadlier witch’s brew.

It wasn’t until a U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist named Joe Skorupa began studying the lake bottom in 1987 and found bird mutation rates equal to or exceeding those at Kesterson that the focus shifted.

Growers in Tulare Lake lobbied in Sacramento and Washington. The U.S. Justice Department turned down requests by environmentalists to prosecute the pond operators under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

After years of lawsuits and state fines of a nickel an acre against seven growers, a compromise was reached. Tulare Lake could continue to operate its ponds if it agreed to an environmental impact report and compensation habitat.

Environmentalists and federal scientists wanted an acre of new habitat for every acre of evaporation pond--3,000 acres of wetlands in all. Instead, they got 307 acres of cotton land converted to a bird ranch and the chance to petition the state for more.

“One of the concerns I have is the water they’re using [in the new habitat],” said Barnum of the U.S. Geological Survey. “It’s not freshwater like they claim. It’s saline drainage water that happens to have lower levels of selenium than some of the other drainage water.”

Small corners of the Boswell empire have been turned into tiny labs--one studying whether certain aquatic plants can filter out selenium before the drainage water is shipped to the ponds.

The biologists working for the growers and pond operator concede that the water in the new habitat could be cleaner and that many questions need to be answered:

Why are some birds in the new habitat dying of avian botulism? What will happen in a drought year when the only standing water in this part of the valley will be either the contaminated ponds or the compensation habitat? Will the hazing program work then? Will the electrical fence that skirts the habitat prove enough to keep out hungry raccoons and coyotes?

“Yes, there are questions, but we’ve never seen this many avocets and stilts nesting together in a small place,” said Rob Hansen, an environmental biologist working for the growers and the pond operator.

“It’s very heartening. We’ve yet to see any deformities, and I think the small impacts still happening on the ponds are being surpassed by the birds we’re producing on the new site.”