Water draws Interior chief to Fresno for hearing

Salazar, congressional leaders at town hall meeting Sunday.

Published online on Wednesday, Jun. 24, 2009

MENDOTA -- Under increasing political pressure to address California's water crisis, the Obama administration said Wednesday it will dispatch Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to a hastily organized town hall meeting Sunday in Fresno.

Interior Department officials have not yet identified a location for the meeting, which is scheduled to run from 2:30 to 4 p.m. But it will be Salazar's first official on-the-ground visit to the region.

On Wednesday, meanwhile, state agriculture officials said that a combination of drought and federal environmental regulations have the potential to turn a short-term water crisis into a long-term agricultural and economic disaster.

During a hearing Wednesday of the state Board of Food and Agriculture at Mendota High School, panelists raised many of the same issues as at rallies this spring: Less water for west-side growers means less acreage planted, creating a spike in unemployment and economic hardship for farm laborers and their communities.

"With this regulatory and geologic drought, we've seen really how agriculture touches every life," state Agriculture Secretary A.G. Kawamura said. "Especially in this region, so many lives are being affected beyond the farmers and farmworkers. ... The communities impacted go well beyond the farm sector."

Agriculture on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley relies largely on water transferred through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta from Northern California. But the effects of a three-year drought, coupled with federal environmental decisions to protect the delta smelt and salmon, have severely narrowed the periods in which massive pumps can be used to move water from north to south.

Now, there is a window of less than 90 days in which the pumps can operate; other proposed regulations threaten to reduce that to about a month out of the year, officials said.

"We can have a lot of rain next year and still have these problems," said Dan Nelson, executive director of the San Luis & Delta Mendota Water Authority. "We had chronic shortages even before the smelt and salmon decisions; these regulations just exacerbated them."

Mendota Mayor Robert Silva and Firebaugh City Manager Jose Antonio Ramirez both described high unemployment and lower sales taxes that are forcing them to make painful cuts to their cities' services.

"It's survival mode for west-side cities," Silva said. "If farmers don't have water, there's no future for farm towns on the west side."

Fresno County Supervisor Phil Larson agreed, adding that farm woes are driving unemployment higher and sales tax and property tax revenues lower in the county.

"Farmers are getting frustrated, even to the point of losing their farms," he said. "But forget about the farmers -- look at the people, the school kids, the food lines."

And the worst of the unemployment may be yet to come.

West-side farmers Shawn Coburn and Bob Diedrich said the farm labor picture will become clearer as the harvest season progresses with far fewer crops to harvest.

Coburn said he's being forced to rely on low-quality, salty water pumped from underground just to keep his almond trees alive. "I've got 100 people coming out every couple of days looking for work, and we're just fighting for our lives out here," he said.

Wednesday's hearing won't render immediate relief, but Kawamura said he hopes it will encourage the U.S. Department of the Interior to incorporate flexibility and balance in its regulation of the delta pumps.

"This should not be 'state vs. federal,' " Kawamura said. "This should be the federal government understanding that this is an issue of the food supply, of food security for the nation.