California cuts off thousands of Valley farmers from river water as drought intensifies

California regulators moved to cut off thousands of farmers from their main irrigation supplies Tuesday, voting to ban them from pulling water from the state’s main rivers and streams as the drought worsens.

The State Water Resources Control Board, following hours of debate and comment, voted 5-0 to issue “emergency curtailment” orders covering the rivers of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed — essentially the entire Central Valley.

It’s the most dramatic step taken to date by state regulators since the drought was officially declared in most of California’s counties — and surpasses any of the moves made during the previous drought.

“This is a terrible situation that we’re all in,” said board member Sean Maguire.

It’s the latest blow to California agriculture and the state’s $50 billion-a-year farm economy. Already, most of the farmers who rely on the State Water Project or the federal government’s Central Valley Project have had their allocations slashed to nothing or nearly nothing. The state board’s order affects those with direct legal rights to divert water from the rivers.

The board said it needed to curtail farmers’ usage to preserve river flows for drinking water as well as endangered fish species. Of particular importance, agency officials said, is the need to maintain flows in the rivers to keep saltwater from the Pacific from rushing into the Delta — the estuary through which much of California’s water is pumped to the southern half of the state.

If that water gets too salty, pumping operations could have to stop. “Then we’re in a very different emergency,” said Dorene D’Adamo, vice chair of the board.

The decision is expected to become official in about two weeks, when it’s cleared by the state Office of Administrative Law, and then the board will start issuing the actual curtailment orders.

The state board has been predicting since late March that curtailments were likely, but those warnings haven’t resulted in meaningful reductions in diversions from the rivers. “Depletions have remained high,” said Conny Mitterhofer, a water board engineer.

Some farm groups, while not contesting the decision, said the order underscores the desperate need for more reservoirs and dams to store water. “We can’t ignore our state and federal leaders’ failure to meaningfully prepare for this drought,” the California Farm Water Coalition said in a statement preceding the board’s vote.

Cutback order for Russian River as well

The state board imposed emergency curtailment orders on limited groups of farmers in 2014 and 2015, but never on such a broad scale as it did Tuesday. The new order is expected to take effect in about two weeks.

The vote came a day after the board issued a separate order forbidding anyone from pulling water from the Upper Russian River, “except as needed to ensure human health and safety.” The board also warned that it expects to issue a similar order for the Lower Russian next week.

The Russian watershed is arguably in the worst shape of any in California, with rapidly declining levels at Lake Mendocino north of Ukiah, the region’s main reservoir.

And officials with the water board said conditions have turned extreme on the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers as well. Lisa Hong, a staff engineer with the water board, said demand for water in the San Joaquin River watershed is 16 times greater than supply, and three times greater than supply in the Sacramento Valley.

“It is a painful moment,” Karen Ross, the secretary of the Department of Food and Agriculture, told the board. “We know the impacts are real.”

But while Ross applauded the board’s decision, some in agriculture protested the order and decried the lack of local control. Valerie Kincaid, a lawyer for the San Joaquin Tributaries Authority — an alliance of San Joaquin Valley water districts — said the state is “moving to top-down regulatory control of our systems.”

She added that the order is “overly broad” and tramples the districts’ legal rights. In 2015 several districts were able to get court orders overturning similar orders issued by the water board, she noted.

Yet some in agriculture supported the move. The California Fresh Fruit Association, an alliance of farmers, “understands the necessity and urgency” of the decision, said Adam Borchard, the association’s policy director.

This story was originally published August 3, 2021 at 5:47 PM with the headline "California cuts off thousands of Valley farmers from river water as drought intensifies."