The Mendacious State Water Project

Next to the winners of the Academy Awards is the headline, DROUGHT POSES
THREAT TO STATE WILDLIFE in a front page article on 3/3/2014 by Michael Gardner.

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/mar/02/drought-threatens-wildlife-ecosystems/.

In the local section of the same date, Tom Meyer’’s
political cartoon makes the point that State Water Project flows for farmers
are in conflict with State fisheries.  There is a common connection
between the two, and that is the 1950’s era boondoggle, called the State
Water Project (SWP), that created this ecological mess pushed to reality by
our current Governor Brown’’s father.

By understating by almost 100% the true cost of this new State Water
Project, and then promising to deliver twice as much water as was available,
to call the SWP actions mendacious is an understatement. The cost of the bond
issue for the SWP was $1.74 Billion, but costs (known at the time) ran in
the three billion dollar range. On top of that the state had signed binding
contracts to deliver 4,230,000 acre-feet of water. However, all of those works could deliver a
safe yield of only 2.5 million acre-feet of water. [Reisner-Cadillac Desert]

Southern California was growing exponentially in the middle of the 20th
Century. Why not draw on the plentiful water in the North to fuel the
growth? What happened as a State entity is similar to athletes who take
performance enhancing drugs, in lieu of doing the hard work of training for
better performance. It was a quick short-term fix with major long term
problems, just like the athletes. And addictive, but never enough.

As the drought deepens, going into a fourth year, there are natural processes that protect the
habitat of animals, fish and trees.  History is littered with the wreckage
caused by humans who screw up nature’s processes, as we have done. We are just beginning
to see it unfold in the Central Valley. But it didn’’t start with the SWP, it
started much earlier in the 20th Century. By 1933 there were 20,500 wells, and
the water table was dropping below 300 feet. The following is quoted from:
http://www.sonoma.edu/users/c/cannon/bio314chapter10.html

““Agriculture has encouraged gully (arroyo) formations, dirt blows off the
land, soil erosion, and salt build up are other signs. A 1985 report from
the American Farmland Trust states that about one third of Ca. 31 million
acres of crop and rangeland suffers from excessive soil erosion. Another
report stated that in 2000, over one third of the states’ 35 million acres
of farmland will be destroyed by salt. 44,000 acres are eaten by
urbanization.
The ground water is being over drafted by 1.5 million acre-feet per year.
This causes the water tables to drop, promoting draining of wetlands, drying
of springs, and subsidence. Marshes and Riparian Woodlands have suffered
from this dewatering. Some parts of San Joaquin Valley have dropped as much
as 30 ft.
Desertification is a term used to describe when land becomes desert like
because of humans activities. Desertification is happening in the Great
Central Valley (GCV). The symptoms are: salty soil, erosion, gully
formation, subsidence, and replacement of native vegetation by weeds. The
causes are overgrazing, poor agricultural practices, ground water overdraft,
and poor water management. If environmentally sound actions are not taken
soon, California will turn into a desert wasteland much like the Fertile
Crescent in the Tigris and the Euphrates valleys. They were once the richest
agricultural region in the world and are now salty wastelands. (from
Schoenherr, pages 516-543)””

The quote in the first few pages of Water Shock says it all.
“At an 1893 Irrigation Congress in Los Angeles, after listening for several
days to those who proclaimed the vast wealth of an irrigated West, [John
Wesley Powell] rose to speak, saying: When all of the rivers are used, when
all of the creeks in the ravines, when all the brooks, when all the springs
are used, when all the reservoirs along the streams are used, when all the
canyon waters are taken up, when all the artesian waters are taken up, when
all the wells are sunk or dug that can be dug in all this arid region, there
is still not sufficient water to irrigate all this arid region.”[west of the
100th meridian]
It was merely simple arithmetic, he said.
If you need twenty-four inches of water a year to grow crops on an acre-foot
of land, and Nature supplies three, four, or five inches of rainfall, even
if you catch every drop it will not be nearly enough. [James Lawrence
Powell- Dead Pool]