As most of you are well aware, last week was a snow week in Washington, DC, and the odds are pretty good that there's something like that going on for you as well.
Our good friends in the conservative community have seized upon the moment as proof that this whole "global warming" thing is just a big scam perpetrated by the likes of Al Gore and his Legion Of Weather Nazis; their mission being only to deprive the American people of their Constitutional right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of a Ford Super Duty F-450 King Ranch Edition with the Heavy Service Suspension Package, Snow Plow Prep Package, Transmission Power Take-Off Provision, dual alternators, and supplemental cab heater.
To drive the point home, last week Senator James Inhofe's family went to the time and trouble to build a little igloo on the National Mall for our amusement.
But here's a question: just what has the weather been like in other places-for example, in my part of the world...or in the Senator's home State of Oklahoma?
It's a good question-and the Senator won't like the answer.
On Sept. 4, Resnick wrote to Feinstein, complaining that the latest federal plan to rescue the delta's endangered salmon and shad fisheries was "exacerbating the state's severe drought" because it cut back on water available to irrigate crops. "Sloppy science" by federal wildlife agencies had led to "regulatory-induced water shortages," he claimed.
"I really appreciate your involvement in this issue," he wrote to Feinstein.
One week later, Feinstein forwarded Resnick's letter to two U.S. Cabinet secretaries. In her own letter, she urged the administration to spend $750,000 for a sweeping re-examination of the science behind the entire delta environmental protection plan.
The Obama administration quickly agreed, authorizing another review of whether restrictions on pumping irrigation water were necessary to save the delta's fish. The results could delay or change the course of the protection effort.
To environmentalists concerned with protecting the delta, it was a dispiriting display of the political clout wielded by Resnick, who is among California's biggest growers and among its biggest political donors.
I have been reading or viewing a lot about the California Latino Water Coalition and their March for Water. The name itself triggered by BS filter. It is like all of those names of groups that seem to back the propositions on our ballots and who always track back to some highly financed special interest… even proponents of controversial projects.
Environmental activist Lloyd G. Carter brings up a good point… that this is just another Agribusiness attempt to empond (sic) all of the water that they can for irrigation and that the Coalition is not really about farm workers or the UFW would be joining in. Well worth the read if you think this is a real issue.
The customer seemed interested in a black blouse offered for $1 at the thrift store. But instead of buying it, she set it on the front counter.
Maybe tomorrow, she told the cashier, she would have the money. Or the next day. But not now.
"That is the way people are now," said the cashier, Alicia Reyes, as she watched the middle-aged woman walk out of the store. "They just come in here and look. They just come in here to kill the time. And then they take off."
Welcome to life in Mendota - the unemployment capital of California. With a 41 percent jobless rate, the town's social fabric is tearing at the seams. Alcoholism and crime are on the rise. To save money, some mothers wash and re-use disposable diapers. Unemployed men with nothing to do wander the streets and sit on benches.
The irony is obvious: In a large swath of the nation's most productive farming region, many struggle to fill their own cupboards.
There are many factors here - the economic meltdown and struggling economy, of course. But the third year of drought conditions have devastated harvests, leading to less workers needed to pick crops. This is the sad future of a dry California. With housing cratered throughout the state, the fallback option of construction is closed off as well. And as seasonal workers stay home, the businesses that support the economy have less consumers and suffer as well.
This is a disaster area, and the signs are it will only get worse. The state jobless rate is projected to grow as high as 15% before subsiding, and will remain in double digits until the beginning of 2012. The FDIC has issued warnings to at least six state banks, telling them to increase capital levels. "Two-thirds of the state's banks will be operating under cease-and-desist orders" by the end of 2009, according to one analyst. And housing prices continue to fall off the cliff.
The Central Valley is in a Depression. The rest of the state may not be as far behind as you think.
"Those Hollywood types don't have any idea what's going on out here on the farms," said Mr. Rogers, a retired dairyman from Visalia, the county seat in a Central Valley region where cows far outnumber people...
"They think fish are more important than people, that pigs are treated mean and chickens should run loose," said Mr. Rogers... "City people just don't know what it takes to get food on their table."
As someone who has written before of the water problems our state faces, and who has repeated the "omg worst drought ever" frame, it's important that I give some necessary attention to Michael Fitzgerald of The Stockton Record, who called bullshit on the whole thing today:
California's "drought" is overblown. The alarmists calling it a historic disaster are trying to pull a fast one....
Besides, state officials, SoCal water importers and other Chicken Littles don't mention they drained Northern California reservoirs prior to February's storms.
"In the first year of the drought, we passed water like a drunken sailor," said Bill Jennings, head of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.
Some perspective: In the 1990s, the state and feds exported 4 million acre-feet of Delta water annually. In this decade - and well into the drought - officials imprudently powered up exports to more than 6 million acre-feet a year.
They irresponsibly sucked reservoirs down. They nearly killed the Delta. They stopped only when a federal judge called a halt.
"We cannibalized Northern California to sock it away in the Kern water bank and Diamond Valley water bank down south," Jennings said, "giving no thought to the question of a second or third year."
In short, those who have the weakest water rights claims - such as sprawling Southern California exurbs - have been recklessly drawing down our water supplies to support a totally unsustainable use of the land. We've had intimations that this is going on, with the collapse of Delta fisheries and the West Coast salmon population. But the media often reported this as an unfortunate consequence of mandated water deliveries from the Delta, through the pumps at Tracy and down the delivery chain that the drought (and everyone agrees we're in some sort of drought) has exacerbated.
Funny thing about those "mandated water deliveries" though:
The 80-year average for Delta water is 29 million acre-feet annually. The state and feds wrote contracts promising 130 million acre-feet: 41/2 times reality.
Other contracts bring total export contracts to an insane 245 million acre-feet, an ocean of paper water promised to people who gauged their farms, businesses or urban water consumption accordingly.
In other words California water policy has been built on debt, just as I've been arguing. To water the suburban sprawlconomy and the agricultural sprawl necessary to feed that sprawlconomy, we created a kind of "water bubble", where contracts to deliver water were written without regard to mother nature's ability to pay. This almost exactly parallels what went on in banks during the housing bubble.
And like the collapse of the housing bubble, those who engineered the water bubble are saying the answer is to spend more public money on bailing them out - in this case through more canals and dams.
Don't get me wrong, California does face water problems and does need to change how we use water here. But the answer isn't to waste more water on sprawl. Instead it's time we got serious about providing water security by reducing how much we use, retrofitting urban areas to do more recycling, and implementing more water-friendly and environmentally sensible farming practices across the state.
Elissa Lynn, a meteorologist for the Department of Water Resources, said the water content in the snow would have to be between 120 to 130 percent of normal by April 1 to replenish the state's reservoirs, the largest of which are less than half full. "That's just the snowpack," Lynn said. "We need to have rainfall in the mountains continuing through the spring, contributing to the total water supply. That's what we had hardly any of last year."
Rain and snow would have to fall virtually every day this month to get back to normal, a highly unlikely scenario, according to Steve Anderson, meteorologist for the National Weather Service.
The water interests who have spit out grim news releases the last two months were silent Monday in the face of the growing snowpack.
Those who would like to build new reservoirs and canals and to weaken environmental regulations have invoked the drought like a mantra in recent weeks...
Sen. Dave Cogdill, a Republican who represents agriculture-dependent Modesto, called the drought "epic" when he introduced a $10-billion water bond package last week that includes funding for new reservoirs and other infrastructure.
There's no doubt that folks like Cogdill are trying to take advantage of the crisis - but the water crisis is real, even if it's not quite as bad right now as it looks. On a regional basis the situation is still serious - the Monterey Peninsula, for example, overshot its carrying capacity long ago and has been overdrawing the Carmel River for decades. Growing propulations and more water-intensive agriculture have strained existing resources. And global warming will lead to less water availability for California.
Still, it's important to refuse to let California get shock doctrined by those pushing bad water solutions using the drought as a cover. That was the message Debbie Cook delivered on desalination in a post at The Oil Drum:
The next worst idea to turning tar sands into synthetic crude is turning ocean water into municipal drinking water. Sounds great until you zoom in on the environmental costs and energetic consequences. It may be technically feasible, but in the end it is unsustainable and will be just one more stranded asset.
We're debating desal here in Monterey as well, and Debbie Cook's criticisms of the concept are extremely valuable to us - and to a state that, despite this week's rain, still has to figure out how to secure its water future.
Substantial cutbacks in water deliveries from the delta to Central Valley farms will severely reduce the region's income, employment, revenues and farm acreage, according to a new report from the University of California's Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics.
The report projects potential economic impacts for 2009 as the state grapples with its third drought in the last 30 years...
Based on projected allocations, Central Valley farmers could sustain revenue losses from $1.2 billion to $1.6 billion this year, depending on their ability to increase groundwater pumping.
Across the valley, towns are already seeing some of the worst unemployment in the country, with rates three and four times the national average, as well as reported increases in all manner of social ills: drug use, excessive drinking and rises in hunger and domestic violence.
With fewer checks to cash, even check-cashing businesses have failed, as have thrift stores, ice cream parlors and hardware shops. The state has put the 2008 drought losses at more than $300 million, and economists predict that this year's losses could swell past $2 billion, with as many as 80,000 jobs lost.
"People are saying, 'Are you a third world country?' " said Robert Silva, the mayor of Mendota, which has a 35 percent unemployment rate, up from the more typical seasonal average of about 20 percent. "My community is dying on the vine."
This is a double whammy hitting the Central Valley. They have been the hardest-hit region in the entire country, perhaps the entire world, by the housing bust. The economic crisis alone leads to reduced demand for farm products, but the drought is going to make a bad situation much, much worse.
The Central Valley is at the leading edge of the 21st century crisis, brought about by California's overdependence on debt and sprawl. As I've explained before, the "debt" is not merely financial - California has lived beyond its natural resource means for some time, overpumping water to slake the thirst of new suburbs AND to water the fields to feed the suburban consumer.
This is much the same problem that hit the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. 50 years of farming the marginal lands of the Great Plains eroded the topsoil, creating an environmental catastrophe at the very moment that a collapse in farm prices and wages led to a massive foreclosure wave. The place they headed to escape the crisis was the Central Valley.
Some farmers would like to just keep pumping the water, and cut off fish (which are already in severe distress) or cities (which are already facing mandatory rationing), and others believe a Peripheral Canal is the solution. But if this is the leading edge of climate change, those solutions will be the deck chairs on the proverbial Titanic.
I personally believe it's important to maintain agriculture as an industry in California. But we need to find a way to make it sustainable. Continuing the methods of the past is no longer an option, as the Steinbeckian scenes now unfolding in the Central Valley should make clear to us all.
(This is cross-posted from my site La Vida Locavore, which covers food politics and all news related to food. Stop by and check us out if you're ever wondering what Tom Vilsack's up to, what really happened to all the peanut butter, or where California milk REALLY comes from... hint: not the happy cows in the pictures.)
The news in California is bad. Well, mostly bad. After all, the Oscars are tomorrow. But the budget's a mess, the economy sucks, and on top of that there's a drought. What's next, an earthquake?
To manage water in the face of the drought, the federal government is cutting off water to many California farms for at least three weeks in March. The amount of time without water will depend on whether we get rain in the next few weeks. In the San Joaquin Valley, the drought will cause an estimated $1.15 billion (with a B) in lost agriculture-related wages and 40,000 lost jobs in farm-related industries. And if that ain't bad enough, the New York Times reports that the problems go beyond food in affected towns:
Across the valley, towns are already seeing some of the worst unemployment in the country, with rates three and four times the national average, as well as reported increases in all manner of social ills: drug use, excessive drinking and rises in hunger and domestic violence.
California farms receive 80% of their water from federally-managed supplies and the rest from the state. The feds are turning off the tap, but farmers may still receive some water from the state. Unfortunately for the farmers, some of the water may be legally unavailable to them due to laws or rulings protecting endangered species.
(Meanwhile, in the parts of the state where I hang out - San Diego and Los Angeles - I've seen idiots who let their automatic sprinkler systems water their already wet lawns on rainy days recently.)
In the 1930s two crises hit the Great Plains at once - 50 years of overfarming marginal lands had destroyed the topsoil and created what we know as the Dust Bowl, and at least twenty years of economic pressure to overfarm (to pay debts and make up for collapsed prices) had created an untenable financial situation for the farmers. Either one was going to end in disaster - the land would give out or the overuse of credit would end in deflation and ruin. As it happened, the crises both occurred at exactly the same time, producing a social catastrophe from which several states have still not recovered.
California now faces the same problem. For 60 years we have based our economy on the production and consumption of sprawl. This worked well enough until the late 1970s, when those who had prospered the most from this model decided to stop reinvesting profits in the state and in society, and took their ball and went home. The next 30 years were dominated by even more sprawl, financed by massive amounts of debt and by eating the state's seed corn by slashing the government programs that built prosperity in the first place.
This was always bound to end in disaster, and as we are well aware, that disaster - in the form of economic depression and government bankruptcy - is now here. But the massive sprawlconomy binge had another set of costs whose bill is now coming due - water.
California had an unusually wet 20th century, and we exploited that to the fullest. To have a society built on sprawl and consumption, we needed to siphon as much water as possible to give not just to the new housing developments, but to the sprawling farms. Sprawl is a farming phenomenon as well - wasting land and water resources on resource-intensive crops grown to enrich shareholders, instead of sensibly using land and water to grow crops for subsistence and food security. California was in a water bubble, just as the state was experiencing a financial bubble. We have been living well beyond our means.
Ultimately the water bubble was going to burst. And just as in the 1930s Great Plains, it is bursting at the same moment as the economic bubble. For the least year or so you could drive down the backroads of the Salinas Valley, Salad Bowl Of The World, and see shuttered warehouses and laid off packing workers.
Now that water is less available the agricultural recession is shifting into higher gear. The highest unemployment rates in California are in our agricultural counties - 22.6% in Imperial, 14.3% in Tulare, 13.7% here in Monterey County. (Note: those stats are for nonfarm jobs, and yet the correlation between ag and the rest of the county economy is obviously very strong.)
The water crisis is now about to come to the rest of California. Sitting here in Monterey, in summer-like weather in January, I am inclined to believe the claims that this is the worst drought ever in the state's recorded history:
California teeters on the edge of the worst drought in the state's history, officials said Thursday after reporting that the Sierra Nevada snowpack - the backbone of the state's water supply - is only 61 percent of normal.
January usually douses California with about 20 percent of the state's annual precipitation, but instead it delivered a string of dry, sunny days this year, almost certainly pushing the state into a third year of drought.
The drought exacerbates the problems caused by our overuse of water resources. To prevent a total environmental collapse in the Delta massive reductions of water flows will be required. And for those of us who live in counties that don't get our water from the Delta - places like Sonoma, Marin, and Monterey - the situation is going to be worse. Water managers in those counties are planning to 50% cutbacks in urban water use, which is an amount that will dramatically change how we live. We could let every lawn die and stop hosing down every driveway and still not get anywhere close to 50% reductions.
The Monterey Peninsula has been under Stage 1 water rationing for ten years now. You rarely see water wasted here, and new development has been at a standstill (how many towns have vacant lots and abandoned homes within a mile of the beach as we do?). But a 50% cut will force dramatic changes in how we live, as it will around the state.
Those changes ARE coming. There is no way around the fact that the way California was organized in the 20th century - politically, economically, and especially in terms of our land use and water use - is over. Done. Gone.
The question for us now is will we try to actively transition California to a more sustainable future? Or will we do nothing and let the chips fall where they may? The first option at least allows us a chance of rebuilding widely shared prosperity by funding local food, sustainable farming, and urban density. The latter would produce widespread immiseration while allowing a small aristocratic elite to enjoy a semblance of the 20th century lifestyle.
We might have mentioned something about the budget crisis in California, but it's not the only thing that's trying to push California into the ocean. For example, this whole water (or lack thereof) issue seems to be exploding on us:
The Lake Tahoe Basin snowpack on Thursday was only 2 percent of average for the date. The situation is similar to last year, when the Tahoe Basin snowpack was only 1 percent of normal on the same date. (cbs5.com)
As a skier and an overall big fan of the Tahoe region, this hits me hard in a somewhat selfish sense. But in a larger sense, this is a disaster. If we don't get some serious snow this season, our reservoirs will get to dangerous levels. There will be strict water rationing across the state. You hear that folks...not just brown lawns, but moving to the yellow mellow alert level. You might as well cut it with the bright green lawns and the hosing off the sidewalks now.
We've been living in something of a glory era for rain in California over the last 125 years. Are we returning to our drier past or is this a short burst of the desert days? Is this climate change here to stay? Who knows, but one thing is clear. This is more than just a disastrous winter sports season, this is a full-fledged crisis. We risk the sight of houses falling into the ocean and the growing risk of cutting off water for crops in the Central Valley.
Welcome new legislators, you're going to love this job.
Like me, you probably thought this was a wet winter. It certainly was in January and February here in Northern California, where several major storms dumped a lot of rain into local reservoirs, and snow in the Sierras. There was even hope by late February that we might have had enough snow to make up for 2007's drought.
California just came through its driest March-April rain period - 2.3 inches of precipitation in the Sierra - since records began being collected in 1859. The biggest reservoir in the state, Lake Shasta, is at 75 percent of its average capacity for this time of year. The second-biggest reservoir, Lake Oroville, is at 59 percent.
State officials warned today that widespread water rationing was a very real possibility this summer. Another few years like this, experts say, and we might start running drastically short of water....
Water managers in the East Bay, Santa Cruz and San Diego are either considering or instituting water-rationing measures this spring, and they expect to tighten their mandates next year.
I would not be surprised if we on the Monterey Peninsula, dependent on the Carmel River and not hooked up to the state water system, face rationing this summer as well.
Sure, we all laughed when Atlanta prayed for rain to help end its drought, and many Californians probably shook their heads at a red state's reckless growth that helped produce the crisis.
Already local water agencies are beginning to plan for rationing, such as in Santa Cruzand Riverside. The Monterey Peninsula Water District is even considering cloud seeding for the Carmel River watershed (don't laugh, apparently it works).
Certainly California has long-term concerns regarding overuse, sprawl, and global warming's impact on water supplies. But we also have short-term concerns; only the unusually wet spring of 2006 has staved off disaster. We treat wet years as "normal" years and dry years as abberations, but perhaps it's better we look at it the other way around, and begin to adjust our lifestyles and civilization to make do with less water.
They're Baaaaack! (Cross-posted from OpenLeft, thanks to a gentle nudge from Lucas O'Connor.]
I live in Long Beach, walking distance from San Pedro Bay, the southern edge of the Los Angeles Basin, and today there are wildfires raging on the other edge of the Los Angeles Basin. Over 100 houses have been evacutated, and over 2,000 acres burned so far. I can look out my window as I type this and see the smoke. It's not as bad as the fires one month ago. But it's a stark reminder of quickly and easily those fires could return. So I'm going to republish an article I wrote about the fires for Random Lengths News.
The image below combines a satelite photo of the fires from last month with Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother." She was a refuge from the most famous megadrought of the last century. But there's been much worse centuries ago, and there's much worse to come, according to scientists I spoke with.
Rain falling on the skylight and roof, taps fluttering in waves.
The cool wet smell of new rain, so unfamiliar after the long dry summer and fall.
The drops of rain hanging heavily like dew on the leaves of plants, and the eaves in front of my window.
The long slow hiss of car tires on wet roads in the distance.
The sigh of relief, the hope that maybe this dry spell is safely over.
California is a bipolar state when it comes to water, doubly so here in the axle-pivot of the Central Valley. One year the rains never seem to end, and the century-old levees groan with the floodwaters, suburban sprawl waiting nervously on the other side of those earthen mounds for news of a breach, sandbags at the ready. Everyone pontificates for the cameras on the need for better flood protection.
The next year, the interminable waiting for that one big storm to materialize eventually withers into acceptance that the rain is not going to come, the forests dry to a crisp, reservoirs recede, leaving bathtub rings - memories of old storms - in their wake. Tentative conservation preparations are quietly made without jinxing things by announcing an official drought, everything contingent on how the next year goes. Everyone pontificates for the cameras on the need for water storage.
SoCal grocery workers have set a June 21 deadline for contract negotiations. They can always use more support.
The California Supreme Court has ruled that cities and counties DO have the right to ban big-box stores such as Wal Mart superstores. Yet another step towards San Diego getting the ban finalized.
Drought related disaster has been declared in 23 California counties by the Dept. of Agriculture and the Small Business Administration, making low-interest loans available to recoup damages. It's something.
Tonight I'm feeling indie and reflective, so let's just run with it shall we? Minus The Bear - Pachuca Sunrise
"Is it possible to put this night to tune, and move it to you?"
All sorts of one-off goodies for you tonight, and go ahead and get your hip hop juices flowing cause that's what's coming at the end.
The City of San Diego must pay nearly $1 million in legal expenses for athiest who sued over the Mt. Soledad cross. First Jerry Falwell and now this? Not a good week for the soldiers of the Lord.
San Diego County, in a a stroke of exceptional forethought, will now require all landscaping at new county facilities to be "drought-tolerant" and fire resistant...whatever "drought-tolerant" means (apparently, no plants that want water). There were still a few cows in the barn, so slamming the door might accomplish something. Cynicism aside though, at least it's something.
Most exciting though is Carol Goodhue alerting us that the Union Tribune is now accepting unedited and anonymous comments on the website. Ms. Goodhue, for her part thinks "it's loony to allow readers to post these comments anonymously. Considering readers' interest in interactivity, I also think we'd be crazy not to give this a whirl." And with that, we're off into a brave new world. What's the over/under on this turning into a flame war you ask? Depends on how much time I have to comment.
Now, to mark the end of one of hip hop's all-time greats. Jurassic Five (1994-2007) - Concrete Schoolyard
"Cause we're protected by the covenant of words and beats."
In his 1998 environmental history of Southern California, Ecology of Fear, UCI radical historian Mike Davis argued that one of the major ecological threats to SoCal was massive drought. He cited recent scholarship that showed medieval California saw the Sierra snowpack drop to 25% of its norm (the 1986-93 drought saw the snowpack at 65%) for periods of over 200 years.
At the time some critics said Davis was being overblown and apocalyptic. But today's LA Times suggests that not only was Davis right, but that we may be on the verge of such a megadrought:
The driest periods of the last century - the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and the droughts of the 1950s - may become the norm in the Southwest United States within decades because of global warming, according to a study released Thursday.
The research suggests that the transformation may already be underway. Much of the region has been in a severe drought since 2000, which the study's analysis of computer climate models shows as the beginning of a long dry period.
They're Baaaaack! (Cross-posted from OpenLeft, thanks to a gentle nudge from Lucas O'Connor.]