“FIVE POINTS, Calif.—Sharp cutbacks in water for farmers threaten to trigger renewed layoffs in a large swath of California, eating into the state’s $40 billion-a-year agriculture industry and damping its nascent economic recovery.
Amid an unusually dry winter, managers of the federal Central Valley Project, which delivers mountain water for agriculture, late last month announced an initial reduction in farmers’ water allowance for this year to 30% of the allotment in the driest southern reaches of the valley, down from 85% last year. Now farmers and local agriculture officials are taking in the economic impact they face.
Officials of the 614,000-acre Westlands Water District, near Fresno, say farmers there are expected to leave tens of thousands of acres fallow, only a year after California experienced one of its wettest winters on record.
“Being a farmer in California is worse than going to Las Vegas,” said Mark Borba, as he inspected a barren field he may leave without crops this year because of the water reductions. Mr. Borba, co-owner of Borba Farms, which gets water from the district, expects to reduce his cotton crop by 38% to 1,480 acres from 2,400 last year.
The Central Valley, which is 450 miles long and about 50 miles wide, is home to most of California’s agriculture industry. With much of the valley semi-arid, farms there for decades have depended on irrigated water from the Northern California mountains, but those supplies have long been subject to sharp fluctuations. Environmental regulations have made the water supplies from year to year even more unpredictable.
The mountain snowpack stood at 45% of normal as of last Wednesday, compared with 139% a year ago, according to official estimates. Reservoirs remain full enough from 2011 precipitation so that restrictions aren’t expected to spread to the household water tap yet, officials said….”
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