Re: Thicker Than Water


"trudogg" <independent@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:lk3ei3p2614ikqlt5og6h62i05ddu33muc@xxxxxxxxxx
Brad Plumer hits on one of my pet peeves today: the fact that drought
policies (and drought press coverage) inevitably focuses on
residential water use even though it's, literally, a drop in the
bucket:

http://tinyurl.com/2wq59v

As [Jon] Gertner notes in passing, it's farming, and not
residential areas, that consumes the vast majority of water in the
[Southwest] (90 percent of Colorado's water goes toward agriculture).
You'd think, then, that inefficient agriculture practices would get
most of the scrutiny here. According to the U.S. Geological Survey,
most irrigated farmland in the area ? in California, Colorado, and
Wyoming ? is watered via flood irrigation, the least efficient method
out there. Basically, farmers dig a bunch of trenches and dump water
in them. In the short run, it's cheap and easy; in the long run, it
tends to waste water and deplete topsoil.

Subsidies are part of the problem here: Large farms often qualify
for taxpayer-subsidized irrigation water, paying as little as 10
percent of the full cost. That, in turn, discourages conservation: "A
1997 study by researchers at Cornell University suggests that more
than 50 percent of irrigation water never reaches crops because of
losses during pumping and transport." The subsidies also encourage
farmers to grow water-guzzling crops like alfalfa, a crop that sucks
up about 20 percent of California's water but comprises only a tiny
part of the economy (it's mostly used to feed cows). I'd like to see
more on the subject, but this seems like a major place to focus on,
no?

Unfortunately, this is an almost impossible problem to address.
Reducing agricultural water use by 20% would basically solve all our
problems, but it can't be done because water rights are controlled by
an almost impenetrable maze of local water districts, Spanish land
grants, English common law, multi-state compacts, acts of Congress,
court rulings at every level imaginable, overlapping jurisdictions,
and local, state and federal environmental regulations. And that's not
even counting the vast corporate lobbying forces that would be at work
even if the legal Gordian knot weren't.

So it's hopeless, I guess. But that doesn't stop me from bitching
about it. And it sure doesn't justify this massive Bush administration
giveaway to California agribusiness, which has to be read to be
believed.

?Kevin Drum

It has been proven many times over that drip systems are more effective than
irrigation, and use only a fraction of the water. ["Studies show that drip
irrigation reduces water use by 30-70% and increases yields by over 50%."
http://other90.cooperhewitt.org/Design/drip-irrigation-system]

Such systems may be initially expensive to install but, considering that our
water problems are only going to get worse, it would seem more prudent for
government to underwrite farmers in installing such systems. I can only
speak for California's central valley but, at present, when some of these
farmers are allocated more water than they need, they use the water as a
cash crop (at times even doing this /instead/ of planting), selling it to
the highest bidder.

Barbara



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