Why California Is Running Dry

(CBS)  Water is in short supply. You don't have to go to Africa or the Middle East to see how much the planet is running dry. Just go to California, where, after three years of drought, dozens of towns and cities have imposed mandatory water rationing and a half million acres in the country's agricultural breadbasket are lying fallow.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the action hero governor, has thrust himself into the fray by requiring towns and cities across the state to reduce their water use by 20 percent over ten years. That means less water to drink, to bathe in, and to water the lawn.

Governor Schwarzenegger only has a year left in office, and he's well aware of the old saying "Whisky is for drinking, water is for fighting."

Web Extra: The Water Diet

"People have died over water. You know, movies have been made about the wars of water in California," Gov. Schwarzenegger told 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl.

"Chinatown," Stahl remarked.

"Exactly," Schwarzenegger replied. "So water has been one of those issues."

It's one of those issues that is pitting Californians against each other for every last drop.

Schwarzenegger says his state is in crisis. "We've been in crisis for quite some time because we're now 38 million people and not anymore 18 million people like we were in the late 60s. So it developed into a battle between environmentalists and farmers and between the south and the north and between rural and urban. And everyone has been fighting for the last four decades about water."

He took us to the San Luis Reservoir in California's farm country.

"Everything that you see here was all full of water," he told Stahl.

He showed us how desperate things are: the drought that has affected the western part of the country has left its mark there - water levels are only half what they should be. It's like a bathtub ring, showing the previous water level.

"It's a disastrous situation and we got to do something about that very quickly," he told Stahl.

The reservoir is a key part of the water system that has kept southern California - and one of the most productive agricultural basins in the world - green and arable, until now.

"It looks like sand. It looks like a desert, actually," Stahl remarked, while talking with Todd Allen, a wheat, cotton and cantaloupe farmer in California's Central Valley.

"This right here is 150 acres, and there hasn't been anything planted on it," Allen pointed out.

"This is all fallow out here?" Stahl asked.

"Yes," Allen replied. "Nothing has been grown on this, this year."

And because of that, his bank cut off his line of credit.

"You know, I've got a wife and kids," he said. "The thought of bankruptcy is something…I don't think I could deal with that."

But he doesn't blame his troubles on the drought. He blames the environmentalists who sued under the Endangered Species Act to protect a tiny little fish, the Delta smelt, that was being killed off by California's main water pumps.

A federal judge ordered that the pumps be turned down, and Allen's taps almost ran dry.

"When you can put the needs of a two-inch fish above me and my family and that thing could potentially bankrupt me, I got a serious problem with that," Allen told Stahl.

"Here's the way I've heard it described: fish versus farms," she remarked.

"Well I would say I'm at the bottom of the food chain. I even told Schwarzenegger to put all of us farmers out here on the California Endangered Species Act. Because that's what I feel. I feel like I'm being punished, and I haven't done a darn thing wrong," Allen said.

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[thowardnhood]

and what of those of us whose homes...nay...entire towns will be annihliated by the facilities required to create the "reflow" or "diversion" of water?
in an 8 mile span from the town of Freeport down through my town and beyond by 4 miles, 5 intake facilities will be built. FIVE! all at least 60-90 feet high!

Please 60 Minutes and Leslie, come to our area and see what this saving this stupid little fish would destroy.
We voted this down in 82 and the grassroots town hall meetings are starting now...

[idaho2]

The state of California has been using and wasting too much water for many years. (Owens Valley Project) Agriculture in the west is subsidized to an amazing degree, with Bureau of Reclamation projects in every state west of the Mississippi. California has stolen water and wasted water, a decision needs to be made if California is going to use its water for watering a desert or supplying people, the environment has been damaged severely and will affect everyone, not only California agriculture. Watering a desert that cannot naturally sustain itself is a waste of a resource.

[oaklandrichie]

No mention of the beef industry?
Common sense tells us that most of our water is devoted to the production of meat products. I'm sure most people aren't crazy about the idea of cutting back on eating meat to conserve water, but 60 mins should at least pay lip service to this notion. A vegetarian meal requires a fifth of the water that a meal with meat requires.

[barrieharrop]

?If water consumption continues at current levels, by 2025 at least 48% of the world?s population will lack sufficient potable water.?CN, Source/Quelle.

[pds10]

We tried to bring water to the desert once before-- it's now called the Salton Sea. After a man-made disaster rerouted the Colorado River into the desert, the basin filled up. Now the Sea is 8000 square miles of polluted water that causes massive bird and fish dieoffs. That problem is being ignored because there is no financial incentive to fix it, while Schwarzenegger talks about bringing water to the desert again.

[notsustainable]

Ms. Stahl needs to do another 60 Minutes program on Resnick and other farmers who sell their surface water rights for millions to southern California developers. Next she should examine the rapidly growing population of California and how it exceeds current water supply, to say nothing about climate change with its likely expanded drought conditions and snowpack reduction. Then examine in detail water law in California especially the part stating that the last in line were only guaranteed to get water after those earlier in line get their allocation. Then there is the unregulated pumping of groundwater that far exceeds its recharge rate, resulting in water table dropping, and increased energy consumption to lift water to surface. lack of groundwater regulation means that the farmer with the most money can drill deep and pump down his neighbors water table with no legal consequences. Another ignored issue is that of farmers not paying the full price of the water the taxpayers delivered to them through the California Aqueduct. Ms. Stahl should take a look at how much water is promised vs. how much is available and do the math to discover that the promised allocation exceeds the amount available. I could go on with much more, but until CBS engages far more in truly investigative journalism (a dying art) it will continue to slide into the entertainment category rather than have the seriousness it had in the Cronkite years. Why California is running dry is about as factual as reality television, and as valuable to a critically thinking public as the media's obsession with the Tiger Wood scandals.

[westlandsrep]

A good video and some good comment ideas for the future, but of little consequence right now.

On November 4th the California Water Bills were approved by the states elected officials.

The population imbalance between Northern and Southern California, and their desire for water, will likely mean overwhelmingly approval of the Bond next November.

Whether you approve or not, this bond will fund,(with local cost-sharing), drought relief, water supply reliability, Delta sustainability, the Peripheral Canal, and water conservation and watershed protection programs, for all Californian's.

[cfinnie]

I almost spit up my supper when I saw Leslie Stahl fawning on our fake action-hero governor. I've lived in California for almost 60 years and could have told her how variable the water supply is here. Even I could have explained the well-established principle of senior and junior water rights, and how junior rights mean your water supply is even more variable during prolonged droughts.

These junior rights holders have no business planting something like almond groves that require long-term water allocations they may or may not get. I'm sorry for his loss. But it was a stupid decision.

I could have told her how the current water system is depleting the water table in the Central Valley according to NASA. How fields are becoming too salty to farm in some parts of the Valley because of it. And how towns all over face the loss of their drinking water supply, including the sixth largest city in the state, Fresno.

I could have told her about the chronically high unemployment figures in Central Valley towns like Mendota, and the seasonally high unemployment these agricultural towns regularly deal with. Or the fact that unemployment there spiked when the housing boom died, not when the water did. And it didn't come back when the pumps were turned back on--as they were many months before this segment aired.

I could have told her about the water diverted to desert housing developments instead of farmers. About the millions private companies have made off of publicly subsidized water. About the millions in political donations from these companies to continue this public largesse. And how this new water bond will bankrupt our already struggling state budget.

But 60 Minutes chose not to do even the most rudimentary journalism. You chose to listen to the script Schwarzenegger wanted you to play and give credence to the astroturf campaigns, funded by the big business who will profit from more public spending on water.

I expect this of Faux Noise. I expect better of 60 Minutes. I am more disappointed than I can say.

[Laukia]

We Expected Better of the Network That Gave Us Edward R. Murrow
by Jane Wagner-Tyack

"60 Minutes" had a chance to take on California agribusiness and water mismanagement the way they took on Big Tobacco. They blew that chance. Instead, this past Sunday we got a CBS-ified version of Fox's Sean Hannity, complete with dry Westlands acreage, smelt-in-the-hand, and out of work Latinos. So hackneyed was Leslie Stahl's fish- vs.-farmer formulation that even the Governor dodged it.

The Governor took Stahl on a flyover of the Delta and didn't say a single word about all the people who live and farm there. We got to see him standing in front of the Latino Water Coalition, and Stahl never raised the issue of whom that coalition really represents. Sloppy. Was anyone at CBS doing any research?

With Latinos in food lines as a background, Stahl repeated the misinformation about loss of water for agriculture being the cause of Central Valley unemployment. Sloppy again.

Unemployed salmon fishermen got just a nod. All the sympathy was reserved for the west side farmer who had to pull out the almond trees he should never have planted. And he got the last word, threatening Americans with having to get their food from somewhere else. They certainly won't be getting their food from the Central Valley if agribusiness there can make more money selling their water for development in the desert.

Restore the Delta gives Professor Jeffrey Mount an unqualified "A" for saying that farmers need to stop relying on water transfers. But he gets a resounding "F" as in "fragile," the word he once again applied to Delta levees. The implication, as always: they're too fragile to be worth maintaining. But Mount knows we have to maintain them, not just for water transfers and farming but to protect
infrastructure and manage flooding in the whole region.

Mount's model of saltwater intrusion was indeed alarming, but the Governor's conveyance dream will not address the problems of saltwater intrusion into the Estuary and the Delta, especially if it diverts resources from levee management.

The Governor came out of this segment looking like his old action-hero self, ready to take on a huge challenge. Why spoil that by asking if his approach is wrong-headed?

CBS came out of the segment looking like an amateur news organization. Somebody at the network should be embarrassed.

www.restorethedelta.org
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[waterguys]

No, it wasn't a sloppy report. It just didn't fit your radical environmentalist paradigm.

Oh, by the way CBS has reported on the salmon fishermen. It is at:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/23/eveningnews/main4124892.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody

That story was titled "Salmon Fishermen Reeling In Your Tax $$ --
Salmon Shortage Called A "Disaster," But Are Federal Subsidies Going Too Far?"

[frmrsdaughter]

The drought was A Congressional Drought. They continue to take water from the farmers and appropriate it to environmental causes at the expense of the security of our Nation. The Greatest National Resource our nation has is the human resource. We need water, FOOD and shelter to survive. It is common sense that we need to feed our Nation Independently . We should not depend on foreign countries to feed our populace. We should maintain a self reliant food source. The greatest source of Food for the United States comes from the San Joaquin Valley of California. The quaility and variety are unequalled by food from anywhere in the universe. I am a third generation farmer. I am proud to do God's work by feeding the people of this Great Nation. We are not terrorists, we are farmers who feed the world and the extreme environmental fringe is trying to stop us from providing a necessity of Life. FOOD!