Can California Farmers Save Water and the Dying Salton Sea?
Looming deadlines threaten a historic water agreement in the Imperial Valley.
The
Salton Sea, the largest lake in California and one of the most heavily
used bird habitats in the country, is in danger of drying up.
PHOTOGRAPH BY DENNIS R. DIMICK, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
Published February 18, 2014
Standing atop a rocky outcrop on the southeastern edge of the Salton Sea
in southern California, Bruce Wilcox pointed to the wooden ruins of a
boat dock that dates back to the 1960s, when the region was a marina
that attracted sport fishermen and celebrities. On a sunny day last
December, the dock sat hundreds of feet from the water, rendered
obsolete by the shoreline's steady withdrawal. No boats were visible
anywhere on the shimmering blue water.
Covering nearly 350 square miles (900 square kilometers),
the Salton Sea is the largest lake in California. It was created in 1905
when heavy rain and snowmelt caused the Colorado River
to swell and overtake headgates along the Alamo canal. It was largely
sustained by agricultural runoff from the Imperial Valley, but since the
late 1990s the sea has been steadily shrinking, partly because the
runoff has dwindled due to a combination of the ongoing California drought, more efficient irrigation methods, and changing crop patterns.
The sea's decline will accelerate dramatically in 2018,
when the IID must stop sending "mitigation water" to the lake as part of
a pact known as the Quantification Settlement Agreement, or QSA. Signed
in 2003, the QSA was a deal between the U.S. Department of the
Interior, California, and various water agencies in the state that
placed California on a Colorado River water diet and transfers some of
the river's flow to San Diego and other cities, where water is scarce.
Under the terms of the QSA, 30 million acre-feet of water
will be sent to San Diego County and Coachella Valley over a period of
75 years, making it the largest ever farm-to-city water transfer in U.S.
history. One acre-foot is approximately 325,900 gallons—or enough to
supply two single-family households of four for a year.
PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID MCNEW, GETTY IMAGES
Dead fish lie on dry ground in July 2011 near
pilings that once supported a dock at a former yacht club on the shore
of the Salton Sea.
The QSA was designed to gradually wean California off its
overdependence on water from the Colorado River. According to a 1964
U.S. Supreme Court decree, California is entitled to 4.4 million
acre-feet of water—or about 30 percent of the total allocation—from the
river annually, but the state regularly exceeded this amount in past
years. This wasn't a problem as long as Arizona and Nevada didn't use up
their apportionments, but as the populations of those states grew, so
too did their water needs.
Of California's allotment, 2.6 million acre-feet is shunted
to the Imperial Valley via an 82-mile (132-kilometer) canal, where it
has been used to transform a sandy desert into a farming oasis. The
Imperial Valley thus uses 20 percent of the Colorado River's total water
allotment. With that water, farmers in the valley grow about 80 percent
of the nation's winter crops, including lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower,
carrots, sweet corn, watermelons, cantaloupe, and onions. Farmers also
produce alfalfa and Bermuda grass hay, which is used as dairy feed in
the U.S. and abroad. (Related: "Exporting the Colorado River to Asia, Through Hay.")
The QSA has been in effect for more than a decade, but the
deal's long-term success could be threatened because two of its key
requirements remain unmet, and observers say there is little hope of
their being satisfied before a 2018 deadline.
PHOTOGRAPH BY BRENT STIRTON, GETTY IMAGES
The 80-mile (130-kilometer) All-American Canal
(shown in August 2009) is the main water conduit from the Colorado River
to the Imperial Dam.
Saving Water Down on the Farm
One of those requirements is the implementation of
water-saving systems on farms. Under the terms of the QSA, the IID will
deliver water to the San Diego County Water Authority and the Coachella
Valley Water District for up to 75 years. The schedule calls for the
amount of delivered water to increase by 20,000 acre-feet each year.
In 2013, about 100,000 acre-feet of water were delivered;
by 2018, it will be 130,000 acre-feet per year, and by 2026, it will be
200,000 acre-feet per year, after which the volume will be capped.
The IID plans to meet its water obligations through a
combination of efficiency improvements to its water delivery system and
to on-farm water use. As an example of the former, the IID is lining
portions of its delivery canals with concrete to reduce seepage losses
and is constructing regulatory reservoirs to better match farmers'
requests for water with actual supply.
Reducing on-farm water use has proven more difficult. The
IID planned to meet this goal by enticing farmers to install advanced
sprinkler systems and other improved irrigation techniques. "If you used
to use 200 acre-feet and now you're using 160 acre-feet, we pay you for
the 40 acre-feet that you saved," explained David Bradshaw, IID
assistant water manager for agriculture water management.
The QSA gave the IID and Imperial Valley farmers 15
years—until 2018—to test and install the water-saving technologies. In
the interim, the IID would fulfill its water obligations by asking
farmers to fallow their fields. "We basically ask a farmer not to grow a
crop for one year. We lock their gate and make sure no water goes into
that field," Bradshaw said.
Currently, some 36,000 acres—or about 10 percent—of
Imperial Valley's arable farmland is fallowed. Bradshaw estimates that
more than 800,000 acre-feet of water have been conserved through
fallowing since 2003.
The process has its limits, though, because farmers can't
fallow a particular field for more than three out of five years.
Otherwise, the prolonged dryness that results from a lack of irrigation
and crop cover can cause the soil to shrink and buckle, putting
underground drainage pipes at risk.
To Fallow or Lease?
Not everyone is happy with the fallowing program. One
complaint comes from the fact that the price the IID pays to farmers to
fallow their fields has steadily increased over the years, from about
$60 per acre-foot of water saved in 2004 to $125 per acre-foot of water
saved in 2014.
"If you have a six acre-feet history [of water use], that
converts to $750 per acre [of land]," said Al Kalin, a fourth-generation
Imperial Valley farmer who works 2,000 acres of sugar beets, alfalfa,
wheat, and carrots at the southern end of the Salton Sea. That price is
much higher than the going rate to lease an acre of farmland in the
area, which currently ranges from $325 to $450 an acre, according to
Kalin.
Therefore, critics of the fallowing program say it discourages landowners from renting their plots to tenant farmers.
"A lot of the farmers don't own the land they farm," said
Kalin. "The high prices that are being paid by the fallowing program
compete directly with tenant farmers trying to lease ground to farm in
the valley."
But the IID's Bradshaw says the decision of whether to
fallow a field or lease it to a tenant farmer depends on the market.
"For example, wheat prices were really high two years ago, and nobody
cared about fallowing. They just wanted to make money on wheat. It's
really an economic decision every time," he said.
The disagreements about fallowing will become moot by 2018,
which is when the QSA requires that the program end. By then, farmers
are supposed to have implemented various on-farm water conservation
systems to reduce their water usage.
PHOTOGRAPH BY BRENT STIRTON, GETTY IMAGES
A sprinkler system sprays crops with water from an
irrigation canal (shown in August 2009) in an agricultural area that
traditionally uses Colorado River water.
The program is voluntary, however, and requires farmers to
pay for installations themselves and then recoup their expenses through
payments by the IID for the amount of water saved annually. The cost of
installing water-saving systems on an acre of land can range anywhere
from $500 to upwards of $3,000. The more expensive the system, the
longer it will take to recoup the costs.
"If you want to offset your cost in 12 months, you probably won't be able to do it for a drip irrigation field," Bradshaw said, referring to a high-efficiency, yet expensive, technology.
Perhaps not surprisingly then, very few farmers have volunteered for the program.
As a result, Kalin is deeply skeptical that the IID will be
able to meet the 2018 deadline. "The original QSA language should never
have required fallowing to stop in 2017 and immediately switch to
on-farm conservation," he said. "You can't just change from fallowing to
all these fancy on-farm programs overnight. It has to be done slowly."
The transition was intended to be gradual, supporters say.
The IID was supposed to work with farmers to implement pilot projects to
demonstrate the benefits of various water conservation techniques. But
to date, very few such projects have been set up.
"This should've been started seven or eight years ago, and
worked up slowly," Kalin said. "It's amazing that they haven't done more
work. It's just poor management all around."
IID spokesperson Marion Champion said that much of the
delay was due to numerous lawsuits surrounding the QSA. "In 2013, there
was a final ruling that seemed to put more clarity to the situation,
allowing us to move forward," Champion said.
She noted that in 2013, the IID contracted with about a
dozen growers and began on-farm efficiency pilot projects that saved
more than 2,000 acre-feet, and that 2014 will see an even greater
ramp-up.
"We have an additional 50 to 60 fields ready to go to
contract, with a projected savings of 13,000 acre-feet," Champion said.
"Our goal for the 2014 program is to get that number closer to 40,000
acre-feet."
PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID MCNEW, GETTY IMAGES
Mullet Island is the only place for many thousands
of island nesting birds, like the cormorants above in July 2013, to
breed at the Salton Sea.
A Dying Sea
The other major problem threatening the QSA is the Salton
Sea, which is home to more than 400 resident and migratory bird species,
including several endangered ones. The sea is a critical pit stop for
migratory birds flying south along the Pacific Flyway,
and it is one of the most heavily used bird habitats in the country. As
farms clamp down on their water usage, there will be less runoff and
the lake's shrinkage will accelerate.
A diminished Salton Sea also poses a human health hazard,
since receding water will expose more than 100,000 acres of lakebed,
known as a playa, that is made up of silt and fine-grain soil and salt
particles. This toxic dust can get lofted by desert winds and degrade
air quality for residents in the Imperial and Coachella Valleys,
impairing public health by exacerbating respiratory conditions, in a
region where childhood asthma rates are already three times higher than
the state average.
A smaller Salton Sea would also directly impact agriculture
in the region, according to Kalin. As a large body of water, the sea
readily absorbs heat from the sun but relinquishes it only slowly. In
the summer, the water temperature can reach 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35
degrees Celsius), and it never dips below 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10
degrees Celsius) in the winter.
"When the prevailing northwest winds blow down the center
of the Salton Sea from Palm Springs [in the winter], they're warmed by
the 50-degree temperature of the sea," said Kalin. That warmer and more
humid air then blows onto the farmland at the south end of the sea. In
effect, the sea creates a favorable microclimate that allows Imperial
Valley farmers to grow crops in the winter that can't be grown anywhere
else in the country.
The original drafters of the QSA foresaw the environmental,
health, and agricultural hazards that would be associated with a
shrinking Salton Sea, but they could not agree on how to prevent them
from happening. Rather than risk scuttling the deal, the stakeholders
delayed the decision by requiring that the sea be fed by mitigation
water until 2018. It was assumed that by then the state of California,
upon which responsibility for restoring the sea ultimately lies, would
have a plan in place.
That early optimism has proved unwarranted, critics say. In 2007,
after more than three years of deliberation, the California Resources
Agency announced the ambitious Salton Sea Restoration Plan, which had an
estimated price tag of $8.9 billion. But a recent report by
California's Bureau of State Audits found that the plan is projected to
receive only $81.8 million by 2047.
"The real problem with the Salton Sea is that the scale of
it is so large that any real mitigation effort would need to be
similarly large in scale," said Michael Cohen,
a senior research associate at the Pacific Institute, an Oakland,
California-based nonprofit that focuses on freshwater issues. "And
there's simply no time left now to construct and implement a mitigation
plan of that magnitude.
"Four years from now, mitigation water delivery to the
Salton Sea will no longer be required, and the sea is going to decline
very rapidly."
PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID MCNEW, GETTY IMAGES
Dead palm trees stand at the former yacht club on the shore of the Salton Sea in July 2011.
A Smaller, More Sustainable Salton Sea?
Citing fears that California's grand plan will not be
adequately funded, the IID and other groups are drafting their own
schemes for smaller-scale restoration projects that are aimed at saving
ecologically important parts of the sea. A state agency called the Salton Sea Authority is coordinating the various efforts.
"It's an incremental approach to restoration," Wilcox said.
"We want to build multiple small areas of habitats as the sea recedes."
In 2013, the IID partnered with Imperial County to launch its own environmental restoration plan. Called the Salton Sea Restoration & Renewable Energy Initiative,
the plan would save a much smaller portion of the Salton Sea, but for a
fraction of the cost of California's original plan. "I don't see
California finding $9 billion, but I can see it having $10, $20, or $30
million a year to do this incremental approach," Wilcox said.
That would be enough money, Wilcox said, to jump-start the
initiative. Ultimately, however, the IID thinks it can finance the
initiative and jump-start the state's restoration efforts through
renewable energy projects centered around the sea itself. The geothermal
energy potential of the Salton Sea is among the highest in the nation,
they say. Conservative estimates suggest there is nearly 2,000 megawatts
of untapped energy in the area—enough to power more than one million
homes.
A recent report commissioned by the IID concluded that
renewable energy development at the sea could generate up to $4 billion
in revenue over 30 years, with $2 billion going toward restoration.
The IID's initiative calls for geothermal plants to be built
alongside newly restored habitats along the edges of the southeastern
corner of the sea. According to this vision, the Salton Sea about a
decade hence will be a very different place than it is today."It'll be roughly two-thirds its current size, and the southern section of the lakebed would end up resembling a kind of renewable enterprise zone, almost an industrial park for renewable energy," said IID general manager Kevin Kelly. He added that the district plans to route agricultural return flows to important habitat areas, to counteract the increasing salinity of the water as the sea shrinks.
In addition to geothermal facilities, the IID is also
considering the installation of algae ponds for producing biofuels,
solar panels, and salt-gradient solar ponds—which use density
differences between fresh and saltwater to trap heat that can be
extracted later.
"Interspersed among all of that would be berms and habitats
and wetlands, and all of these mixed uses would end up complementing
one another," Kelly said.
Much will need to happen before this dream can become a
reality. The initiative will require actions from numerous local, state,
and federal government agencies. For example, the Salton Sea would need
to be designated as a renewable energy development area to encourage
companies to invest their time, experience, and capital. New
transmission lines would also need to be built for transporting power
away from the sea, and that in turn will require cooperation from state
and federal regulatory agencies as well as investor-owned utilities.
But as with its push for improved on-farm water efficiency, the
biggest challenge the IID faces with its plans for the Salton Sea is
time. The IID is developing pilot schemes to test the feasibility of
blending renewable energy and ecological restoration projects at the
same sites. For instance, one project proposes to flood a site called
Red Hill Bay that is located near the abandoned Salton Sea boat dock
with just enough water to cover exposed playa and prevent dust from
becoming airborne while hosting a habitat for migrating birds and
unobtrusive facilities for extracting geothermal energy.
But this project and others are still in the very early
stages of development. "We are behind. Ideally, we would've had Red Hill
Bay built five years ago," Wilcox said. "We're getting closer and
closer to the point where we're simply running out of time."
Kelly said he thinks it would be in California's best
interest to support the IID's initiative. "We're proposing a way forward
that would eliminate the need for coming up with an unrealistic $9
billion and replace it with an achievable restoration and renewable
energy initiative," he said.
"It's simply a matter of the state figuring out that it can
do itself a lot of good by summoning the political will to address this
while it's still possible, because this business of simply running out
the clock is not going to advance the state's water interests, and it
does not help the renewable energy resources get to where it can be used
by people throughout the state."
To date, several California city and state officials,
including Senator Ben Hueso and Congressmen Juan Vargas and Raul Ruiz,
have written letters of support for the IID's Salton Sea initiative, so
some of that political will may be building.
No comments:
Post a Comment