April 10, 2015
CapitalPress.com
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California
Ag water providers must have drought plan
By TIM HEARDEN
Capital Press
SACRAMENTO — Gov.
Jerry Brown boosted reporting
requirements for agricultural
water users April 1 while his
administration deflected criti-
cism that farmers were mostly
spared from his latest measures
to help California withstand the
drought.
Amid a wide-reaching ex-
ecutive order, Brown told state
water regulators to require more
frequent reporting of water di-
versions and use by water right
holders, conduct inspections
and crack down further on ille-
gal diversions and wasteful use
of water.
Agricultural water provid-
ers serving more than 10,000
acres are required to develop
drought management plans that
detail how the districts “strike
a balance between supplies and
demand,” said Mark Cowin, di-
rector of the state Department of
Water Resources.
Additionally, local water
agencies in high- and medi-
um-risk groundwater basins
must immediately implement
a groundwater monitoring
program.
“It’s obvious that we’re
clearly in a drought that we’ve
not seen before, and neither have
our parents or grandparents, so
Sticky cotton
prevention
tips offered
By TIM HEARDEN
Capital Press
DAVIS, Calif. — Researcher
Peter Goodell compares cases of
sticky cotton to buying a child
some cotton candy at a fair.
Pretty soon, he said, a sticky
residue is all over the child’s
clothes, the back seat of the car
and everything the little boy or
girl touches, he said.
The same mess is created by
sticky cotton, which is caused by
invasions of whiteflies that se-
crete honeydew on open cotton
bolls.
“Sticky cotton affects spinning
mills,” Goodell said recently in
a webinar for growers. “With a
sticky deposit, they’ll start to col-
lect more and more loose cotton
… This is the kind of issue that
will shut the system down.”
Frequent observations and
tests in fields, taking advantage
of natural enemies and knowing
when to apply pesticides are keys
to controlling whitefly invasions,
explained Goodell, a University
of California Cooperative Exten-
sion integrated pest management
adviser based in Parlier, Calif.
The sweet potato whitefly
was first found in the San Joaquin
Valley in 1992, according to a
UC news release. Growers have
controlled the pest reasonably
well since then, but the pest’s in-
vasions have become more of a
problem in the last several years.
One potential reason may be
heat. Generational turnover of
whiteflies happens quickly, and
in warm years such as the ones
California has seen during the
drought, the turnover is more
rapid.
Whiteflies can directly dam-
age plants by extracting proteins
from plant sap, then the sticky
sugars they leave behind can be
a boon to fungi, Goodell said.
An outbreak of sticky cotton
can shut a mill down for a week,
and the reputation hit from pro-
ducing contaminated cotton can
take years for an area to over-
come, he said.
“Producing high-quality cot-
ton in California requires that they
be free of contaminants,” he said.
Goodell advises that grow-
ers defoliate as quickly as pos-
sible to control insects and that
they manage water and nitro-
gen to avoid excess late-season
growth. Growers should sam-
ple leaves early in the season
to determine if an invasion has
occurred, and use selective in-
secticides in the early phase of
an invasion to preserve natural
enemies.
To know how best to treat
for the pest as the season goes
along, Goodell encourages
growers to consult a worksheet
developed by extension advis-
ers. The worksheet can be found
at http://ucanr.edu/blogs/Green/
blogfiles/28455.pdf.
we have to take measures we ha-
ven’t taken before,” State Water
Resources Control Board chair-
woman Felicia Marcus said in a
conference call with reporters.
The ag-related measures
come amid instructions from
Brown that mostly center
around urban water use, includ-
ing a mandate that cities reduce
their consumption by 25 per-
cent compared to 2013 levels
and that state and local agencies
replace 50 million square feet
of lawns with drought-tolerant
landscapes.
“Last year the governor
asked all Californians to re-
duce their water use by 20 per-
cent, but unfortunately many
haven’t stepped up to meet that
goal,” said Mark Ghilarducci,
director of California’s Office
of Emergency Services. “Now
with no snow in the mountains
and with reservoirs getting
lower by the day, it’s really
time to do more.”
Marcus and other officials
deflected criticism that Brown
isn’t requiring farmers to do
more to conserve. For instance,
Restore the Delta executive di-
rector Barbara Barrigan-Paril-
la asserted in a statement that
Brown places “the largest bur-
den of conservation on urban
water users” while refusing to
deal with “the insatiable de-
mands of big agribusiness grow-
Courtesy of Calif. Dept. of Water Resources
California Gov. Jerry Brown, right, watches as Department of Water Resources snow surveys chief
Frank Gehrke conducts a manual snow survey April 1 at Phillips Station east of Sacramento. The
state’s third manual snow survey of the season found virtually no snow.
ers on the west side of the San
Joaquin Valley.”
State officials noted the
farmers’ water supplies have al-
ready been drastically cut back,
as many growers will get no
federal water, only 20 percent
of their normal supplies of state
water or face curtailment notices
if they have a junior water right.
“Everyone knows that the
drought is especially a hard
hit for agriculture,” said state
Food and Agriculture secre-
tary Karen Ross, adding that
growers fallowed more than
400,000 acres last year and
the drought caused the loss of
17,000 ag-related jobs.
Water shortages will cause
growers to take out more trees
and vines this year, she said.
“It’s farm and wage in-
come that’s not going to be
spent in these rural communi-
ties,” she said.
Agricultural water suppliers
that cover more than 25,000
acres have been required since
2009 to submit water manage-
ment plans to the state. Brown’s
order adds a mandate for a de-
tailed drought plan and applies
the rules to smaller water dis-
tricts, too.
Plans must include details
of how much water was used
in 2013, 2014 and 2015 and de-
scribe actions the water district
is taking to manage demand
during the drought. The state
will provide technical assis-
tance and funding, prioritizing
grants to smaller districts, ac-
cording to the order.
Other details of how the or-
der will be implemented will be
worked out in the coming weeks
by the water board and Depart-
ment of Water Resources.
Brown issued the order as
he accompanied Cowin and
snow surveys chief Frank
Gehrke on the third manual
snow survey of the season near
Echo Summit 90 miles east of
Sacramento, where they found
no snow on the ground for the
first time in the test site’s 75-
year history.
California’s snowpack typi-
cally supplies about 30 percent
of the state’s water needs as it
melts in the spring and sum-
mer, but statewide electronic
readings April 1 found only 1.4
inches of water content, or 5
percent of the historical average
of 28.3 inches for the date, the
DWR reported.
Senior water right holder usage suspended
By TIM HEARDEN
Capital Press
SACRAMENTO — The
state warns that more stop-di-
version orders loom for water
right holders throughout Cal-
ifornia — and this time it may
curtail some senior rights.
The State Water Resources
Control Board sent warning
letters to some 36,000 land-
owners and other entities that
their rights to take water from
rivers and streams will soon be
suspended in key watersheds
because of the drought.
The warnings are the agen-
cy’s second this year and are
designed to give water right
holders advance notice to help
them make difficult planting de-
cisions this spring, officials said.
“We’re monitoring the water
in the streams, the availability of
water and the expected demand,”
water board spokesman Tim Mo-
ran told the Capital Press.
“We don’t know how many
or if” senior right holders will
be told to stop diverting, he said.
“We’re just giving them a warn-
ing that this could happen. It real-
ly depends on how much water is
in the watershed and what we see
is the projected demand.”
The letters portend a repeat
of last year, when curtailments
impacted more than 5,000 water
rights, according to the board.
While the curtailments pre-
dominantly affect agriculture,
they also apply to water rights
held by municipalities and other
water users, officials noted in a
news release.
If dry conditions continue
through the spring, curtailments
are likely in certain watersheds
on all post-1914 water rights, and
many holders of pre-1914 rights
could also be affected. If senior
right holders are curtailed, offi-
cials would “work backwards by
date,” Moran said.
“If we get through all the ju-
niors and there’s still not enough
water in the system, it would like-
ly kick over to seniors,” he said.
The warnings come as Gov.
Jerry Brown issued a mandate
last week that cities reduce their
water consumption by 25 percent
compared to 2013 levels and that
state and local agencies replace
50 million square feet of lawns
with drought-tolerant landscapes.
The governor’s wide-reach-
ing executive order largely
spared agriculture, although
Brown did boost various report-
ing requirements for agricultural
water users. For instance, the
governor told state water regula-
tors to require more frequent re-
porting of water diversions and
use by water right holders, con-
duct inspections and crack down
further on illegal diversions and
wasteful use of water.
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