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CapitalPress.com
June 5, 2015
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California
Strong El Nino may not bring wet winter, expert cautions
By TIM HEARDEN
Capital Press
SACRAMENTO — As-
surances of a dominant
El Nino weather pattern
through the summer doesn’t
necessarily mean Califor-
nia is in for a wet winter, a
weather expert warns.
The federal Climate Pre-
diction Center recently as-
serted that El Nino, whose
warm sea surface tempera-
tures fuel southern storms,
stands a 90 percent chance
of continuing over the next
few months and a more than
80 percent chance it will
last through the end of the
year.
While there’s more con-
fidence that El Nino will
continue into the winter,
it’s too soon to know how
strong it will be, said Mi-
chelle Mead, a National
Weather Service warning
coordinator in Sacramento.
“The strength is really
what determines the poten-
tial to see above-average
precipitation for Califor-
nia,” Mead said.
Early predictions don’t
necessarily materialize, Mead
cautioned. She pointed to last
winter, which started strong
amid predictions of a wet win-
ter but fizzled after Christmas.
The CPC boosted its con-
fidence level as warm and
unsettled weather through-
out California this spring
suggested the presence of El
Nino, which tends to steer
storms into Southern Califor-
nia while leaving the Pacific
Northwest dry.
Scattered clouds last week
brought more than a quarter
of an inch of rain to some
areas of the state, as most
of the state has recorded at
least some rain in the last few
weeks.
In late April, a chilly storm
system dumped up to a foot of
snow in high elevations after
drenching the San Joaquin
Valley. The storm caused hail
damage in a few navel orange
groves, said Bob Blakely, vice
president of the Exeter-based
California Citrus Mutual.
“The rain was welcome,
but it came with a price for
some growers,” Blakely said.
The weather service in
Sacramento was predicting a
chance of rain and thunder-
storms this weekend if trop-
ical moisture moves into the
region. Mead said the unset-
tled conditions may be part-
ly because of El Nino, but
it’s also fairly typical for late
spring.
Californians reduced water
use by 13.5 percent in April
Orange harvests promise
good summer fruit
By TIM HEARDEN
Capital Press
SACRAMENTO — Sum-
mer oranges from California
promise to be sweet and plen-
tiful despite the water shortag-
es that are punishing the state’s
prime citrus region.
The harvest of navel or-
anges still has
about a month to
go and the sea-
son’s production
could be close to
the 81 million
cartons predict-
ed by the Na-
Blakely
tional Agricul-
tural Statistics
Service office here.
“We’re still picking and
will continue to pick for a few
more weeks,” said Bob Blake-
ly, vice president of the Exeter,
Calif., based California Citrus
Mutual. “We’re moving into
the final month of it.”
Picking could continue
until the middle of June, with
navels still appearing in stores
through the Fourth of July, he
said.
“We’re still getting good,
quality oranges out in the mar-
ket,” he said. “We’re having to
grade them a little harder. Utili-
zation is falling off, but there’s
still good fruit out there.”
For much of the season, uti-
lization rates — the percentage
of fruit that could be sold as
fresh — remained in the low
80s, Blakely said. But now
they’ve dipped into the 70s as
the crop has been picked over,
he said.
Subpar oranges are divert-
ed to juice.
Meanwhile, harvest is un-
derway for a diminished Va-
lencia orange crop. Growers
this season are expected to pro-
duce a 20 million-carton crop,
down from 22 million cartons
last year and a little more than
half the 39 million cartons pro-
duced in 2001-02, according to
NASS.
“We’re hearing they’re
coming in lighter than estimat-
ed so far, but we’re only about
25 to 30 percent into that crop,”
Blakely said. “Again, the fruit
could grow as we get into the
remainder of the season.”
The harvests come as a
fourth year of drought and its
related federal surface water
shutoffs have prompted many
growers to take trees out of
production. Citrus Mutual has
estimated as many as 50,000
acres of orange and other cit-
rus trees would be bulldozed.
The orchard removals
could take a particular toll on
Valencia trees, which were
already being replaced with
navels and other more lucra-
tive citrus varieties before the
drought began.
Valencia acreage has seen
a precipitous decline in recent
years; there are about 34,000
bearing acres this year, down
from 65,000 in 2001-02, ac-
cording to NASS.
With navels this season, fruit
started out smaller than nor-
mal because of drought stress
on trees throughout the prime
citrus region of Fresno, Kings
and Tulare counties, but winter
rains improved fruit sizes.
An 81-million-carton navel
crop would be slightly small-
er than the 84 million cartons
produced in 2013-2014, when a
series of winter freezes caused
considerable damage to groves.
Very few nights approached
freezing this year, as winter
temperatures remained warmer
than normal.
California is the source
of 85 percent of the nation’s
fresh citrus and navel oranges
are among the state’s top com-
modities, valued at more than
$721 million a year, according
to the California Farm Bureau
Federation.
Mindy Schauer/The Orange County Register via AP
In this Monday, June 1, 2015 photo, workers with JW Landscape work on removing 300,000 square
feet of turf at Suzuki headquarters in Brea, Calif. The grass will be replaced with drought-tolerant
plants and is expected to save the company 700,000 gallons of water a month, said R.F. Taitano,
administrative services manager.
2013. The city offered a host
of programs to achieve this,
paying residents to reduce
52 football fields’ worth of
lawn and giving away 50,000
low-flush toilets since 2007.
Saved water “is the cheap-
est water you can find,” said
David Guhin, water director
for Santa Rosa. “It’s gotten
to where lawns are uncool.”
Cool or not, many com-
munities are still falling far
short.
“Fifty-thousand toilets?
Really? We don’t have that
kind of money,” said Alan
Tandy, city manager of Ba-
kersfield, where water use
actually increased by 1 per-
cent in the latest state count.
Besides offering some
modest rebate programs
for water conservation, the
working-class city of farms
and oil rigs was finding it
“difficult to get the word out
to everybody” about saving,
Tandy said.
The Southern California
coast, a region including
Los Angeles and San Diego,
cut just 9 percent in April,
compared to a 20 percent re-
duction in the San Francisco
Bay Area and 24 percent in
the Sacramento area.
Among cities of 40,000
or more, the steepest reduc-
tion in the state, 45 percent,
was reported by the water
company serving Livermore.
The worst was Escondido,
reporting a 20 percent in-
crease.
Water districts missing
their targets face potential
fines of up to $10,000 a day
once June numbers are in,
although a far more likely
outcome will be state-or-
dered changes in local reg-
ulations, like tougher limits
on lawn-watering.
Each community was as-
signed a reduction target,
with some ordered to cut
back as much as 36 percent.
Water waste also is being
tracked, and the board could
penalize local agencies that
don’t crack down. Only a
tenth of water departments
reported penalizing their
customers for water waste.
The shift to mandato-
ry conservation followed
lackluster savings through a
voluntary effort, with water
use slipping just 3 percent
in February and 4 percent in
March compared to the same
months in 2013.
And while suppliers of
treated water closely moni-
tor and report on their cus-
tomers’ usage each month,
most farmers self-report
consumption long after their
crops have been grown and
harvested.
But as more wells and
streams run dry, California’s
farmers are expected to in-
crease by a third the fields
they fallow this year. The
drought’s impact on agricul-
ture alone will cost Califor-
nia $500 million more than
last year, for a total econom-
ic hit of $2.7 billion in 2015,
according to a study released
Tuesday by the University of
California at Davis.
Roughly 200 farmers in
the Sacramento-San Joa-
quin River Delta east of San
Francisco submitted plans
by Tuesday’s deadline for
reducing water use by 25
percent to avoid deeper cuts.
State officials are still fig-
uring out how much water
could be saved with these
deals, but state delta water
master Michael George said
he expects “significant con-
servation.”
California Dairies Inc. elects officers
California Dairies Inc.
board of directors has elected
executive committee officers
for the 2015-2016 term. John
Azevedo, who has served as
chairman of the board since
May 2013, was re-elected to
serve another term.
Also elected were:
• John Moons, re-elected
first vice chairman
• Manuel Machado, former
treasurer, elected second vice
chairman
• Edwin Koetsier, re-elect-
ed secretary
• Charles DeGroot, elected
treasurer
• BJ Schonevel, re-elected
member-at-large
• Simon Vander Woude,
elected member-at-large
Executive committee elec-
tions take place each May,
and officers serve a one-year
term.
ROP-23-2-2/#5
Tim Hearden/Capital Press
Organic Valencia oranges from Southern California-based Sun-
dance Natural Foods Co. are ready for eating. Valencia orange
harvest is underway in California while the harvest of navels is
expected to wrap up within a few weeks.
SACRAMENTO (AP) —
Californians are using less
water, but they’ll have to con-
serve a lot more to achieve the
mandatory cuts taking effect
this month, according to the
latest numbers released Tues-
day.
California residents re-
duced overall water usage by
13.5 percent compared to the
same month in the benchmark
year of 2013, water officials
said.
That’s the second-best con-
servation achievement since
state officials started closely
tracking water use more than
a year ago, but falls short of
the 25 percent cuts Gov. Jerry
Brown made mandatory for
cities and towns as of June 1.
“Local communities are
stepping up in a way they
weren’t before, and I’m hop-
ing that’s why we are starting
to see the uptick” in conser-
vation, said Felicia Marcus,
chairwoman of the state Water
Resources Control Board.
“The real challenge is, we
really have to step it up for
the summer months,” Marcus
said. “If we miss the summer,
we are toast.”
April’s
still-lackluster
overall achievement report-
ed by the roughly 400 water
agencies in the state could
raise concerns about wheth-
er Californians have fully
acknowledged the drought’s
severity.
This year’s Sierra Nevada
snowpack, which feeds the
state’s rivers, was the lowest
on record — a grim image
that served as Brown’s back-
drop when he announced
unprecedented conservation
measures on April 1.
“When they saw the gov-
ernor out on that dry mead-
ow and saw what was in his
executive order, and realized
it was really time to step up,
they really started to step
up,” said board scientist
Max Gomberg, who is over-
seeing conservation.
April’s best conservers
included Santa Rosa, a city
of 170,000 north of San
Francisco, which reported a
32 percent drop compared to
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