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September 4, 2015 CapitalPress.com 9 California Subscribe to our weekly California email newsletter at CapitalPress.com/newsletters California water board may scrap statewide grazing regs By TIM HEARDEN Capital Press SACRAMENTO — A California cat- tlemen’s group’s effort to stave off state- Courtesy of Organic Valley wide restrictions on grazing near streams Valley Ford, Calif., dairyman Jarrid Bordessa and family sells milk may be paying off. to the Organic Valley dairy cooperative, which is giving special After numerous meetings with ranchers premiums to producers suffering from the drought. the State Water Resources Control Board will consider discontinuing its efforts to craft grazing regulations at its Sept. 16 meeting. &DWWOHSURGXFHUV¿OOHGWKHURRPVDWVHY- eral workshops earlier this year and hosted ranch tours for board members and their employees to persuade them that ranch- By TIM HEARDEN from funds set aside by the ers’ current practices are environmentally Capital Press co-op for grower support. The sound. higher premiums per hundred- :DWHU RI¿FLDOV DOVR DWWHQGHG WKH 5XV- VALLEY FORD, Calif. — weight aren’t being passed on tici Rangeland Science Symposium in For dairyman Jarrid Bordessa, to the consumer, Organic Valley Davis earlier this year, at which speakers the four-year drought in Cali- spokeswoman Sasha Bernstein sought to correct what they believe are fornia has had a big impact. said. misconceptions about the science regard- The dairy’s grass production “The idea behind what ing grazing and water quality, the Cali- is considerably lower because Organic Valley is doing is to fornia Cattlemen’s Association noted in a of the lack of water, so Bordessa help provide some relief for newsletter. has had to purchase feed, which growers who are struggling “We’re certainly pleased they are con- can get expensive, he said. He’s with drought,” Bernstein said. sidering eliminating the process of de- also had to move cattle around “There are all kinds of costs veloping a statewide grazing regulatory more and truck in water. that struggling farmers are fac- program,” said Kirk Wilbur, the CCA’s di- Fortunately for him, he’s one ing. Because it’s a co-op, all rector of government relations. “That said, of about 30 dairy operators in the different farmers across the all the concerns we’ve brought up in the California who, along with sev- country are supposed to be on past year about the veracity and science eral in Oregon and Texas, are DQHTXDOSOD\LQJ¿HOG´ behind their … list of impaired water bod- getting a boost from their dairy The 27-year-old Organic ies and their overlooking (producers’) pro- cooperative. Valley represents nearly 1,800 active measures to improve water quality In a pilot project, the Wis- FHUWL¿HG RUJDQLF IDUPHUV LQ are concerns we still have at the state and consin-based Organic Valley states who provide milk for regional levels.” is paying drought-affected dairy products as well as soy, Water board spokesman Tim Moran said growers as much as $2 extra eggs and produce. Milk is pro- per hundredweight in areas of duced, bottled and distributed in exceptional drought, above and the region where it is farmed. beyond the price they receive Earlier this year, the coop- for milk. erative increased prices paid “It’s really helping us,” Bor- to growers and issued a “thir- dessa said. “It’s giving us a cash teenth check,” or additional bonus basically every month SUR¿WVKDULQJ ERQXV JLYHQ WR WKDW¶V FODVVL¿HG DV D GURXJKW growers in successful years, ac- and I wouldn’t say it’s cover- cording to a news release. ing 100 percent of the cost of For Bordessa and his fam- WKH GURXJKW EXW LW¶V GH¿QLWHO\ ily, who operate a couple of helping. dairies near Bodega Bay on the “Probably at the level we’re Northern California coast, the at right now, it’s covering about co-op’s drought relief program 50 percent” of added costs, he is a helpful supplement to relief said. programs administered by the The drought relief program, Farm Service Agency and Nat- which will continue through ural Resources Conservation the end of the year, comes Service, he said. Co-op helps dairies impacted by drought Tim Hearden/Capital Press From left, Vicky Whitney, the State Water Quality Control Board’s deputy director for water quality, makes a presentation as Esther Tracy of the water board and Matt St. John of the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board listen during a meeting in Redding, Calif., on proposed grazing regulations earlier this year. WKHWHVWLPRQ\WKDWRI¿FLDOVUHFHLYHGDWVWDNH- holder meetings prompted them to recom- mend discontinuing the statewide effort. “Feedback from those meetings indi- cated that regional differences in rangeland type, grazing practices and water quality factors supported a regional approach to grazing rather than a statewide approach,” Moran said in an email. The resolution being considered by board members at their 9 a.m. meeting would encourage the state’s regional water quality boards to consider imposing best management practices, Moran noted. “These strategies would consider re- gional differences in hydrology, topog- raphy, climate and land use, and include watershed-wide or regional monitoring programs to assess the effectiveness of the BMPs implemented,” he said. The state water board began working on the Grazing Regulatory Action Project, or GRAP, last year, asserting that it would HQKDQFH WKH HQYLURQPHQWDO EHQH¿WV IURP grazing while addressing its impacts on water quality. 36-4/#18 Trinity water release upheld to aid salmon John Deere Dealers See one of these dealers for a demonstration By TIM HEARDEN Capital Press A federal judge has denied San Joaquin Valley water dis- tricts’ request to halt the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s re- leases of as much as 88,000 acre-feet of water from the Trinity Reservoir in Northern &DOLIRUQLDWRDLG¿VK The Westlands Water Dis- trict and the San Luis and Del- ta-Mendota Water Authority asked for the injunction after the bureau began releasing water into the Trinity River to provide cooler and higher water for chinook salmon re- turning to the Lower Klamath River. U.S. Eastern District Judge Lawrence J. O’Neill denied the motion on Aug. 26, prompting cheers from the Yurok Tribe, which had joined the Hoopa Valley Tribe and Humboldt County in requesting the releases. “This is a great victory for the Klamath River and its salmon,” tribal chairman Thomas P. O’Rourke said in DVWDWHPHQW³:HDUHJUDWL¿HG that the judge saw through their desperate efforts to dis- SDUDJH WKH QHHGV RI WKH ¿VK and to discredit our science.” The water districts had ar- gued that more than 200,000 acre-feet of water had already EHHQÀXVKHGGRZQWKH/RZHU .ODPDWK5LYHUIRU¿VKLQWKH last four years. They said fed- HUDOZDWHURI¿FLDOVZHUHVHQG- ing mixed messages about the drought by denying water for farms while appearing to have H[WUDDYDLODEOHIRU¿VK %XUHDX RI¿FLDOV VDLG WKH measure was necessary to stave off a large-scale salmon die-off like the one that oc- curred in the Klamath River in 2002, which environmental- ists blamed on Reclamation’s decision to restore irrigation water to farms in the Klamath Basin. 36-1/#4N