Co-authored by Adam Scow
By now, the whole nation is aware that its fruit and vegetable basket, California, is in the fourth year of an unprecedented drought. One NASA scientist recently projected that the state may only have roughly a year's supply of water left in its reserves. While that number is not entirely cut and dry (pardon the pun), it's clear that California's water crisis is real and that solutions are late in coming. For the first time in the Golden State's history, its governor, Jerry Brown, has placed mandatory water restrictions on residents and municipalities.
We can all agree that individual water conservation - efficient toilets and washing machines, shorter showers and smarter landscaping - should be expanded and embedded in our culture. But restrictions on households are not enough to dig us out of our water woes. Given that residential and municipal uses account for about fifteen percent of California's annual water use, we must ask: who is guzzling California's water and what should Governor Brown do to rein in these users?
Below we identify some of California's most egregious water abusers and offer some commonsense steps for Governor Brown's consideration.
Big Agriculture
The Almond
On the desert-like west side of the San Joaquin Valley, almond orchards stretch as far as the eye can see. But this nut empire is a relative newcomer to the neighborhood: in the past five years, skyrocketing global demand for the cash crop has enabled it to double in size and become the second-biggest water consuming crop in California. The arid climate and selenium-laced soils in this region make it a kind of madness to grow this thirsty crop here, where it takes more than double the water to grow almonds than in Northern California. Agribusiness giants like Beverly Hills-based billionaire Stewart Resnick are raking in profits from these crops, about seventy percent of which are exported overseas. The Westlands Water District, where many of these orchards are based, has pumped more than one-million acre feet of groundwater in the past two years - more water than Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco combined use in a whole year - to produce these nuts, threatening the region's water supply, and causing the ground to sink as much as a foot per year in some places. What's more, most of this crop is exported abroad--meaning, effectively, the water is exported along with it.
Factory Farms
Industrialized animal agriculture is notoriously water-intensive. For example, Food & Water Watch estimates that it takes 150 million gallons of water a day to maintain the dairy cows on California's mega-dairies. That calculation does not include the large quantities of water needed to raise the feed for dairy cows in California or to move manure into storage systems; it is just the water given to cows to drink and used to wash cows and buildings. A lack of available numbers tallying the meat industry's water use in California presents a problem as the State seeks to tackle the drought crisis.
Alfalfa
Of all crops grown in California, alfalfa uses the single largest share of agricultural water, so it clearly deserves attention. Like almonds, alfalfa is exported overseas, but is also used to feed dairy cows in California. Alfalfa is grown in some of the state's hottest and driest areas, including the Imperial Valley, and is exported to feed livestock. Interestingly, though, acreage devoted to growing alfalfa in California is expected to shrink 11 percent this year, according to Tom Philpott and Julia Lurie in this recent Mother Jones piece, as the agricultural industry increases production of cash crops like almonds and other "pricey nuts."
Big Oil
It's estimated that each year, the oil industry in California uses eighty-two billion gallons of water - enough to supply both San Diego and San Francisco for a year. While agriculture dwarfs the oil industry in terms of overall water use in California - where more than one million people lack access to safe drinking water - it's well-documented that the industry's dirty practices like fracking, acidizing and cyclic steam injection are permanently contaminating and destroying water California can't afford to lose. What's more, recent reports have brought to light that this industry has been illegally injecting billions of gallons of its wastewater into protected drinking water aquifers.
Bottled Water
California is home to over 100 bottled water facilities that every year bottle millions of gallons of water for private profit. In Sacramento it is estimated that each year, the notorious multinational water hog, Nestlé, pumps around fifty million gallons of local groundwater to be bottled and sold for 1,000 times the cost of tap water. Nestlé pays just shy of $1.00 per 748 gallons of water it taps from Sacramento's municipal water supply, then resells it for thousands of times more in environmentally damaging plastic bottles. While Food & Water Watch has always opposed bottled water, during a historic drought the moral imperative for ending this practice is crystal clear.
Solutions
As he calls on California's 38 million residents to conserve, Governor Brown must also take bold action to rein in uses by these corporate water abusers. The Governor oversees the State Water Board, which is empowered under the California constitution to manage water for the public good. To serve that imperative, Governor Brown should quickly take the following first steps:
1. Align California agricultural production with the realities of the State's water supply. The State routinely promises water users, including industrial agricultural users, five times more surface water than it can provide. The State must reduce demands to meet the reality of California's water supply.
2. Manage groundwater as a public resource to prevent depletion. The State, albeit poorly, manages surface water for the public good, but groundwater - the State's water savings account for future generations - is largely managed privately. The State should start with immediate, sensible restrictions on groundwater pumping. In the long-term, the State should retire from production the toxic, arid lands on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley that we do not have the water to support and compensate producers fairly for their losses.
3. Place an immediate moratorium on fracking and the bottling of California's water for private profit.
It's Californians' job to exercise their democratic rights, starting with signing this petition urging the Governor to take these bold actions. While some have suggested that people boycott almonds or make other changes in their diet, the realities of the global food system are such that corporate agribusiness will continue to abuse our water and simply export the crops we wouldn't be buying. In other words, we can't shop our way out of the crisis.
It's time for Jerry Brown to exercise courageous leadership that fixes the long-time mismanagement and corporate abuse of water that threatens the future of California's economy and agriculture. There are no easy shortcuts: the governor must govern.
Wenonah Hauter is the Executive Director of Food & Water Watch, and Adam Scow is the organization's California Director.
This post original appeared at Food & Water Watch's blog.