Sasha Khokha/KQED

Pistachio trees on a drip irrigation system. Drip systems can dramatically reduce water loss from evaporation.

UPDATE: Despite snow closing Interstate 5 over the Grapevine Pass on Monday, state snow surveyors returned from the Sierra today with more forlorn figures. The third snowpack measurement of the season showed water content in the accumulated snow at just 30% of the average for this date and 26% of the average for April 1, typically when the snowpack reaches its peak for the season.

Even though more snow is on the way, as I explain in my radio story for The California Report, Central Valley farmers are getting ready to face a fourth dry year in the last five.

I visited with Fresno County farmer Ryan Ferguson in his pistachio orchard near the Lemoore Naval Air station, to ask him how he’s coping with the news that he may get just 30% of the water he’s asking for from the canals of the federal Central Valley Project.

Despite the carry-over in the state’s reservoirs from last year’s healthy snowpack, this year is looking bleak, and water managers have to plan conservatively. That particularly impacts farmers like Ferguson, who’s land is part of the Westlands Water District, which relies entirely on federal Bureau of Reclamation for surface water.

Even though they are politically powerful, and control some of the nation’s wealthiest farms, Westlands growers are low on the totem pole when it comes to water rights. That, coupled with pumping restrictions to protect endangered fish in the Delta, means they’re unlikely to get their full allocation of federal water. In 2009, Westlands farmers got ten percent and fallowed thousands of acres. With last year’s bountiful snowpack, they got 80%.

The capricious weather means farmers like Ferguson can get whipsawed back and forth. “It makes it really difficult to plan,” he told me.

Sasha Khkha/KQED

Ryan Ferguson uses his iPhone to check the soil moisture in his Fresno County fields.

“You can’t gear up to farm 100% of your ranch one year, and 50% the next year. It makes it difficult to plan how much equipment to buy, even to decide whether we can put in more drip irrigation.”

Ferguson is part of a generation of young farmers that’s getting its start during some intensive years of drought. He’s invested in water-saving technology, including drip irrigation he can monitor from his iPhone.

One thing Ferguson’s likely to do this year: pump groundwater with his new million-dollar well. That well water comes at a far steeper price than what he buys from the feds, because he’s got to pay for electricity to power the well and bring the water to the surface. The groundwater here is salty and has to be cleaned up before it can be used on crops, which also requires expensive filtration.

But the biggest uncertainty is how much groundwater is left in the aquifer under these farms, or how quickly it could get sucked dry, especially if lots of farmers turn on their wells this summer.

Why climate change and public health policy make good chemistry

A major study released today in Fresno details the direct link between higher levels of air pollution and asthma-related ER and hospital admissions. So, what’s that got to do with climate change? Plenty.

Sandy Huffaker / Getty Images

Tourists snap photos of a murky sunset in San Diego

“There’s a division in the public’s mind between global warming and health effects of pollution,” says Dimitri Stanich of the California Air Resources Board.

In reality, there’s significant overlap. Some components of air pollution shown to have harmful warming effects on the planet are also harming people, especially children, right now.

Let’s start with ground-level ozone. Ground-level ozone is different from the ozone layer, which lies about 15 miles above the earth (not exactly ground level). The ozone layer shields us from most of the sun’s harmful rays. Ozone is good in the atmosphere but bad, in many ways, at or near ground level.

Ground-level ozone is not part of air pollution itself. Instead, it is formed by a complex chemical reaction starting with the nitrogen dioxide (NO2) component of air pollution. That chemical reaction is especially strong when the air is calm and the sun is shining (California’s Central Valley in the summer, anyone?). This stuff is terrible for your lungs.

“Ozone has the same corrosive aspects of bleach,” explains Bonnie Holmes-Gen, senior policy director for the American Lung Association in California. “When people breathe it in, it damages the lining of the lungs. It’s like getting a sunburn on the lungs. It triggers coughing, wheezing and asthma attacks,”

Ground-level ozone is also a greenhouse gas. So, while it’s harming people today, it’s simultaneously helping to warm the planet. If that’s not enough, ground-level ozone’s corrosive properties harm crops, too. The Central Valley may be the nation’s salad bowl, but it’s ground zero for ground-level ozone.

Then there’s “black carbon.” If you think that sounds ominous, you’re right.Tiny particles of black carbon can lodge deep in a person’s lungs (bad) or circulate in the air and contribute to global warming (also bad). And, in a triple whammy, if black carbon particles land on arctic snow, they can accelerate the ice melt. Scientists say black carbon is a major contributor to climate change, perhaps second only to CO2. Black carbon comes from, among other things, the burning of fossil fuels, the stuff that comes from tail pipes and smokestacks.

Sunday’s New York Times featured a depressingly detailed account of Americans’ waning interest in global warming. Climate skepticism is on the rise, at least in political circles. While skepticism about the health effects of air pollution isn’t polled as much, it seems reasonable to think there’s little argument there.

This is where we get to what policymakers call “co-benefits.” Ms. Holmes-Gen points out that ground level ozone and black carbon are both fairly short-lived in the environment. “It’s a huge bang for the buck. If we reduce air pollution, we’ll see an immediate health benefit and we get warming pollutants out of the air, too.”

Lisa Aliferis is a health news editor at KQED. The complete smog & health study referred to at the top of this post is available as a PDF download from Fresno State University.

Jefferson Beavers

Reporter Sasha Khokha hits the road.

By Jefferson Beavers

When we decided to take a look at smart growth in the Central Valley, we wanted to see if the goal of compact, walkable living was a realistic option for the largely suburban, car-loving communities of central California.

So, Central Valley bureau chief Sasha Khokha decided to get out of her car, put on her walking shoes, and burn some shoe leather…almost literally.

As the story’s field producer, I first researched dozens of developments in Fresno and Madera counties. I looked for good examples of high-density housing and sustainable neighborhoods as defined by the San Joaquin Valley Blueprint, the area’s land use and transportation planning process.

Finding examples of smart growth communities here proved to be harder than we thought. A 2010 study [PDF] out of UC Merced detailed the significant challenges of implementing smart growth practices in the Central Valley. People here love their cars. They love their detached, single-family suburban homes. They are immersed in a commuter culture, and old habits are hard to break.

I found the biggest and most successful smart growth project near Fresno to be Harlan Ranch, with its “high-density” housing and eco-friendly features. The development features a school, lots of shared playgrounds and green spaces, miles of walking paths, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, and a communal clubhouse with activities for residents. Within its walls, Harlan Ranch is an award-winning oasis of good living and sustainability.

But here’s the catch: Residents of Harlan Ranch must drive to get there. It’s more than three miles to the nearest bus stop. It’s nearly five miles to the nearest supermarket. And from its spot on the suburban fringe, it sits nearly fifteen miles away from downtown Fresno.

This is when Sasha laced up her cross-trainers and hit the road.
View Central Valley Smart Growth in a larger map

Using Google Maps and some advance scouting in the field, I plotted out the routes from the main entrance of Harlan Ranch to the nearest amenities. While the Harlan Ranch master plan does include a shopping complex at some point in the future, residents living there now must rely on their vehicles to get to basic services such as a grocery store, pharmacy, or bus stop.

For our experiment, we imagined that Sasha lived at Harlan Ranch and didn’t have access to a car.

I dropped her off at the Harlan Ranch entrance with a map, a bottle of water, and a small bag of radio gear. We arranged to meet three times along the 4.8-mile route to the supermarket, when I would refill her water bottle and check to see if she was OK. While Sasha walked, I photographed the area for the story’s photo gallery.

Not long after walking out of the development, Sasha faced long stretches of rural roads without sidewalks. She made her way along weed-strewn fields. She passed farmhouses and orchards. She said hello to a grazing horse more than once.

Sasha began in the mid-morning and she quickly faced the Central Valley heat, which rose to above 90 degrees by the walk’s end shortly before noon. Fresno’s notoriously poor air quality was technically “moderate” on this day, but a few days later would have been in the “unhealthy for sensitive groups” range.

Sweaty and tired, Sasha made it to the supermarket in about two hours. (We didn’t count our three check-ins toward the total walking time.) She eagerly gulped a Gatorade as we debriefed about the trip, luxuriating in the car’s full-blast air conditioning.

Her conclusion: Even under the best of circumstances, it would be nearly impossible to walk from Harlan Ranch to the nearest grocery store. Sasha had only walked one way – without lugging bags of groceries all the way back – and she was beat. If she lived in Harlan Ranch, she’d still have to rely on a vehicle, a contradiction of smart growth’s ultimate promise.

Jefferson Beavers is a freelance journalist based in Fresno. Listen to the companion radio feature with this post, reported by Central Valley bureau chief Sasha Khokha, airing Friday on The California Report.

All radio and web features from our series, “Miles to Go: Building a More Sustainable California,” are posted on our special coverage page.

The New York Times this weekend published a story and useful graphic describing new findings on the intensity of groundwater pumping in California’s San Joaquin Valley.

One eye-opening note from Felicity Barringer’s article:

“…the total loss of groundwater from the Sacramento and San Joaquin River basins in California’s Central Valley from 2003 to 2010 was just under 16.5 million acre-feet — approximately the volume of the Lower Colorado River reservoir, Lake Mead, when it is full.”

Lake Mead is the nation’s largest man-made reservoir (and has not been full for some time).

The research, by scientists at a Massachusetts arm of the Stockholm Environment Institute, includes projections for water supply and demand in California and the Southwest. The article points out that about a third of Californians’ total water use is groundwater.

California’s Central Valley has lost nearly enough water in the past six years to fill Lake Mead, according to NASA scientists presenting at the American Geophysical Union Conference in San Francisco this week. Nearly two-thirds of that loss–20.3 cubic kilometers of water–is from groundwater depletion.

With the recent drought, groundwater has been an important water source for California’s Central Valley agriculture, but getting a picture of that water use hasn’t been easy. Water districts haven’t been required to report groundwater pumping in their areas. That’s something the recent Delta overhaul package of legislation now requires, but according to Jay Famiglietti of UC Irvine, the records to date aren’t very complete. Wells are sparse and the measurements have been sporadic.

The majority of the water loss since 2003 has been focused in the San Joaquin Basin at the southern end of the Central Valley, which is losing 3.5 cubic kilometers of water each year. The bulk of that loss is the result of groundwater depletion.

Famiglietti says this is due to a “triple threat” in California.  First came the drought, then decreased water allocation and more groundwater pumping. Finally, with less surface water, the groundwater aquifers have a reduced opportunity to recharge. Famiglietti says it’s clear that California is using groundwater at an unsustainable rate, which “poses significant threats to food production in US and the California economy.”

Groundwater basins in the Central Valley. Image: NASA

This large-scale picture of California’s groundwater comes from NASA’s Grace project. Twin satellites orbiting the Earth detect changes in the gravitational field, caused by the movement of water. Those satellite measurements act like a“scale at the bottom of the ocean weighing how much water is in each of these spots,” according to NASA’s Michael Watkins.  They also detect changes in snow, surface water and soil moisture.

The Grace project, though, is becoming a “senior citizen,” according to Watkins and is reaching the end of its technological life. He says quality of their water research, which has included other spots around the globe, speaks to the need for another generation of the project.  Famiglietti says, though this data can’t replace ground measurements, he hopes it will be taken into account by state agencies faced with making the tough choices about California’s aquifers.

Deceptively soggy fields in Fresno County. Photo by Sasha Khokha

This morning’s news for Central Valley farmers was bad–but not unexpected: record low allocations of water from state and federal irrigation systems, just as growers make their spring planting decisions.

There are two major plumbing systems that supply water for Valley farms. This morning, the federal Bureau of Reclamation said the best-case scenario will be that ag customers of its Central Valley Project get 10% of their requested water this year. Zero is more likely for most, especially if the current season’s weather patterns persist. The previous low for CVP allocations was 25% in the early 1990s.

Also today, the California Department of Water Resources confirmed its earlier estimate of 15% allocations for farms served by the State Water Project.

The recent string of rainy days has left fields soggy but failed to make a dent in the current drought. Elissa Lynn, Senior Meteorologist for the state Department of Water Resources says we’d need four or five more big storms by April to bring the state’s precipitation levels up to normal.

It’s unlikely it will keep raining hard enough, for long enough, to bring California out of a drought.

And that means more fighting over the state’s water supply. Especially when it comes to the massive state and federal plumbing projects that pipe water from northern California to make arid Central Valley fields bloom.

Not only is there less water in the state’s reservoirs, but there are restrictions on pumping it because of legal decisions to protect the endangered delta smelt.

On The California Report this morning, we visited with a Fresno County tomato farmer, to find out how he’s coping. If you missed it, that radio story will be posted here sometime today.

For more on the drought, explore Climate Watch’s newest resource, California’s Water. Visit this page for access to KQED’s drought coverage, data and reports from the Department of Water Resources and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and California water news from across the Web.