Ross: investment, cooperation needed to solve water crisis in California

Collaboration and infrastructure investment will both be needed for California to solve its water crisis, California Department of Food and Agriculture Secretary Karen Ross said at The Packer’s Sustainable Produce Summit.

The Sept. 14 panel consisted of Ross; Jeff Huckaby, president of Bakersfield, Calif.-based Grimmway Farms; and Jenet DeCosta, chief of staff for Driscoll’s, Watsonville, Calif.

Ross said growers and researchers have already made great gains in looking for the most efficient water delivery systems, such as drip irrigation, for agriculture.

“We have to figure out new ways of doing things so that we can use the water that we have, and think about how we recharge our groundwater basins,” she said.

In particular, she said California is sponsoring incentive programs such as the farm water use efficiency program.

“We’ve funded over 850 projects with the demonstration projects for commodities that are still trying to figure out new improved ways of using irrigation water,” she said, adding that the state’s climate-related programs include a healthy soils program that is funded at $50 million.

Ross was asked during the panel about “one thing” California needs to achieve water balance.

“The infrastructure package is a big piece of this,” she said in response, noting that California recently invested $5.1 billion for different types of infrastructure to improve water resiliency, with $2.7 billion also committed to six different storage projects, she said. Three of those projects are for surface storage and three projects are for underground water storage, she said.

Ross said new infrastructure to move water east and west also is needed in California.

“I would also say what we’ve been working on for three years now is really coming together with true collaboration for voluntary agreements that really bring together the farmers, the irrigation districts, the Fish and Wildlife agencies, and our water purveyors, to really look at how we can improve in the health of our ecosystems and still maintain a robust agricultural economy,” Ross said. “Those are not easy things to do, but there is huge effort being invested in that and this (state) administration is very committed to bringing those to conclusion. That would be an important part of how we work together for a holistic way of managing water resources.”

Investing in water

DeCosta said Driscoll’s is heavily invested in becoming more efficient with water.

“We are trying to be really good citizens and share those limited resources with our neighbors that we have,” she said.

In addition, Driscoll’s is looking for private-public partnerships between growers, landowners and the government to understand the ways that water can be a sustainable resource not only in California, but all states and countries where Driscoll’s grows fruit.

Huckaby said that Grimmway is always considering how to build soil up so that it captures and retains more water.

“We grow 65 different crops, and so there are different patterns that you deal with climate as to the water usage,” he said.

Among several adjustments, Huckaby said that Grimmway built its own water banking program in conjunction with some of the water districts.

“We took some of our own land and built the dikes and the dams all around it so that when there’s excess water during those high flow years, were able to capture it, put it in the ground and bank it and then work with the districts to pull it out as groundwater when needed,” he said.

Ross said while California faces a “dire” water shortage, there is a huge capacity in the state for groundwater storage.

“What we are trying to do now is stop borrowing from the future,” Ross said.

In the most recent drought, Ross said California was short at 1.8-million-acre feet of water, which created cutbacks in surface water deliveries and over pumping and the state’s most critically impacted groundwater basins.

With climate change, Ross said growers in the state will likely have more volatile weather events with longer dry spells, along with times of intense flooding from “atmospheric rivers.”

Capturing that water in wet times and investing in new conveyance systems will be important, she said.

“Our capacity to store groundwater is 100 times more than our existing infrastructure for surface water, but we also have to continue to build for surface water storage as well, because we’re not going to get those atmospheric rivers as frequently as we might need them.”

DeCosta said Driscoll’s monitors its water runoff to make sure water sources and future groundwater are protected. The company also is looking at substrate growing as a way to more closely manage nutrients and recapture runoff.

Huckaby said the challenge is capturing excess flows of water.

Kern County has a massive program for water banking that will help growers get through times of drought, he said.

“I think you’ll see a balance of both going forward, utilizing the surface water when we can because it helps recharge and to help save the groundwater, but being able to store it, and bank it into the ground and be able to pump it out over these tougher times are definitely part of the future and how we’re going to play that out,” Huckaby said.