California Central Valley Farmers' Deal with the Devil

Yesterday I posted an entry about the fight between the farmers and the fish, in which I intended to also discuss the farmer's deal with the devil. However, due to various interruptions (my family expects to be fed at dinner time, as do the animals) and discursions in the text I actually wrote, I didn't do so. To be honest, I found the writing going a certain way and went with it, and as the post had gotten quite long, I thought that another post would be a more suitable way to discuss that aspect of the problem. In the meantime, alert blogger Monica of Spark a Synapse fame wrote an extensive and well-argued comment that you can read here. It was so good, and will keep me so on track that I will be using portions of it.

Monica wrote:
"Cutting off the water supply for a fish is ridiculous, I agree with that part. But the historical and political context here needs to be taken into account as well."

This is very true. As much as I would like to discuss situtations in which one party to the dispute is as pure as the driven snow, it is getting more and more difficult to find them. The farmers in question, and their predecessors are not free-market capitalists who have never taken handouts from the government. Unfortunately out of ignorance or desire to get something for nothing, as people are wont to do when they can, most Americans had made deals with the government devil.

Monica says: "There's no such thing as a free lunch. Or, there is when you deal with the feds. ;)"

Unfortunately for our California farmers, there's no such thing as a free deal with the feds, either. In fact, they have made deals with two devils, the state government (California) and the federal government. Further, they had either not read their Faust, or they forgot that the devil would come calling to collect sooner or later.

The California Aqueduct is a government project that is maintained by the California Department of Water Resources. Because it is a government-run project, rather than a private Acequia Association, demands for the water are apportioned politically, and the costs are born by the taxpayers. From it's inception to the present, the California Aqueduct, the purpose of which is to move water from the Sierras in the north to the dry Central Valley for agriculture, as well as to cities for municipal use, has given very favorable, subsidized rates to farmers and charged municipalities much higher rates, so that the taxpayers pay twice: once for the subsidies and once again for the use of their own water.

The whole issue becomes even more convoluted because the farmers, who own businesses, pay business taxes on their profits to the state, as well as personal income taxes, with the right hand, while taking the subsidies (in the form of water prices far below market value) with the left. And this is all at the state level. When the feds get involved, as they have, by delivering federal money collected from people all over the country to benefit certain sectors of the California economy.

At the same time, the federal government has taken it upon itself to control the use of water in the west, sometimes stripping older, private water associations of their water property rights and giving them carte blanche to local, state and regional governmental agencies that are more easily controlled. The private water cooperative to which Ragamuffin House belongs, and from which we purchase our water, has gone through several name changes and a number of legal maneuvers to purchase and maintain water rights because the City of Albuquerque and Bernalillo County,, through the Mid-Region Council of Governments, wants to annex our water.

(In general, water law in the Western United States can become quite complicated. The private purchase of land, for example, does not necessarily give the owner the mineral or water rights for these resources on that land. In some locations, a land-owner may be able to collect rainwater that falls on their roofs, but they may not have the groundwater rights to dig wells, for example. To further complicate things, individual states have negotiated treaties with one another about how much water they may use from their rivers that flow into or from other states. These treaties have generally been short-sighted in that they do not take into account recurring weather/climate phenomena like drought).

In California (and the rest of the West), population growth, drought and competing water usage (urban, recreational, agricultural, environmental) have predictably* come together to create the situation the Central Valley is experiencing today. And nobody who uses water is innocent in the matter of accepting government subsidies and handouts; further, individual property owners and Land Grant communities have often been forced to accept governmental authority over their older, more communitarian water arrangements, which worked quite well for the kind of small, regionally commercial farming that was traditional in these parts. (See the article about Acequias, linked above). The concerns of people who farm in small-population states, like New Mexico, are often ignored when the people of larger states, like Texas and California, appropriate property rights by force through the federal government. In New Mexico property rights disputes (including water and mineral rights) also date back to the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hildago, and are not considered resolved in the eyes of the descendents of the original settlers, who are still quite suspicious of the federal government. (For a very interesting fictional treatment of 'colonization' of Northern New Mexico by Texans, and the ensuing water 'wars', see John Nichol's novel, The Milagro-Beanfield War).

(Property deeds here include the ownership history of the land purchased; thus when I received my title search from the title company for my first home in Rio Rancho, the transactions were listed back to the original Black's Arroyo Landgrant documented by King Philip of Spain in the 1500s. The title for this house was much the same, going back to the Sedillo Land Grant in the 1600s).

So the California farmers are not innocent. At the same time, I do have more sympathy for them than Monica does, because I suspect that although they are not innocent, in some cases, they were likely forced to make deals with the devil against their better judgement in order to continue farming or hold onto their land. Some of them--especially those whose land and orchards had been in the family for generations--were likely forced to give up their ground-water rights at the point of a government gun.

There are other concerns, as well. Food security is going to become a larger issue in the United States because the productivity of farms has been squandered by nearly a century of federal meddling (going back to the New Deal), that has been destructive to the initiative and independence of American farmers. (McLean County, Illinois, where I hale from, is an exception because most of the farmers there owned their land outright before the New Deal. But Iowa was nearly destroyed by FDR's policies. My children's great-grandfather, born on an Iowa farm, and died in 2000 at the ripe old age of 110, never got over his hatred of that president and his destructive policies).

I am not sure I can forsee a good solution to these problems. Any solution is going to require painful accomodations to reality. The State of California has some of the most meddlesome and restrictive environmental regulation in the United States. It is said that the California state government even wants to determine the size of citizen's big-screen television sets. (I'm not sure if that's really a joke!). Due to repressive government and increasingly burdensome taxation, wealth is fleeing that state at an unprecendented rate, and property is becoming usalable due to unrealistic values. California is on the verge of total financial collapse.

I think it would be a good start for California to assert the 10th Amendment and get the feds out of the water picture. I am, however, very uncertain of the legalities involved. But if this could be done, then the next step would be to privatize the California Aqueduct. Perhaps with modifications for size, the Acequia and/or Water Association models would work for California. This would likely mean that farmers in the Central Valley would have to change the types of crops they grow, and how they use their water. Municipalities would also be charging more for water, and people would have to forgo frequent showers, green lawns and lush golf-courses, or pay more for these amenities (Those of us in the Inter-Mountain West have considered Californians spoiled and privileged by federal favoritism for some time; thus the ubiquitous bumper stickers: Don't Californicate _____ [name of mountain state]). Clearly, government has some role in these water issues, if only to adjudicate a process of transferring water rights into private hands and then adjudicating disputes in the future.

If water rights were in the hands of private associations, I don't think there would be any nonsense about diverting water from productive use for the (dubious) benefit of a fish.

Flash Flood Alert: This is the 'Semi' Part!

NEARLY WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

In the past few days very wet air coming up from the Gulf has precipitated very good Monsoon conditions along the east side of the Central Mountain Chain.

Here, afternoon thunderstorms build over the Sandia Mountain Front.

Last night, the heavens opened.

We received 0.49 inches of rain in about 30 minutes.

The white flecks you see are raindrops illuminated by the flash. The larger streaks and ghosts are from streams of water falling over the eaves.

This morning we surveyed the results of last night's gullywasher.

Rarely, does one see standing water in our desert mountains. Here, we see the borrow ditch along the extension of Los Pecos doing its job.

But there was trouble in the large culvert on Los Pecos Loop. Much standing water, and washout below meant that the contractor has to remodel how the drainage will work there.

Yesterday, they had dug out the rock bed downstream of the road. Now, there is more water and more work.

Although the rock dams did slow down the water last night, the intensity of the rainfall and the ground saturation created downstream rilling that could eventually undercut the rocks.

Upper level disturbances over the

San Pedro Valley at dawn

is a good indicator that the

flash flood warnings for this

afternoon are accurate.

Bruce and I are driving to Santa Fe this afternoon. He is taking one of the two evening reading classes I am teaching at Santa Fe Community College-UNM Continuing Education extension. I hope there is no serious water on the road at Madrid and Cerillos.

I remember my first Monsoon* season in New Mexico in 1982. I arrived at an Advanced Geomorphology class soaked from the knees down from wading across Lomas Blvd. (Albuquerque proper has no serious storm drains). As I stood in the doorway, water running off my umbrella, I announced to my classmates: "I thought that I was moving to a semi-arid climate!"

The professor responded: "This is the 'semi' part."

*In New Mexico the Monsoon is always capitalized. It it almost spoken in italics. It is that important.

The State of the Snow

This morning's walk and the very cold weather we've had in the past week brought up a very good question.

We got five inches of snow last week. And the temperature has not got above freezing since then. But the snow looks now like less than five inches, and it is ragged and crunchy where the sun shines on it. But if the temperature has continued well below freezing, then what happened to the snow?

It's a very good question. I really like it when N. asks questions like that. Technically, N. is doing science through his Kamana II studies, which is mainly the ecology of the Sandia Mountains, as well as related natural phenomena. But weather and climate are part of the local ecology.

In the picture to the left and the picture above, you can see that there is no longer a uniform covering of five inches of snow on the ground. Where did it go, indeed!

The answer is not magic, it is sublimation. On earth, matter exists primarily in three states: solid, liquid, and gas, listed here in order of increasing energy. A fourth, and very energetic state of matter, plasma, is not so common on earth, but is very common in the universe.

Normally, we think of snow--a solid state of water--as being removed by melting to become liquid water, which happens when the temperature gets above 32 F (0 C), which is the freezing point for water.

So what is happening in the picture on the right, where there is no water--and, in fact, the temperature was 8 degrees F, which is well below the freezing point? Shouldn't the snow just hang around as a solid until the temperature gets high enough for a phase transition from solid to liquid?

In two words, not always.

Sometimes, when the vapor pressure at the surface of the solid is lower than the triple point for that substance, the whole liquid state is skipped. The state transits directly from a solid to a gas. This kind of phase change is called "sublimation."

Here, in our desert mountains, we lose a lot of snow to sublimation because the air is not capable of holding very much moisture due to altitude. Nor does it retain heat well, because of how dry it is.

This means that on a sunny, very cold day when there is snow on the ground, the sun hits the surface of the snow and as it reflects back, it warms the air above it. This lowers the vapor pressure at the surface of the snow, so that sublimation occurs. Sometimes, when the light is right, you can actually see the waves of water vapor coming off the snow. As sublimation occurs, the snow becomes pitted and crunchy, not from melting and refreezing, but from sublimation.

In the picture, you may notice that the dirt now visible due to loss of snow from sublimation is frozen, and quite dry.

This continued very cold and clear weather due to a high pressure parked over the Four Corners region means that we will not get a lot of mud from melting of this snow cover.

And the 'shoe yekke' in me likes that. This means reduced vacuuming and mopping and washing of rugs.

On the other hand, this very common way for the snowcover to disappear also means that we do not retain as much water in the soil, perpetuating the dryness of our desert mountains.

Science:It's everywhere!

Even on our morning walk.

Is It? Or Isn't It? The North American Monsoon

In the early mornings, moisture has been hugging the tops of the Sandias. And on some mornings, there is a Great-Smokey-like haze above the trees.

Is it? Or isn't it?

The monsoon, I mean.

At this time of the year New Mexicans are eagerly asking the question.

And of great concern is the unspoken question: Will it fail? Being somewhat superstitious, New Mexicans are loath to voice this question lest it reveal to the Coyote Angel, the trickster, that we have no faith. When the monsoon fails, our resevoirs drop, our crops dry out and wild fires abound.

The clouds have been gathering in the mid-to-late afternoons.

We have had thunder and lightning and showers almost every evening this past week. But is it? Or isn't it?

Sometimes, we are wooed by thunderstorms made from gulf-moisture coming in from the east, but the great northerly flow of moist air brought from the Pacific by the summer tradewinds does not take hold.

That happened a lot during the great drought of the 1990's. I remember having "rain parties" in 1996, to celebrate what we thought was the return of the summer monsoons--only to see them fail so that by the next summer, I could walk across the Rio Grande at my field sites without hardly getting my boots wet.

The New Mexican monsoon is a fickle creature.

The monsoon happens thus:

• a steady flow of low-level moist air comes up from the south
• the Colorado Plateau mountains warm up with summer insolation and draw the moist air to us
• the rising warm air lifts the moisture up into the atmosphere, creating the thunderheads that drop the summer rains.

This monsoonal flow mechanism is the same one that causes the torrential summer monsoons in India and also the southern hemispere summer monsoons on Australia's northern provinces. In India, the towering heights of the Hymalayas make for a most spectacular monsoon. Ours is nothing like that. But we count on the moisture we do get, just the same.

So we every afternoon as the thunderheads form, and winds smell moist, and the lightning arcs to ground, we go outside, look up at the sky and ask each other:

Is it? Or isn't it?

It may be building, but the steady flow of moisture from the south has not started--yet.

So it isn't. Yet.

It is the start of the summer thunderstorm season.

And everyday that the clouds build, we'll look hopefully to the south.

Waiting for that happy day when the question becomes: Is it?

And the answer is: Yes.

From our mouths to G-d's ear!