Water Woes Worry Pistachio Grower

Each day, Larry Easterling watches thousands and thousands of gallons of water pass by his pistachio orchards on the west side of California’s San Joaquin Valley. Easterling is manager and part-owner of the King Pistachio Grove, and is a partner in Kettleman Pistachio Growers, which farms a total of 1,878 acres along the California Aqueduct. The aqueduct is a man-made river that takes water from Northern California, where water is relatively plentiful, and moves it to the parched central and southern parts of the state.

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Easterling is entirely reliant on the aqueduct, which carries water for both the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project (CVP), to irrigate the 213,000 pistachio trees he and his partners farm. To get a good, healthy crop — and this year looks like a whopper — the trees need 42 inches of water. But this year Easterling will get just 9.6 inches of water from the state project, and he gets none from the CVP. “Sometimes I’m tempted to start a bucket brigade to save the trees,” says Easterling with a chuckle.

But he’s not doing much laughing these days, not when he had to pay $500 an acre-foot for the supplemental water needed to save his crop. By way of comparison, he paid $335 an acre-foot last year, and he thought that was highway robbery. As recently as five years ago, the price was $65 an acre-foot. Easterling, who’s been farming pistachios for nearly 40 years, says the only reason he has to pay so much for water is because the needs of a fish, the delta smelt, are being put ahead of the needs of people. So he’s taking the government to court.

Farms’ Future In Doubt
In late May, a conservative legal organization, the Pacific Legal Foundation, filed suit on behalf of King Pistachio Grove and two other large nut growers, Stewart & Jasper Orchards, which farms more than 2,000 acres of mostly almonds in Newman, and Arroyo Farms, which grows more than 1,000 acres of mostly almonds near Firebaugh. All three growers say the uncertainty over water supplies puts the future economic viability of their farms in serious question. In the meantime, the cost of water is so high that it’s difficult to stay in business. “I’m paying as much for water this year as all my other cultural costs combined,” says Easterling. “That makes it extremely difficult to make a living, much less a profit.”

The lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court and names the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, among other agencies, as defendants, claims the service has no constitutional authority to regulate the delta smelt. “The ESA (Endangered Species Act) rests on the federal government’s constitutionally vested power to regulate commerce among the several states,” the foundation states. “However, the smelt is not in commerce. It exists only in California, and is not bought or sold in commerce. Therefore the federal government has no authority to regulate it.”

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National Security Issue
Calling the current policy “a misguided scheme” to help a fish that’s on the Endangered Species Act list, the foundation states that the federal restrictions have severely cut the pumping into the water system that serves millions of people in Central and Southern California.

“While farms and businesses are starved of water, more than 81 billion gallons of water have been allowed to flow out to the ocean — off-limits to human use or consumption, thanks to federal regulators’ environmental extremism. That’s enough to put 85,000 acres of farmland back into production,” the foundation states. “In the Central Valley, California’s agricultural heartland, up to 90,000 jobs are threatened by the pumping cutbacks. In some urban communities of Southern California, water rationing is a prospect. Moreover, in a real sense, national security is also at issue: By starving America’s breadbasket, the feds make us more dependent on foreign sources for the basic need of life: food.”

Easterling says that this issue won’t be truly settled until people understand that this really is a matter of national security. With all due respect to the breadbasket of the Midwest, California is where most of the nation’s healthy fruits and vegetables are grown. And the San Joaquin Valley is the heartbeat of the Golden State’s agriculture. In Fresno County alone, despite somewhat diminished water supplies, farmers produced $5.6 billion worth of food and fiber products last year.

“The Alaska oil pipeline was allowed in as a matter of national security,” says Easterling. “If the food chain of the United States is not a matter of national security, I don’t know what is.”

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