CFBF seeks movement on drought bills

A delegation of Farm Bureau leaders from California, who traveled to Washington, D.C., last week, encouraged the U.S. Senate to pass Western drought legislation that can be sent to a conference committee with a bill passed earlier by the House of Representatives. The delegation, which included county Farm Bureau leaders and the 2016 Leadership Farm Bureau class, visited the nation’s capital at the same time that a Senate subcommittee held a hearing on drought legislation.

“In an election year, people want their representatives to act on matters that affect their livelihoods and the environment around them,” California Farm Bureau Federation President Paul Wenger said. “Drought has plagued California, and human action has made matters worse by unnecessarily reducing water supplies. It’s time for the Senate to send a drought bill to a conference committee, and for Congress to produce commonsense legislation that helps ease the impact of water shortages in California and the West.”

Farm and ranch leaders in the Farm Bureau delegation advocated for maintaining momentum toward a single, effective compromise bill that can be signed into law.

Tulare County citrus grower Matt Watkins said, “We’ve been trying to get legislation for over two years and we’re in year five of a drought and nothing has changed. We need a Senate bill.”

The amount of water received from this year’s El Niño storms is positive, Watkins added, but he said some San Joaquin Valley farmers still face 95 percent supply reductions and, in his area, supplies have been cut 35 percent.

“There’s still not enough water to farm adequately with that supply,” Watkins said, “so you’re going to have to supplement with groundwater or purchased water. Even in an above-average rainfall year in an El Niño, we are not even at a normal supply.”

During testimony before the subcommittee, Tim Quinn, executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies, said federal regulatory agencies “are approaching water management problems the same way today that they did decades ago.”

“Federal agencies cling to a single-species-single-tool approach that has a devastating impact on water supplies for our urban and agricultural economy,” Quinn said, criticizing federal agencies’ interpretation of the Endangered Species Act.

“The ESA did not cause the drought, but the manner in which the ESA has been implemented by the federal government has made the impacts of the drought much worse,” he said. “Too often, ESA regulators impose rules and regulations on water users that have enormous costs but negligible benefits for the environment.”