Managing the drought begins with geography

Many of us could use a refresher course in California geography as we debate how to manage the drought and prepare for an uncertain water future.

For starters, calling the hardest-hit farm region the Central Valley is much too simplistic.

Second, agriculture per se is not the issue — not the culprit guzzler. Rather, it’s the location of the agriculture, which gulps 80% of California’s developed water. Almonds, for example, make a lot of sense in some areas; a lot less in others.

Too often we try to wrap it all into convenient, simple packages — Central Valley and nut orchards — when more specificity is required to grasp the nub of the problem.

What part of the vast Central Valley? How dry is it and what’s being grown there?

Let’s begin with the basics. The Central Valley stretches 450 miles from Bakersfield north to Redding and is divided into significantly different hydrology regions that affect crop growing. Actually, they should affect it more, but farmers are free to plant whatever they want.

The long valley essentially is divided into two valleys — the San Joaquin and the Sacramento. It’s the much drier San Joaquin that usually is referred to casually as the Central Valley — and sometimes a looming dust bowl.

The San Joaquin Valley is drained by the San Joaquin River, which usually runs dry by summer downstream from around Fresno because so much water is diverted for agriculture. It resumes running again farther north when it’s replenished by tributaries.

The southernmost part of the San Joaquin Valley is the very dry Tulare Basin. There, Tulare Lake once was the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi but dried up a century ago because of agriculture diversions.

The Sacramento Valley is drained by the Sacramento River, which never

it provided 3.1 million households with an average of $2,373 each, for a total of $7.3 billion, according to Internal Revenue Service figures.

A 2013 study from the Public Policy Institute of California said the federal credit was one of the most effective tools for reducing poverty in the state.

However, unlike 25 other states and Washington, D.C., California has not supplemented the federal credit with one of its own, to the chagrin of some Democrats and advocates for the poor.

Assemblyman Mark Stone (D-Scotts Valley) has been pushing legislation to create a California credit, saying the state, which gives tax breaks to the film industry and other businesses, can afford it.

“An earned income tax credit is the same kind of investment in our economy,” Stone said this year. “It’s just getting the money in the pockets much further down the economic strata who need it the most.”

It’s been unclear whether Brown would agree to any other new proposals to aid the needy.

In January, when the governor released his initial budget proposal, he said there would not be much money available to increase spending. “It’s very tight,” he said at the time.

The state has since seen a flood of unexpected revenue; nonpartisan legislative analysts said the government’s coffers have taken in $3 billion more than anticipated this year. Most of that money, if not all, will be directed to public schools and community colleges under the state’s education funding law.

Additional funds will be deposited in the rainy-day fund that voters strengthened in November by passing a ballot measure that required the state to pay off debt and save money as a buffer against future economic downturns.

There is no guarantee that Brown’s new proposal will satisfy those who have faulted him for not doing more for the poor. It would provide less money for those with meager incomes than one option outlined by legislative analysts, which would cost $450 million.

Some cuts in government aid that were made during the recession have remained in place, and some members of Brown’s party have been frustrated by his refusal to open the purse strings more.

Lawmakers have called on him to increase state payments to doctors who treat poor patients, and others want more state spending on child care.

Laphonza Butler, state council president of the Service Employees International Union, said this week that reduced child-care aid has been a “barrier for working families to get into the workforce.”