After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Robert Frobose’s great-grandfather rebuilt his grocery store, then sold it and moved to Oakdale, where he began farming. “I was born into the Oakdale Irrigation District (OID),” said Frobose recently. “We still have one of my great grandfather’s ranches.” A rice farmer, Frobose is keenly aware of his crop’s water needs. When he learned this year’s allocation of water for senior OID members would […]
Seabirds in the Valley
The San Joaquin Valley has always featured great extremes in weather and landscape―everything from flood to drought, and desert to inland sea. Before it was drained for agriculture, Tulare Lake, in the southern part of the Valley, was the second largest lake in the United States. Prior to levees and flood control, seasonal wetlands often stretched as far as the eye could see and the rivers were big enough for […]
Pawns in the Water Game
Dr. Vance Kennedy was visiting Modesto Reservoir in eastern Stanislaus County last week when someone asked him what the likelihood is that almond orchards around the reservoir are pumping water from the reservoir via seepage into nearby aquifers. “One-hundred percent,” replied Kennedy. Kennedy retired from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) after winning its highest possible award. His special expertise is in tracing sediments in water, but he’s well versed in […]
History, Water, and Devin Nunes
To hear Congressman Devin Nunes tell it, politics and litigation are tools used solely by radical environmentalists to further their goals of depopulating the San Joaquin Valley. Nunes just published an extended diatribe arguing that “the Natural Resources Defense Council and several other environmentalist groups” are engaged in a plot to remove 1.3 million acres of San Joaquin Valley farmland from production. In what has become a recurring theme for Nunes […]
Why Water Needs CEQA
The pipes extend in all directions from their exoskeleton pumping arrays, each one entering the ground like the alien proboscis of an off-world insect. Some of the arrays have as many as seven or eight 300 horsepower pumps, each one capable of lifting thousands of gallons of water a minute. These powerful pumping systems are the signature apparatus of the industrial almond orchard, a favored investment of speculators looking for, […]
How Trinitas Rolled the Irrigation District
According to General Manager Steve Knell, the Oakdale Irrigation District’s (OID) Board of Directors was preoccupied with the district’s precarious financial position as far back as 2011. And that may be why the Board failed to address its state-mandated requirement to apportion district boundaries based on population. “The board, faced with financial challenges, may have elected not to spend money hiring a consultant to help reapportion, a priority that ‘probably […]
The Water Sale Mirage
Among the most sacred shibboleths of the water world’s power elite, none is more revered than the one that proclaims, “Water sales are wise and beneficial.” Of course, no member in good standing of water’s movers and shakers would ever refer to “water sales,” a vulgar and much too accurate description. The proper terminology is “water transfers.” As is often the case with euphemisms, the purpose is to conceal an […]
Fresno County’s Water Follies
The latest production of the San Joaquin Valley water follies issues from the Fresno County Board of Supervisors, who’ve taken it upon themselves to ask Governor Brown, “to take even more stringent actions to be directed at reducing the state’s water consumption by imposing curtailments [of?] water supplies currently dedicated to the environment and fishery habitat that are comparable to those now being mandated and burdening urban and agricultural contractors […]
The Irrigation District’s Water Math
Thursday, May 14, Oakdale Irrigation District (OID) General Manager Steve Knell told a group of local farmers he was more worried about OID’s financial situation than he was about the drought. Knell said OID lost $7 million last year and would lose $10 million this year. “Those losses will be made up with water sales,” he added. Knell is a staunch advocate of water sales, euphemistically known as “water transfers.” […]
Water for Free?
“It’s almost like you live in Fairyland,” said Steve Knell last Thursday in a meeting in the Oakdale Irrigation District (OID) boardroom. Knell is the district’s General Manager. He was responding to repeated queries from farmer Bob Frobose about OID’s apparent willingness to deliver water to Trinitas Partners while cutting back allotments for farmers with more senior water rights. Trinitas Partners, a consortium of investors led by three Bay Area […]