• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

The Valley Citizen

Pursuing truth toward justice

The Valley Citizen

Pursuing truth toward justice
  • Arts
  • Education
  • Environment
  • History
  • Nature
  • Politics
  • Wit
  • About

Water, History, and the Environment: Part II

July 28, 2015 By Eric Caine Leave a Comment

San Joaquin River, summer, 2009
San Joaquin River, summer, 2009

History? Not around here…

“Like most environmentalists, they want it all,” said Oakdale Irrigation District (OID) General Manager Steve Knell recently when discussing water rights along the Stanislaus River.

Though absurd on the face of it, Knell’s claim represents a widespread belief throughout the San Joaquin Valley, where environmental illiteracy and historical amnesia have enabled private appropriation of public resources since the days of the gold rush. The simple fact is that “wanting it all” is impossible in the San Joaquin Valley because “it” is almost all gone.

Consider Tulare Lake in the southern part of the Valley. It was once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi. Tulare Lake was completely drained by 1899. It wasn’t partly drained, largely drained, or even almost all drained. It was drained entirely, not by environmentalists but by Big Ag, especially corporate giants like Boswell and Salyer. 

Beginning with Charles Lux and Henry Miller in the late nineteenth century, industrial agriculture has dominated water use in the San Joaquin Valley, frequently to the point of total depletion. In fact, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, by 1910, “nearly all the available surface water in the San Joaquin had been diverted,” almost entirely for agriculture.

Today, those who claim environmental needs for water are unreasonable also argue that without surface water for agriculture, farmers will be forced to pump groundwater. The truth is, they’ve been pumping all along; industrial agriculture depleted sustainable groundwater resources in the southern San Joaquin Valley long ago.

Almost immediately after the completion of the Delta-Mendota Canal in 1951, subsidence from overdrafting groundwater was seen as a threat to the structural integrity of the canal. Today, subsidence as much as two feet per year in some regions is causing cracks in the canal.

Groundwater has always been a major source for water in the San Joaquin Valley, not just for agriculture, but for urban uses as well. Modesto is one of the very few cities in the Valley with adequate supplies of surface water for its urban users. Fresno, the largest city in the Central Valley, depends on groundwater for 85% of its summer use and 70% of its winter water usage. 

Apologists for corporate agriculture also claim environmentalists want to waste water on fish, but only after decades of legislation was there any water at all for salmon runs in the San Joaquin River. In April 2014, Chinook Salmon were returned after an absence of sixty years.

The San Joaquin River is California’s second largest; the salmon runs historically numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Salmon weren’t partly gone, largely gone, or even almost all gone; the salmon runs were entirely gone and so was almost all the water. Period.

It wasn’t environmentalists who “took it all,” and it wasn’t even urban users. The water was taken (the euphemism is “diverted”) by agricultural users who calculated that unsustainable agriculture was nevertheless profitable agriculture, especially when it could exploit public resources.

When corporate farmers in the southern part of the Valley ran out of groundwater and had depleted the rivers in their own region, they began promoting water sales from the northern part of the state (euphemistically called “transfers”). One of the most enthusiastic promoters of water sales is none other than Steve Knell, who has admitted the OID business plan depends on selling water outside the district. He’s presided over the sale of 382,408 acre feet of water over the last decade.

Most of OID’s water sales have gone south to Westlands Water District. Despite having very junior water rights, Westlands is the largest water district in the United States. Especially since so many of its members have planted permanent crops, it’s dependent on northern water sources for survival.

It’s not environmentalists who want it all, it’s Big Ag. And in those places where it has already taken it all, it wants more, which means it must buy water from places like the Oakdale Irrigation District. And as long as he can blame environmentalists for the region’s water woes, OID’s Steve Knell is happy to sell.

Next: Fact? Fiction? What’s the diff?

 

Filed Under: Environment, Featured Tagged With: San Joaquin Valley groundwater, Steve Knell

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Note: Some comments may be held for moderation.

Primary Sidebar

Off The Wire

?Monster Fracks? Are Getting Far Bigger. And Far Thirstier.
“Monster Fracks” Are Getting Far Bigger. And Far Thirstier.
A Times analysis shows that increasingly complex oil and gas wells now require astonishing volumes of water to fracture the bedrock and release fossil fuels, threatening America’s fragile aquifers.
www.nytimes.com
Newsom urges SCOTUS to consider encampment ruling that has 'paralyzed' California cities
Newsom urges SCOTUS to consider encampment ruling that has ‘paralyzed’ California cities
The Democratic governor’s intervention lays down a mark in a legal dispute with potentially profound implications for one of California’s most pressing issues.
www.politico.com
Clarence Thomas Secretly Participated in Koch Network Donor Events
Clarence Thomas Secretly Participated in Koch Network Donor Events
Thomas has attended at least two Koch donor summits, putting him in the extraordinary position of having helped a political network that has brought multiple cases before the Supreme Court.
www.propublica.org
How hungry is California? Millions struggle to eat well in an abundant state
How hungry is California? Millions struggle to eat well in an abundant state
How bad is hunger in California? A lot depends on your access to food aid, which expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic but now is being reduced.
calmatters.org
Sacramento DA sues city over homeless encampments
Sacramento DA sues city over homeless encampments
Sacramento County had nearly 9,300 homeless people in 2022, based on data from the annual Point in Time count. That was up 67% from 2019. Roughly three-quarters of the county’s homeless population….
www.mercurynews.com
At Last, a Real Possibility to Avoid Catastrophic Climate Change
At Last, a Real Possibility to Avoid Catastrophic Climate Change
After decades of minimal action, Congress passed the largest and most comprehensive piece of climate legislation in U.S. history. Will we make the most of this opportunity?
www.audubon.org
How the fentanyl crisis' fourth wave has hit every corner of the US
How the fentanyl crisis’ fourth wave has hit every corner of the US
The epidemic’s staggering scale and infiltration of communities is laid bare in a new study.
www.bbc.com
Can licensed tent villages ease California's homelessness epidemic? This nonprofit thinks so
Can licensed tent villages ease California’s homelessness epidemic? This nonprofit thinks so
Taking people off the street and into tents is a new twist on homeless shelter being explored by the San Francisco-based Urban Alchemy in two tent villages operating in Los Angeles and Culver City.
www.latimes.com
Mississippi has problems, but it's handling homelessness better than L.A.
Mississippi has problems, but it’s handling homelessness better than L.A.
The public tends to blame homelessness on poverty, drug use, crime or even warm weather. But other cities don’t have L.A. levels of street homelessness because they have more available housing.
www.latimes.com
Neo-Nazis March Through Florida Park
Neo-Nazis March Through Florida Park
The demonstrators raised “Heil Hitler” salutes and waved flags with swastikas.
www.thedailybeast.com
Families have high hopes for Gavin Newsom's CARE Courts. Providers want to lower expectations
Families have high hopes for Gavin Newsom’s CARE Courts. Providers want to lower expectations
Gov. Gavin Newsom?s experiment to push Californians with mental illness off the streets and into treatment, CARE Court, starts soon.
calmatters.org
Pope says 'backward' U.S. conservatives have replaced faith with ideology
Pope says ‘backward’ U.S. conservatives have replaced faith with ideology
Pope Francis has blasted the “backwardness” of some conservatives in the U.S. Catholic Church. He says they have replaced faith with ideology and that a correct understanding of Catholic doctrine allows for change over time.
apnews.com

Find us on Facebook

pp
The Valley Citizen
PO Box 156
Downtown Bear Postal
1509 K Street
Modesto, CA 95354

Email us at:
thevalleycitizen@sbcglobal.net

Footer

The Valley Citizen
PO Box 156
Downtown Bear Postal
1509 K Street
Modesto, CA 95354

Email us at:
thevalleycitizen@sbcglobal.net

Subscribe for Free

* indicates required

Search

• Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2023 The Valley Citizen

Dedicated to the memory of John Michael Flint. Contact us at thevalleycitizen@sbcglobal.net

Editor and publisher: Eric Caine

Website customization and maintenance by Susan Henley Design