California Gov. Newsom Criticized for Response to Drought That is Withering State’s Farms
Tomato shortage looms as experts can’t decide if it is continuing drought or “mega-floods” we need to fear.
The media neglects to mention an essential fact about California, so I will note the state is home to three deserts: the Mojave Desert, the Colorado Desert, and the Great Basin Desert.
Unfortunately, city planners and other “experts” failed to account for the limited water resources as the population expanded during the relatively wet period in California’s climate history. Furthermore, the state’s politicians have neglected to develop and maintain the state’s critical water infrastructure (and are poised to initiate a vast dam removal project).
Now, Californians are enduring water restrictions. The following guidelines from Los Angles offer an example of the inanity.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power placed restriction on their customers in May by reducing lawn watering to two-days per week in hopes of reducing water usage by 35%.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which provides water to about 40% of the state’s population, declared a water shortage emergency last month and called for millions of people to reduce watering their yards to just one day a week.
Street addresses in odd numbers will be limited to watering on Mondays and Fridays, while those ending in even numbers can water on Thursdays and Sundays.
Those who don’t comply with the new rules will initially receive a warning but could see escalating fines for continuing violations, Martin Adams, the LADWP’s general manager and chief engineer, told the Times.
One of the areas hit hard by the drought is the state’s farms. This is especially troubling as we enter an era of food scarcity concerns. Commenting on the poor state handling of the drought and its impact on California agriculture, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., blasted for mishandling the problem during his time in office.
“I think Gavin Newsom has failed when it comes to water,” McCarthy, who represents a district in California’s Central Valley, said.
…[F]armers’ yields and, consequently, their businesses, are suffering, said Sam Parnagian, a third generation California Central Valley farmer. Over one-third of the country’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts are grown in California, according to the state Department of Food and Agriculture.
“You’ll go see tens of thousands of acres that used to have nuts, almonds, pistachios, and they’re just bare,” Parnagian told Fox News. “It’s just all dust.”
This is a grave matter, especially for those who love pasta and french fries. The poor planning and negligence in accommodating agricultural needs mean a looming tomato shortage.
California leads the world in production of processing tomatoes — the variety that gets canned and used in commercial kitchens to make some of the most popular foods. The problem is the worst drought in 1,200 years is forcing farmers to grapple with a water crisis that’s undermining the crop, threatening to further push up prices from salsa to spaghetti sauce.
“We desperately need rain,” Mike Montna, head of the California Tomato Growers Association, said in an interview. “We are getting to a point where we don’t have inventory left to keep fulfilling the market demand.”
Lack of water is shrinking production in a region responsible for a quarter of the world’s output, which is having an impact on prices of tomato-based products. Gains in tomato sauce and ketchup are outpacing the rise in US food inflation, which is at its highest in 43 years, with drought and higher agricultural inputs to blame.
Now climate “experts” are ranting about projections for a future disaster: California “mega-floods.”
A new study by Science Advances shows climate change has already doubled the chances of a disastrous flood happening in California in the next four decades. And experts say it would be unlike anything anyone alive today has ever experienced.
Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with UCLA and a researcher involved in the study, describes a megaflood as, “a very severe flood event across a broad region that has the potential to bring catastrophic impacts to society in the areas affected.” He said a megaflood is similar to the 1,000-year flash flood events seen this summer in the St. Louis area and Kentucky, but across a much wider area, such as the entire state of California.
These massive floods, which experts say would turn California’s lowlands into a “vast inland sea,” might have previously happened once in a lifetime in the state. But experts say climate change is increasing the likelihood of these catastrophic disasters, causing them to occur more like every 25 to 50 years.
It’s scientific insanity, a condition that allows politicians to use “facts” to enact or ignore policies at will.
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Comments
How stupid do you have to be to really think an event that occurs every couple thousand years (maybe) will now happen every 50 years because of a 0.5 degree temperature change.
Democrat stupid.
Totalitarian, Collectivist Stupid. Which I grant includes all Democrats.
Subotai Bahadur
Why should we believe the claimed phenomenon has ever happened, let alone every 2,000 years?
Just because the Democrats have consistently lied to the country since before the Civil War [1861-65], why would one assume that they are still lying?
Subotai Bahadur
Whenever I hear “This is an oncoming disaster” I’m always listening for the next line that goes “And we can stop it, if you just give me money.”
Happens every time.
A variation on a theme of televangelism.
I dunno about a flood that extends over the whole state, but it’s quite normal to have drought conditions and destructive floods at the same time in the same region.
Out here in desert Arizona, we’ve been in continual drought status for decades; yet when it rains (and not necessarily even hard), the stuff rolls off high ground (poor perc?) and rips through low ground like the Poseidon Adventure. Four day’s later, everything’s bakey-bakey again, and people are walking and driving heavy equipment out on the riverbed to dig their cars and houses out of the sand.
Newsom is Kamala Harris, with Fauxchaontas’ penis. He’s a just as useless a shite.
Cali produces more food than any place on earth. When I was a kid, 2 yo, we moved to Sacramento in the middle of a drought that ended up lasting 6 years. Ca. 1980-1986. The reason there was no food crisis was the water works Cali had developed (aqueducts) to bring water from places like Folsom, Nimbus, Tahoe, Shasta, yada, yada, yada. Those water works were the only reason crops could be grown in the Central Valley at all. This is going to be ugly.
I’m sure Newsom will handle the crisis with the same level of leadership and competence we’ve come to expect from him.
(cough)
Californians elected this moron, so they deserve him. Regretfully, the rest of us don’t and we will all suffer for his moronic decision as well as the decisions made by the other Leftists morons there. Clearly what happens in California doesn’t stay in California.
We are looking at a nationwide shortage of Fresh Vegetables and Potatoes. And yes, even Almond milk.
If the pols were serious about water shortages, they would prioritize ag. and ban residential swimming pools, residential and commercial landscape watering, and other non-essential water use.
I was about to bring up the idea of no lawns. Plant stuff that matches the region. I went to what southern Nevada’s water authorities called “water-wise” landscaping. It was pretty, and I ran a small drip system 20 minutes twice a week. I no longer live there. The Noo Yawkuh who bought the place put in a lawn
I live near Lake Mead in Overton, Nevada. During my morning constitutionals, I am always distressed to see lawns being watered. Not many, but there shouldn’t be any.. I think it’s immoral to have a lawn here in the desert. There are so many other things you can do to make your yard look nice.
Pretty sure that Vegas banned watering lawns a long time ago. I’m not a fan of the government sticking its nose in my business, but I agree with that. If people can’t get the message the drought is sending, they need a little “incentive” to change their behavior.
Vegas banned lawns on new residential construction many years ago. You get rock gardens instead.
Shasta County CA recently rejected a plan that would subdivide three parcels totaling over 750 acres into 166 residential lots with open space. Locals, who have dealt with both water restrictions and worsening fire conditions, pushed back on the development. While the Planning Commission voted for the project, it wasn’t until the last open meeting the project was declined. Both fire issues (poor project planning that didn’t meet recently enacted improvements in fire prevention) and the question of where’s the water would be coming from (the water district is only delivering 40% of historical allotment to over 6,000 customers) were finally heard.
Project proponents bandied the project as making great strides from the fire resistant perspective, to allegations of all sorts of possible sources of water were presented. The EIR stated items that were denied in person by the heads of two different water districts.
Government by the people is possible provided the people truly participate.
Honestly, could it be worse if they were doing it deliberately? (not excluding that, mind you.) This will mesh nicely with the reduction of grain from the Ukraine.
Maybe we could turn to Venezuela for farm tips like we do oil.
They are releasing water into the sea. The coming food shortage will be entirely man-made and they will blame the weather.
This. They think that they have to preserve a bait fish, regardless of the fact that the rivers are designed by nature to run dry, once in a while.
All droughts are man-made. And the scientific marvel of bringing water to the desert is in the process of being undone. People would like to think sending a man to the moon or creating the internet are man’s greatest inventions. No, being able to irrigate and grow greenery in a desert is man’s best invention.
And we’re messing it all up.
Not only is the drought man-made, it’s man-engineered; i.e. deliberate.
I would say this sounds like a golden opportunity for farmers in other states to pick up the slack and expand their operations but with this looming fertilizer crisis, that might not be possible. If it is it’s going to be limited.
Additional thought: there’s almost no way to avoid some food scarcity for a while especially on some of the fruit and nuts. Orchards take time to establish and the initial trees need at least a few years before they’ll start producing. Vegetables won’t be as bad so long as there are farms with the space and willingness to switch over.
The problem is that you simply can’t ‘pick up the slack’. It takes over a year minimum for any farm to actually increase their farmland, you can’t do it just at the drop of a hat. You have to clear the land, fertilize and water it for a period of time before you can plant anything, and then you have to wait for the crops to actually grow to harvest.
Right now we’re feeling the effects of what happened LAST year with Australia, the green insanity in Sri Lanka, and other things.
We still have not felt the effects of Ukraine or the European green ridiculousness yet, and this is only going to make it worse.
Not tomorrow, but you guys better buckle up in the next 6-12 months.
Water to cool the renewable/intermittent/unreliable Green blight and little fish, too.
There will be a lot of dried up farmland for Pelosi’s nephew’s property developer cronies to buy up cheap.
Newsom is more concerd with left handed transgender albino rights.
Have you seen his list of places in California where the Second Amendment no longer applies?
Masterful and comprehensive! Must have taken DAYS to create!
Lets preempt the earthquakes and just push California into the sea.
The article fails to mention that the farm ground in Central Cal has sunk over a foot in many areas as the water table goes down forcing water wells to be redrilled at a terrible cost to farmer and consumer. Additionally, the idiot governor can get his tiny brain around desalination of the ocean as a source of water. Israel has offered to assist in the technology as their years of experience has brought adequate water to Israel for years of population growth. He is too busy providing free financial support to the illegal invaders at the southern border. The people of California need to open their eyes and figure this out before they pass the point of no return, I took my family out in 1982 and have never regretted it!
Every last coastal and gulf state should be getting their water from the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and the Gulf of Mexico. In a sane world all of the coastal and gulf states would be net exporters of desalination water to remaining landlocked stated, helping alleviate lakes and rivers being drained for water. Instead, we are where we are today.
Israel has also provided water to Jordan and is willing to do so for Saudi Arabia using its desalinization plants.
California is my home state. I am from the late 50s and left it to the east coast in 96 due to business. The last time true natural resource work was done in CA was when Reagan was Governor. Reagan worked to build the last dams and reservoirs. Reagan also had logging companies working in the forests to clear out the dead trees and areas, have jobs, taxes, and cut down on fires, which helped with saving the snow pack and water from it during the warm times.
I remember reading a story a while back that an area of North Carolina was facing a drought. The Water Company asked people to cut back and they did. The Water Company suddenly found they revenues were down also, so they raised the rates to make up the shortfall. This is the reason that I don’t do what the authorities tell me I have to do. Foookem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Flood_of_1862
“The entire Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys were inundated. An area about 300 miles (480 km) long, averaging 20 miles (32 km) in width,[21] and covering 5,000 to 6,000 square miles (13,000 to 16,000 km2) was under water.[15] The water flooding the Central Valley reached depths up to 30 feet (9.1 m), completely submerging telegraph poles that had just been installed between San Francisco and New York. Transportation, mail, and communications across the state were disrupted for a month.[22] Water covered portions of the valley from December 1861, through the spring, and into the summer of 1862.[15]”
End of 20 year dought–what is CA in now?
The first thing I would do is as many water projects that would recover every drop of water from the seasonal snow-melt.
And where practical, cisterns can be a big help.
California is overpopulated for its available resources. You see it in many aspects from energy to water to traffic and smog. It’s like 5th grade math and science that they are trying to turn into calculus.