At a town hall meeting in Fresno, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar outlined several steps intended to ease the impact of the state’s water drought on farmers including highlighting Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes as a key figure in water policy, the Associated Press reported Monday.
Salazar said he wanted to direct $160 million in Recovery Act funds to the federal Central Valley Project, the agency that manages California’s dams and canals.
Three years of below-average rainfall has taken a toll on Central Valley farmers who must also contend with environmental policies restricting water deliveries from lakes Shasta and Oroville via the state’s system of aqueducts. In order to protect threatened fish species, such as salmon and smelt, the federal government has limited farmers to 10 percent of their allocation this year, a move that has forced them to fallow hundreds of thousands of acres.
According to researchers at the University of California, Davis, as of May, water shortages in the San Joaquin Valley have cost roughly 35,000 jobs and $830 million in revenue. Farmers have appealed to Salazar to loosen the water restrictions, but he has stood firm thus far.
On the other side of the issue are environmental groups, fishermen and coastal communities impacted by the decline of salmon in the delta, which has resulted in the cancellation of the commercial fishing season for the past two years.
A representative of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Association said the shutdown of fisheries has cost the economy $1.4 billion and 23,000 jobs.
According to the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, farm employment rates have actually increased during the last three drought years. The CSPA also pointed to statements by Department of Water Resources Director Lester Snow, who testified to Congress that a removal of the court order protecting fish would only result in a 5 percent increase in water to the Central Valley.
