On November 14, a historic email arrived in the inboxes of hundreds of California farmers whose land was part of the West lands Water District, one of the most contentious and largest agricultural irrigation agencies in the country.
West lands have led the fight against environmental regulations that limit farmers' access to water from California's rivers for decades. It sued the public authority, campaigned amicable lawmakers, and took on pundits any place it tracked down them, even in Congress. " Where's the shock, that administration choices have made zero water supplies for networks in the San Joaquin Valley"? In 2016, the General Manager of West lands, Tom Birmingham, cautioned a congressional committee.
According to Tim Quinn, a former executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies, members of the governing board of West lands and Birmingham "were pretty entrenched in adversarial decision-making". We were going to prevail over them, and they were going to lose.
However, that November email revealed an unprecedented shift in West lands' power structure. Candidates from the organization's self-described Change Coalition had won all four open seats in an election for the nine-member board. The triumphant applicants are approaching the region to invest less energy taking on lawful and political conflicts and additional time sorting out lifestyle choices with less water. It added up to a renouncement of Birmingham, an imperious figure who has run West lands for over 20 years. Birmingham later declared he'll resign toward the year's end.
The vote shows that people's attitudes are changing, even in the most conservative parts of the Central Valley in California, which is where the most fresh produce comes from. In order to withstand persistent drought, depleted aquifers, and climate change, farmers are coming to terms with the fact that their operations will need to alter and, in many cases, shrink
A Legacy Of Political Power
She was born into a farming family just outside the West lands Water District's boundaries, and she later married into another family, the Woolf, who own one of the largest farms in the district. While working for a California congressman, she developed her expertise in water policy and established her own consulting firm, Water Wise.
More than any other individual, she catalyzed the development of change at West lands. On the western edge of the San Joaquin Valley, farmers needed water to grow food, but there aren't any big rivers. Instead, growers used deep wells that were drilled into aquifers.
In order to distribute that water over 600,000 acres of land, the West lands Water District was established. Mark A R-A X, a writer who has written about the rise of agriculture in the Central Valley, describes it as an act of "pure political power." According to Woolf, "We had a fair amount of clout, legislatively." We were a very wealthy area. We had landowners who were politically active.
However, West lands reached its limits in 1992. When the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a vast network of waterways that empties into the San Francisco Bay, threatened the survival of wildlife like fish, the law restricted water deliveries to farmers. During drought years, the act and rulings from the U S Occasionally, the growers received no water at all
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