Janie Gatzman: Orchards on the east side are not a new trend

In today’s severe drought, Stanislaus County residents are rightly concerned about responsible water use, especially groundwater. If you drive out Highway 108 east of Oakdale or even Warnerville Road to the south, you’ll see thousands of acres of mostly new orchards and vineyard, many of which rely only on groundwater.

These new plantings might lead you to believe agricultural expansion outside of the irrigation districts is a new trend, but it’s not. Drive out one of the less-traveled roads like Claribel, Keyes, Monte Vista or East Avenue, and you’ll see significant acreage of older and second-generation orchards and vineyards that have never had access to surface water from any irrigation district. For most of my career, I’ve been appraising east side orchards and vineyards older than I am that depend exclusively on groundwater.

How much acreage is out there?

Counts have varied, but using aerial mapping in Google Earth, I mapped developed or irrigated land east of the Oakdale, Modesto and Turlock irrigation districts. From a 1998 map, I counted roughly 48,000 developed or irrigated acres outside of the districts. This represents orchards and vineyards that were planted in the 1980s through the mid-1990s, mostly south of the Tuolumne River. Those acres are still farmed today, without having caused land subsidence, widespread residential well failures or significant impacts to downstream city wells.

By 2014, according to my analysis of the maps, the acreage outside of the districts grew to about 85,000 acres, with much of the new acreage added north of the Tuolumne River, repeating the expansion that occurred in the 1980s and ’90s south of the Tuolumne. For comparison, 263,000 acres are now served by the three irrigation districts east of the San Joaquin River in Stanislaus County.

When the districts provide full water allocations to their farmers, the land east of the San Joaquin River has significantly more acreage recharging the aquifer than drawing from it.

During the drought, can our local aquifers sustain all 85,000 irrigated acres outside of the districts, even when some of the 263,000 in-district acreage must draw from it as well? Are the 85,000 acres sustainable even under normal conditions? I can’t answer those questions, but it’s worth noting that it has sustained more than half that acreage for over a generation.

Almost all of the large orchards and vineyards that have been developed east of the irrigation districts are owned by local farmers and ranchers. Much of the property is converted rangeland held for generations by local families, deep-rooted in our local area and history. These families saw business opportunities in almonds, walnuts and grapes, and converted from rangeland to keep their family operations sustainable for future generations.

Today’s farmers are much more sensitive to how much water they’re using. In the many orchards and vineyards out here, technology allows moisture sensors in the soil to alert growers to how much water is needed, when and where it should be applied. Farmers have been doing more with less water for decades, starting well prior to our current drought.

Both permanent plantings and rangeland are important and have deep roots in our shared history. Permanent plantings, in particular, provide significant benefits for our local economy –increasing property values, property taxes and local employment, and providing increased business for a range of local companies. That’s critical in Stanislaus County, where agribusiness remains an extremely important piece of our local livelihoods.

A thoughtful balance between permanent plantings and rangeland on the east side of our county, where agricultural use of groundwater is sustainable, should be the goal of landowners, residents, elected officials and water managers.

This story was originally published June 25, 2015 at 5:51 PM with the headline "Janie Gatzman: Orchards on the east side are not a new trend."