Jack McBride: Forbid new orchards and stop flood irrigation
California’s water shortage didn’t begin this year, and it won’t be alleviated by one more good thunder storm or more dams to store rainwater that’s never coming back. Still, we live in a wonderland, where “Water, Wealth, Contentment, Health” is still the mantra of our elected officials and all the farmers who own and operate them.
Today, I drove past two freshly planted almond orchards on Ladd/Patterson Road and another on Claribel just east of Oakdale Road: all flood-irrigated sites. And I am sure there are dozens more orchards going in all over our county that have the same expectation of unlimited water.
The farmers think it’s 1985! So what do they know that we don’t? They realize the county supervisors and the MID board will fill the canals with groundwater until it all runs out and this becomes the Great Central Desert.
New orchards should be forbidden in our county, and flood-irrigation should be stopped. Farmers who rely on flood irrigation should be limited to annual crops only when rain and mountain snow run-off is enough to sustain them. No local groundwater should be pumped into the canals to support this wasteful water usage.
Jack McBride, Modesto
This story was originally published April 6, 2015 at 5:53 PM with the headline "Jack McBride: Forbid new orchards and stop flood irrigation."