NEWS OUTLETS IGNORE FACTS: GOVERNMENT MADE CENTRAL VALLEY’S FARMERS AND COMMUNITIES INTO VICTIMS

California Water Alliance MEDIA ALERT
Friday, October 12, 2018

Media Contact
Robert Dolezal
[email protected]
(510) 599-5189

 

(October 12, 2018—Hanford, California) Several major California media outlets that for months have famously defended other classes of victims from their harassers are now blaming Central Valley farmers and rural communities for water problems created by California’s and the federal government’s policies and by natural climate conditions.

When it comes to farming, placing blame on victims still is a popular pastime for editors and reporters says the California Water Alliance (CalWA), a statewide water-policy non-profit entity.

Editorial writers too often mislead Californians by saying that hard-working food producers and rural communities intentionally damaged their region’s environment and are looking for taxpayer bailouts, CalWA says.

“What they say misrepresents well-known facts clearly showing who is responsible for today’s problems,” said William Bourdeau, CalWA’s chairman.

The federal and state governments restricted surface water deliveries to the Central Valley and its cities for nearly 30 years, creating vast areas suffering from land subsidence, a widely recognized problem popularly known as California’s most easily preventable environmental disaster, CalWA said.

“All that’s necessary to fix land subsidence in the Central Valley and other areas of the state is to provide more surface water so pumping groundwater isn’t as necessary,” Bourdeau said.

In just the past two years, 188,263 trillion gallons of California’s developed water supply ended up in the Pacific Ocean, wasting water that could have served every California resident’s needs for more than 20 years. Government policies lost to the ocean over 82 percent of our state’s water flowing into the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers since October 2016.

Despite such public-policy mistakes, since 1990 industrious food producers doubled their bounty to the state and nation, providing over 400 different food and fiber commodities. They also saved 1.6 trillion gallons of water per year — more than all the water California residents use annually — and cultivated 6.3 million less acres.

“When the drought came in 2012–2017, the government cut off farmers’ water deliveries so they drilled expensive wells and fallowed nearly a million acres more of their productive land,” Bourdeau explained.

Now, there are those who would seek to blame the farmers for governmental and natural problems beyond the Central Valley’s communities and farmers control, CalWa concluded.

In effect, they are blaming the victims, not nature or those who are responsible for causing California’s water woes.

 

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References:

“Proposition 3 is the wrong water bond for California. Vote No”

“Proposition 3: Smart water plan or costly gift to farmers?”

“Prop. 3 promises more California water projects. Too bad so many are the wrong projects”

 

About the California Water Alliance

The California Water Alliance is a non-profit statewide water policy, education and advocacy group that promotes achieving a safe, reliable and adequate water supply for all Californians and seeks long-term solutions to the continuing water emergencies and droughts afflicting California. Get involved. Visit www.CaliforniaWaterAlliance.org