Especially in the Delta region itself, public opinion has turned sharply against the scheme, which would cost over $15 billion dollars and reshape the area with massive infrastructure construction. “In recent weeks, opponents protested at the state Capitol and submitted volumes of critical comments to state and federal officials on the environmental impact of the plan,” the Sacramento Bee reported. “A wealthy Stockton-area farmer and food processor, Dean Cortopassi, qualified for the November 2016 ballot a measure that could complicate the project, if not stop it altogether.”

On the other hand, according to the Bee, the upheaval “didn’t appear to tilt controversy surrounding the project beyond its traditional bearings. Delta landowners, Northern Californians and many environmentalists have for years opposed a conveyance, while labor unions and building trades groups that stand to benefit from a project support it.”

But over the course of a public comment period on the proposal, Brown’s plan was subjected to withering criticism from a vocal minority of Californians. “By midday Friday, 2,340 unique letters had been submitted, along with 6,665 form letters and 19,047 letters that were the result of online petitions, a spokeswoman with the California Natural Resources Agency said. That’s in addition to about 2,000 unique letters and 10,000 form letters received last year in response to an earlier version of the tunnels plan,” Recordnet reported.

Big blowback

One such comment came from Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., who called the tunnel project a “multi-billion boondoggle,” according to the Appeal Democrat. “If we allow the Delta to be drained by a massive new plumbing system, it will put at risk many Delta jobs and forever change the Delta’s culture and quality of life,” he wrote.

Garamendi’s constituents have largely agreed. “The project to divert some Sacramento River water before it reaches the estuary is controversial, particularly in San Joaquin County and the rest of the Delta,” as Recordnet observed. “Opponents have relentlessly attacked the project from multiple fronts — questioning its economics, warning about its environmental impacts, and predicting hard times ahead for Delta farmers.”

But Brown has stuck to his guns, blasting the negative comments and vowing that the project would make a decisive and urgently needed difference in California’s distribution and consumption of water. “The delta pipeline is essential to […] protecting fish and water quality. Without this fix, San Joaquin farms, Silicon Valley and other vital centers of the California economy will suffer devastating losses in their water supply,” he said in a prepared statement. “Claims to the contrary are false, shameful and do a profound disservice to California’s future.”

Debating democracy

Instead of dissipating the tension, however, Brown’s words have only added to it, helping ensure that the issue will come to a head at the ballot box, when voters weigh in on Cortopassi’s initiative. He and his wife, the Bee noted, “have bankrolled the No Blank Checks Initiative ballot effort, pumping $4 million into the petition drive, consultants and other expenses since March.”

“Under his proposed ballot measure, any revenue bonds for public works involving the state would have to go to a public vote. That would complicate Brown’s planned strategy to pay for the twin tunnels, which rests on water users financing bonds to help fund the $15 billion project.”

As George Skelton suggested at the Los Angeles Times, some skepticism toward the initiative has centered around the potential problems inherent in turning over the fate of all similar large-scale projects to the whims of voters. “But the tunnel project was purposely set up to avoid the electorate. Politicians and their appointees are making all the decisions,” he noted.

Got almonds?

California rice farmers are shifting to growing higher-priced almonds, whose acreage jumped by more than 50 percent last year, to offset the high price of water during the drought. But there will be many unforeseen consequences, especially as rice harvests decline.

Although the data are not in yet, the shift to almonds could be so lucrative it could bring a possible increase in overall farm water usage.

Ironically, for years, environmentalists have criticized rice as using too much water. As recently as May, Guy Saperstein, former president of the Sierra Club Foundation, attacked “water-­intensive crops like rice, which requires the flooding of fields, and cotton. … Shouldn’t water-­hogging crops like cotton and rice be grown in the southeast United States, which has abundant water?”

Other crops are affected. According to Bloomberg, acreage for corn dropped 34 percent from last year, wheat 53 percent and cotton 60 percent.

University of California, Davis farm economist Richard Howitt observed, “California will probably move away from commodity crops (corn and cotton) to high value crops that yield more profit for the water used.”

It’s worth examining some recent statements on water to see what’s actually going on.

Groundwater for cities?  

The Modesto Bee ran an article detailing how the expansion of almond orchards in Stanislaus County would consume enough water for 480,000 people, or enough for the city of Fresno.

That showed how it’s not commonly understood that agricultural groundwater can’t easily be shifted to cities. There isn’t any water infrastructure or wells to put groundwater in eastern Stanislaus County into rivers or canals for statewide municipal use or fish runs.

Higher rates, more conservation?

Then there’s the advocacy, such as by water economist David Zetland, to impose higher farm water rates to cut usage. However, in calculating what crops to grow, farmers don’t use the cost of water alone, but the net crop revenues per acre-foot of water.  That explains why farmers are switching from rice to almonds.

According to accepted economic theory, higher water rates should have increased the amount of water available and water conservation. But state water policy has prevented that from happening. Instead, as the old saying has it, in California water ” runs uphill toward money.”

Zetland calls for water markets similar to oil markets. But that would be difficult to achieve, especially because oil markets are global, but water markets mostly local. And would ratepayers put up with the quadrupling of prices oil has seen the past 15 years?

Groundwater regulation?

Likewise, there is a mad rush by legislators to regulate agricultural groundwater in California for the first time.  But what good would it accomplish if that groundwater can’t be conveyed to other farmers or to cities without, say, $100 billion in new water infrastructure investments?

Agricultural water regulation is putting the cart before the horse. First understood must be how shifting water and crop markets affect groundwater. The Spring Ag Outlook by the California Chapter of the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers found that farm markets are not necessarily being driven by groundwater grabs at everyone else’s expense.

Rather, these markets are being driven by the weakness of the dollar, the nutritional value of nut products, new product lines and uses (almond milk, almond food bars, etc.), limited growing areas worldwide, rising incomes in Asia, and untapped groundwater supplies in remote areas mostly unconnected to California’s water system.

Plants and people

As quoted in Bloomberg, Carolee Krieger of the California Water Impact Network claimed almonds use enough water to supply 75 percent of the state’s population, with much of the crop exported overseas. “Farmers should be profitable, but it can’t come at the expense of urban ratepayers,” she said.

But she overlooked something else that has happened. California once stored three to five years of water for use in droughts. Instead of that, in recent years it has shifted to a system where farmers with “junior water rights” have to fallow their fields and halt their livelihoods, while still paying their debts and other expenses.

In other words, farmers fallow their fields so cities and wildlife refuges and river fish runs can have enough water in a drought.

Water remains California’s most complicated policy area. But it must be understood, not oversimplified, for wise policies to be adopted.