California farmers begin selling water instead of crops as drought reaches critical stage
by: Sandy J. Duncan
NaturalNews.com
Sunday, March 29, 2015
California farmers are making more money selling water than planting their fields in some cases. The rice industry in the Sacramento Valley has really been struggling with this year’s drought. Some farmers are choosing not to plant this year and are cashing in on their water rights instead. This controversial move on the part of the farmers is not a cut and “dry” deal. “In the long term, if we don’t make it available we’re afraid they’ll just take it,” said Charlie Mathews, a fourth-generation rice farmer with senior rights to Yuba River water. [Photo Credit: Orchards in the San Joaquin Valley (Lindsey Hoshaw/KQED]
Matthews and other local farmers “have agreed to sell 20 percent of their allotment to Los Angeles’s Metropolitan Water District as it desperately searches to add to its dwindling supply,” reported CBS San Francisco.
This kind of arrangement is gaining in popularity especially as water prices continue to climb, making the water more valuable than the returns from crops.
Legal Challenge
“California has neglected its groundwater,” said Barbara Vlamis, director of the non-profit AquAlliance. Her group is suing to stop the water transfer because of the mounting groundwater concerns. “You’re putting an added stress on the groundwater basin,” Vlamis said. “In the last year alone, there have been wells in Glenn County that have dropped 32 feet. Nineteen feet in Butte County.”
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