MAKING DESERTS BLOOM

...To such corporate landholders as Tenneco (53,000 acres), Chevron (50,000 acres), and Getty Oil (41,000 acres), this subsidy results in savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year...

...But against all reason, the boosters still prevail...

...The cost will be staggering...

...in the production of tomatoes, lettuce, plums, carrots, and more than forty other commercial crop and livestock commodities...

...Nor are effective constraints placed on urban consumers...

...Denied the flushing action of the river, San Francisco Bay may become bogged down in pollutants...

...He warned the delegates that their shortsightedness could only lead to trouble: There was water enough to irrigate only 20 per cent of the West, he argued, and no matter how the water was apportioned, the rest of the land was bound to remain dry...

...The result is a bizarre network of aqueducts transporting water from sources hundreds of miles away to the thirsty Central Valley and south...

...Massive importations of water did make California's deserts bloom but in their place created new deserts...

...There is no end of schemes .. . divert the Snake, dam the Yukon Disciples of the long-distance pipeline overlook one critically important fact: Any massive water-delivery system that solves problems at one end of the pipe must necessarily create them at the other...

...Under the circumstances, one might expect that the booing would have stopped at last—that a policy mandating careful use of available water would have been implemented in California...

...Thus, while Los Angeles blooms in lush bougainvillea, the once-fertile Owens Valley on the losing end of the 200-mile Los Angeles Aqueduct has become the desert that Los Angeles once was...

...That there is a last river somewhere, a final dam—or indeed a cheaper and more sensible solution to their problems—has apparently not yet occurred to the state's visionaries...

...Powell's warning has apparently been refuted by these remarkable statistics—but only apparently...

...Each year, agriculture lowers the state's water table by an amount sufficient to supply Los Angeles residents with water for five years...

...On the drawing boards to meet future needs are some truly extraordinary pipe dreams: an aqueduct to Idaho that would divert the Snake River to Los Angeles...

...It produces 45 per cent of the twenty-two principal fresh market vegetables grown in the United States, and 35 per cent of all fruits...

...Geological Survey, traveled to Los Angeles to address a conference on irrigation...

...The California legislature has already approved construction of the new canal...

...The state's broad Central Valley, once as dry and barren as northern Mexico, is the most prolific farmland in the United States...

...During 1976 and 1977, when California suffered its worst drought of the century, most urban areas in the northern half of the state cut their water consumption by 25 to 30 per cent— 53 per cent in Marin County...

...Figures from the southern desert from the same period reveal consumers unwilling to face the reality of the drought and of their almost total dependence on imported water: Los Angeles cut back 13 per cent, Riverside 12 per cent, San Diego 7 per cent...

...With no incentive to conserve, farmers expand onto ever more marginal lands...

...a high dam on the Yukon to reverse the flow of arctic rivers and send them rushing south to California...

...MAKING DESERTS BLOOM When Californium need more water, they take it from their neighbors Robert Leonard Reid In 1893 Major John Wesley Powell, pioneer explorer of the Colorado River and director of the U.S...

...The boosters prevailed and southern California, once almost a desert, has become the home of fourteen million people...

...Last year, when the state legislature threatened to impose such controls, corporate farmers screamed "Government intervention...

...Powell was soundly booed for his advice...

...Robert Goldstrom Laissez-faire state and local policies encourage profligate use of water in the regions of the state that need it most...

...customers pay a flat rate no matter how much water they use...

...In the grand tradition of the western robber baron, the state's water planners operate on the assumption that however intractable their problems may become, they can always tap someone else's water supply...

...The irony lies in the fact that the same amount of water that the canal will deliver to California's arid southland could be obtained through a far less costly program of waste water reclamation and minimal conservation...

...Pumping a year's supply of water across the state, 2,000 feet up over the Tehachapi Mountains and down into the arid south, requires the net energy of a barrel of oil for each one of the millions of residents who will use the water...

...They channel 82 per cent of their irrigation water through open ditches, an irrigation method that is vastly cheaper than sprinklers or drip irrigation—and far more wasteful of water...

...The votes are in southern California, which is being subjected to heavy pro-canal publicity from real estate, agriculture, and other development interests...

...Reaching farther north, Los Angeles diverts water from the tributary streams of Mono Lake, which until a few years ago was the nesting ground for one-fourth of the California gull population...

...an air pollution crisis now endangers plants, animals, and humans in the vicinity...

...As much as half of the water made available to Central Valley farmers from the state's system of reservoirs and aqueducts is sold to them at bargain rates—as low as one-sixth the price charged to other contracting agencies...

...and saw to it that the proposals were defeated...

...Confident of the outcome...

...If California water policies appear contradictory, even suicidal, there is a simple explanation...

...The energy consumed by the system is enormous...

...Each time the well appears about to run dry, the state legislature embraces a grandiose and monstrously expensive deus ex ma-china—a dam, a canal, a shiny new pipeline to send out toward the horizon...

...No one knows exactly what effects a dramatic reduction in the river's volume will have, but serious environmental damage is widely forecast...

...The state's water planners must now look farther and farther afield for supplies to meet anticipated future needs...

...To further discourage conservation, the state imposes no controls on groundwater use...

...Estimates vary widely, but everyone agrees that the price tag on the canal and attendant reservoirs will be several billion dollars...

...robbed of the greater part of its water, the new Delta will bear little resemblance to the old...

...fields fed by ditches require five times as much water as fields watered by sprinkler and 100 times as much water as drip-irrigated fields...

...Many cities achieved even smaller reductions...

...Southern Californians continue to indulge in the regional custom of hosing down their driveways on Saturday afternoon...

...The Peripheral Canal is the latest magic fix proposed for California's troubled water system...

...A dramatic drop in the level of the lake has exposed 10,000 acres of lake-bottom sediment soaked with alkali chemicals...

...Equally in jeopardy will be the quality of life of the Delta's quarter-million residents...

...a gigantic funnel in the Pacific near Portland to capture the emerging Columbia River...

...Many California cities do not meter water...

...Canal opponents have gathered enough signatures to place a repeal initiative on a forthcoming ballot, probably in November 1981...

...Farmers are free to suck underground reservoirs dry—and they are doing just that...

...A land bridge to the lake's principal breeding island has emerged as the water level has dropped, giving coyotes and other predators access to the island...

...Today, California leads the nation Robert Leonard Reid is an environmental writer living in Palo Alto, California...

...Upriver, increased salinity will threaten fish and waterfowl populations and Delta agricultural lands...

...Such a cutback would easily be achieved if farmers would make a beginning toward adopting less-wasteful irrigation methods and scientific management of irrigation schedules, and if urban dwellers would place bricks in the water tanks of their toilets—and flush less...

...To his dismay, he found a convocation of boosters singing the praises of unrestrained growth and development...

...Complex social and ecological systems that have evolved along with their water supplies must inevitably suffer degradation if substantial portions of those water supplies are cut off...

...Currently the Delta offers superb boating and fishing opportunities along 700 miles of meandering waterways...

...The National Audubon Society reports a 77 per cent decline in the number of California gulls nesting at the lake...

...Powell, perhaps the first to recognize the limitations that scarce water imposed on development of the American West, put aside his prepared speech...

...California has no hydrologic counterpart to Proposition 13 to guarantee frugal spending of water...

...Normally the Sacramento passes through a marshy region of islands and levees called the Sacramento Delta before emptying into San Francisco Bay and the Pacific...

...Defeating the canal, however, won't be an easy task...

...If it is constructed, the canal will divert up to four-fifths of the total Sacramento River flow to southern California...