SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Farmers in California's Central Valley are in for another brutal summer of drought.
The federal government announced initial 2022 water allocations Wednesday for customers of the Central Valley Project, and the figures were dismal: Most irrigation districts in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys can expect to receive no deliveries from the project's vast network of reservoirs and canals.
Despite some snowfall this week, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which runs the project, said weeks of dry weather wiped out many of the gains recorded during the rainy and snowy December. In just the first two weeks of February, major reservoirs such as Shasta, Folsom and Oroville lost an estimated 1.2 million acre-feet of inflow. An acre-foot is 326,000 gallons.
"Losing over a million acre-feet of projected inflow in two weeks' time is concerning," said Ernest Conant, the bureau's regional director.
Although the allocations could change this spring, continued dry weather makes it unlikely that the thousands of farmers who rely on the Central Valley Project will get meaningful supplies. Last year most farmers received a 0% allocation as well.
The project normally provides water for about 3 million acres of farmland.
A small number of cities also receive water from the federal project. Most were given an initial allocation that's just enough to provide "public health and safety needs." Cities that tap into Folsom Lake, including many communities in the Sacramento area, were given a 25% allocation.
Reclamation's stark projections were in contrast to the State Water Project, which announced a 15% allocation to its customers in January. The state project has more of an urban base; its largest customer is the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which serves 19 million residents.
The vagaries of California weather have hit the federal project harder. Conant said the December storms contributed relatively little precipitation in the upper Sacramento Valley, which feeds Shasta Lake — the largest reservoir in the federal system. As of Wednesday water levels at Shasta were just 53% of historical average.
That doesn't mean farmers will go completely without water. Some irrigation districts will receive deliveries because of historical water rights dating to the origins of the federal project in the 1930s.
Meanwhile, many farmers have access to groundwater supplies, and they will likely run their pumps even as irrigation districts begin planning for long-term cutbacks in groundwater usage in accordance with state law.
Nonetheless, the year is likely to be difficult, and widespread fallowing of row crops is likely. Last year, farmers in the Sacramento Valley idled enough land to cut the rice crop by 20%. In the San Joaquin Valley, some farmers ripped out almond orchards — sacrificing investments worth tens of thousands of dollars — for lack of water.
