Jean Sagouspe: Rains only help if water can be delivered to farms

The winter snow and rain hasn't put an end to our water shortages. Indeed, California's water crisis cannot be solved if we permit the legal and regulatory roadblocks to prevent us from moving the water from this year's snowpack south to the cities and farms where it is needed.

This crisis, like many others, is the result of a failure of leadership, a failure to act and surrender to the gridlock assured by a host of environmental laws.

Farmers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley have known for some time that we're facing a looming disaster. But now, because of restrictions to protect the Delta smelt that the federal court has placed on pumping by the Central Valley Project and State Water Project, the effects of the crisis are extending beyond the San Joaquin Valley to have an impact on major urban areas in San Francisco and Southern California.

Some Southern California cities are already informing builders they may not be able to meet water demands created by new construction. And supplies could be cut back even further as a result of an order by the state Fish and Game Commission imposing more restrictions on pumping.

If uninformed people read the news about fishing declines in the Delta, they would get the impression that, prior to these recent legal and regulatory decisions, nothing had been done. Of course, this is not the case.

More than $1 billion has been spent on habitat improvements. Hundreds of millions more have been spent on scientific research. For decades, multiple restrictions have been imposed on pumping, and in the last 10 years, we have seen more than a million acre-feet of water a year relocated from human uses to environmental purposes.

I realize there exists very little sympathy for the effect of water supply shortages on farmers. Maybe that's because we've adapted. Although our costs for water have increased significantly, we've changed our crops to grow commodities that can support the higher cost of water.

In the Westlands Water District, landowners have invested tens of millions of dollars annually on water conservation programs. And the district has fallowed more than 20 percent of the land within its boundaries to reduce water demand.

Chronic water supply shortages, however, affect other groups that are less adaptable, particularly farmworkers. The history of my farming operations is a good example. In 1988, I farmed 8,000 acres and employed up to 150 people. Today, I farm 1,800 acres and employ no more than 35 people.

There is near universal agreement that the degree to which pumping operations affect fisheries' abundance is unknown. In fact, there are numerous other factors that limit smelt abundance, such as diminished food supplies. But nothing has been done to address those factors. Instead, nearly all of the efforts to protect fish in the Delta have been focused on pumping water. It's not working.

Albert Einstein once said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." If previously imposed restrictions on pumping are not benefiting the fish, then the focus needs to shift from finding someone to blame to identifying the actual causes of the problem.

The planning efforts focused on the Delta today are very important to the future of California's water supply. The Bay-Delta Blue Ribbon Task Force has concluded that isolating and building a conveyance system apart from fish habitat offers our best hope of recovering the fisheries, restoring the Delta and securing the water supply California needs. It's time to have a serious conversation about how to fix the problem instead of continuing to point fingers.

About the writer:

• Jean P. Sagouspe is a farmer on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. He is president of Westlands Water District and serves as a director and vice chairman of the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority.