SACRAMENTO, CA - California’s farmers have agreed to reduce their water consumption by 25 percent, in response to one of the state’s most severe droughts on record.
As we’ve previously reported, Governor Jerry Brown has already imposed a mandatory 25 percent reduction in water usage for urban areas and for water agencies. These cuts had no effect on California’s farmers, however, who have water rights that reach back more than a century. But now, farmers are taking matters into their own hands to possibly preempt even more drastic cuts by the government.
"We're in a drought unprecedented in our time. That's calling upon us to take unprecedented action," Felicia Marcus, Chairwoman of the California Water Resources Control Board, said in her announcement of the agreement.
According to ABC News, the offer potentially could cover hundreds of farmers in the delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, the heart of California's water system. About 25 percent of all California’s river water runs through the delta, reports the state's Department of Water Resources.
This deal is expected to give certainty to farmers who have been threatened by looming cuts in recent months. In exchange to the 25 percent deal, the state gave assurances to the farmers it will not cut the remaining 75 percent of the water to which they are entitled.
With only delta farmers' signed up to the offer so far, the cuts may not be very effective, but the hope, officials say, is that this will spur even more people to sign on. According to ABC News, California’s nearly 4,000 senior water rights holders consume trillions of gallons a year alone.
Michael George, State Water Master for the Delta called the agreement, "an illustration of creative practical approaches that water managers in the state of California are taking to help get us all through this devastating drought.”
"That doesn't necessarily mean they'll all participate" in the voluntary 25% reduction, he continued.
The agreement gives the farmers until June 1 to present plans for how they will make the proposed cuts.
