IRVINE, CA - Western Growers has called for industry members to urge the California Senate to take immediate water conservation action before the predicted rains of El Niño hit.
How? By calling the office of Senator Dianne Feinstein to express the need to capture and store as much El Niño storm runoff as possible in the coming months.
“Please, DO NOT wait to call. Western Growers members can turn this situation around if we pick up the phone and call NOW,” the association stated in an email.
As we previously reported, the warming of a certain patch of the central Pacific that changes weather patterns worldwide (associated with flooding in some places, droughts elsewhere, a generally warmer globe, and fewer Atlantic hurricanes) have been linked to bringing wetter-than-normal weather patterns to areas of the U.S. Western Growers is pushing for legislative action to take advantage of those patterns before they arrive to preserve as much water as possible for drought-stricken California.
The association urges the industry to call, and when doing so to follow this protocol:
- Provide your name and city before making your key points.
- Use your own words
- Reinforce that legislation giving flexibility to the water agencies is needed now, before the El Niño rains come and huge amounts of runoff are lost.
- This is an issue that has been negotiated extensively.
- That more hearings/process puts further risk into more runoff loss.
The email encourages those who want to get involved to offer any additional arguments, as well as to remind the Senator’s office that tens of thousands of farmers, and hundreds of thousands of their employees, are desperate for immediate action, and that California has huge amounts of empty reservoir space south of the Delta that "can only be filled by allowing more storm runoff to be pumped from the Delta."
Western Growers also stated that this would not amend the Endangered Species Act or the fish protection rules in the Delta, confirmed by the Obama Administration.
Senator Feinstein’s office can be reached at any of the following numbers/locations:
- Washington, DC: 202-224-3841
- Fresno: 559-485-7430
- Los Angeles: 310-914-7300
- San Francisco: 415-393-0707
- San Diego: 619-231-9712
For more information, contact the Western Growers Association at www.wga.com.
