Irrigation

The House approved a bill Wednesday that rewrites two decades of water law in California, wiping out environmental protections and dropping reforms of federal irrigation policy that have long irritated agribusiness in the Central Valley. The legislation passed on a mostly party line vote of 246-175 in the Republican-controlled House. But its prospects of becoming law are poor. The White House has issued a veto threat, and it is unlikely to survive the Democratic-controlled Senate, where both of California's senators have vowed to work against it. "It essentially says farmers will get theirs and nothing for anybody else," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)

The House approved a bill Wednesday that rewrites two decades of water law in California, wiping out environmental protections and dropping reforms of federal irrigation policy that have long irritated agribusiness in the Central Valley. The legislation passed on a mostly party line vote of 246-175 in the Republican-controlled House. But its prospects of becoming law are poor. The White House has issued a veto threat, and it is unlikely to survive the Democratic-controlled Senate, where both of California's senators have vowed to work against it. "It essentially says farmers will get theirs and nothing for anybody else," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)

Inventor Jim Pohlman worked in the water supply industry for four decades, drilling wells, building fountains and installing irrigation pumps. He saw water being misused continually, often running off hardscapes and into storm drains. It made him wonder: How can we reduce the waste? One source for potential savings was in plain sight: the condensation from outdoor air-conditioning units. The water vapor produced by residential and commercial air conditioners may not be potable, but it is mineral-free, making it ideal for drip irrigation.

It's raining. It's pouring. Or at least it was at 4 in the morning a couple of Saturdays ago. And though no old men were snoring in my vicinity, some sprinklers were watering lawns, rain or no rain. It was waste in its purest form because during and after a downpour the water runs right off the saturated soil into the street. Turning curbs into waterfalls is a side effect of technology that lets us run sprinklers on timers that we set and forget. In theory, they allow watering at optimal but inconvenient times, such as early morning, when cooler air minimizes evaporation.

Global warming from carbon dioxide emissions may not be to blame for rising nighttime temperatures in the San Joaquin Valley over the last 70 years, according to a study funded by the National Science Foundation. John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, says rising valley temperatures may be caused by an overabundance of irrigated land increasing humidity in the air.

Questioning decades of practice and potentially opening new water supplies for cities and wildlife, federal officials are debating whether controversial Central Valley irrigation contracts require environmental impact statements. Federal officials say the Environmental Protection Agency and Bureau of Reclamation are about to approve temporary extensions of federal contracts scheduled to expire this year.

The California Transportation Commission allocated $1.2 million Thursday to improve the irrigation system along a 4.5-mile stretch of the Ventura Freeway in Ventura. The manually operated irrigation system will be upgraded and automated in 95 acres of landscaped property along the freeway from just south of Telephone Road to California Street. Automating the irrigation system will reduce safety hazards for maintenance workers and help conserve water, Caltrans spokesman Steve Galluzzo said.

With seven months left before the state's landscape irrigation law takes effect, city officials are asking for input from landscapers and gardeners on drafting a local ordinance. The city has until Jan. 1 to adopt its own landscape irrigation regulations, otherwise the state statute will take precedence. City officials are asking landscape architects, contractors and maintenance firms to review the city ordinance being developed and to contact city staff with suggestions.

Jumping from tree to tree and from hilltop to hilltop, a devastating fire fanned by Santa Ana winds scorched more than half of the 575 acres in Elysian Park 3 1/2 years ago. The results of that fire can still be seen in the blackened trunks of palm trees and the skeletal remains of some pines. More important, however, may be another, albeit invisible, legacy of the blaze: a continuing debate over how much of the northeast Los Angeles park should be irrigated to prevent another big fire.

Unlike most other cities in the United States, Palm Springs has actually become cooler during the last 15 years, researchers said last week. Climatologist Robert Balling of Arizona State University at Tempe said that the average daily temperature in Palm Springs, relative to the surrounding desert, has actually dropped 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit since the mid-1970s.

When archeologist John Foster started peeling the asphalt from a parking lot in downtown Ventura, he knew he wouldn't have to dig deep to find a cache of long-buried relics. He just didn't realize how many he'd find and from how many different eras. "It was layer upon layer," he said this week as he surveyed the emerging foundations of a long-buried, 3-foot-thick mission wall, a span of 200-year-old terra cotta floor tiles laid by Chumash laborers, and a channel fashioned from inverted roof tiles that irrigated a long-dead garden.

A group of San Joaquin Valley irrigation districts is demanding that the federal government close the just-revived commercial salmon season off the Oregon and California coasts, a move bound to further inflame relations between farmers and salmon fishermen. In a U.S. District Court lawsuit filed Thursday, the San Joaquin River Group Authority contends that federal fishery managers acted improperly when they recently reopened the commercial salmon season after two years of unprecedented closures.

Lake Okeechobee's declining water level once again threatens to generate water-supply ripple effects throughout south Florida, leaving less water for thirsty crops and lawns as well as an ecosystem trying to rebound from years of abuse. The big lake is south Florida's backup water supply, relied on to replenish drinking water for some communities and tapped for irrigation by sugar cane growers and other farmers. During droughts, the lake also is a barometer for water conditions across the region.

California should more aggressively enforce the state's ban on wasteful water use and crack down on inefficient irrigation practices, a state watermaster recommends. In a report that will be presented next week to the State Water Resources Control Board, Delta Watermaster Craig Wilson wades into a potentially explosive area of water law: the "reasonable use" doctrine in the state Constitution. The principle, reinforced in statute and court decisions, holds that a water right does not include the right to waste water and mandates that "the water resources of the state be put to beneficial use. " Although it's a cornerstone of California law, the clause has been enforced mostly on a case-by-case basis, usually when one person claims another's water use is unreasonable.

The problem: African hunger. In a nutshell, 250 million Africans are undernourished, a quarter of the population and an increase of 100 million in the last 20 years. Yet 70% of Africans are farmers growing food. The hope: Within one generation, Africa will grow enough to feed itself. But how? According to Calestous Juma, a Harvard professor and Kenyan development scientist, Africa can turn its fortunes around by improving roads and transportation, training an army of engineers and using irrigation, solar energy and more technology.

Ghulam Qadir was getting ready for sleep one night early last month when a loud thud startled him. Within minutes, torrents of water were rushing through his village's dirt lanes and brick huts. Qadir and 200 other people in the village of Ghauspur grabbed shovels and raced to the nearest dike, where, he said, an explosion had carved out a 20-foot-wide breach in the 15-foot-high earthen wall, allowing floodwater to speed toward their homes and farmland. At the breach, armed guards working for a wealthy landowner in another village pointed Kalashnikov rifles at the villagers and ordered them to halt.

Farmers should pay the full cost of irrigation water used to grow surplus crops, congressmen, conservation groups and consumer advocates argued Tuesday, as representatives of large Western farming interests expressed fears that such a requirement could put them out of business.

The city of Burbank plans to spend $27 million on developing an irrigation system for city parks and city-owned DeBell Golf Course using reclaimed waste water. The city has been developing the plan over the past year, but the funding had been on hold until last week when Burbank sold $27.1 million in bonds through the Goldman Sachs investment firm.

A federal appeals court panel has ruled that wild steelhead remain an endangered species and rebuffed Central Valley irrigators' efforts to relax federal government protections on the Pacific salmon. Six irrigation districts had challenged the National Marine Fisheries Service decision to list the oceangoing steelhead separately from more plentiful freshwater rainbow trout on the grounds that the two fish interbreed and the steelhead were therefore protected from extinction. Both types of Pacific salmon are born in fresh water, but steelhead migrate to the ocean whereas rainbow trout remain in rivers and lakes.

When the Canadian government's international assistance agency looked into rebuilding a massive irrigation dam here in early 2007, the initial prospects weren't encouraging. The site appraisal team couldn't even get to the dam, 20 miles north of Kandahar in the Arghandab River Valley. A report by the Canadian International Development Agency called security "very fragile" and warned that the "environment will pose a significant challenge." It is even more treacherous now to tread in Arghandab district, the site of major Taliban infiltration routes into Kandahar and the most deadly area of Afghanistan for roadside bombs.