There is a well-known book on water made into a four-part PBS TV series: "Cadillac Desert, The American West and Its Disappearing Water," written by the late Marc Reisner.
Prior to his recent death, Reisner visited Pajaro Valley in 1998 and spoke here at a community water meeting. During his talk, in answer to a question mine, Reisner said that he knew of no worse water abuse and resource loss to saltwater intrusion anywhere than was and still is occurring in Pajaro.
Reisner was specifically referring to "Our Inconvenient Truth" — that up to 15,000 acre feet yearly of our groundwater resource is lost to the sea and saltwater intrusion because of overpumping to grow berries. This crop uses around 90 percent of Pajaro's as well as Soquel Creek's water — three times as much yearly as is sustainable — causing a 200 percent overdraft.
This yearly resource loss is twice the city of Watsonville's yearly use, twice Santa Cruz's and Soquel Creek's water needs for the next 50-plus years. It's about 7.5 new Santa Cruz desalination plants, or put another way, a supply that easily could serve a human population of well over 125,000 — in a county that has a population of less than 250,000.
As was pointed out in the first part of my op-ed, there is only one way to stop this hemorrhaging of seawater into our aquifer, and that is to stop all agriculture well pumping in the 8,000 acre coastal area and redistribute that water to other inland areas of the aquifer. Once we've done that, we will then be able to pump sustainably over twice the amount of water as we currently can — that is, 50,000 acre feet per year instead of only 24,000 acre feet per year.
There are two ways to stop agricultural well-pumping at the coast and solve our water dilemma. The first way is to construct a pipeline. Such a facility will bring an average of 13,400 acre-feet of imported water yearly plus other local supplies to the 8,000 acre coastal salt water intruded area. This will allow the feudal current model of our local berry economy to remain uninterrupted at its current state and scale. It will utilize the entire 13,400 acre-feet of newly imported water plus the 26,000 acre-feet of new local sustainable groundwater and more for — guess what — berries.
The second way to stop pumping on this land is to buy it. And here's why we should.
First, a coastal acquisition of this scale — in that case, for purpose of "saving the North Coast" the 7,500 acre Coast Dairies Ranch — has already been successfully achieved. This demonstrates unequivocally that future development constraints on coastal property, preservation of agriculture, and habitat and resource protection are valued highly by us.
| Consider the parallel nature of buying and fallowing this 8,000 acres. It would be, in and of itself, a huge 50,000 acre feet per year conservation and "new water supply project." It would cure the immense current annual saltwater intrusion resource loss. Additionally, these acres serve as home to some of the most threatened world class and ecologically valuable and critical habitats: namely, Elkhorn Slough and Watsonville wetlands systems — as well as, of course, thousands of acres of some of the world's best farmland. |
Let's look at the benefits of this approach. At three acre-feet per year per acre for berries, fallowing 8,000 acres would conserve around 24,000 acre feet per year coincidentally the same amount of water as the current total basin sustainable annual yield. Additionally, acquisition of and cessation of coastal ag well pumping on this land would also produce increased water revenue because the Pajaro basin yield, a water product which is currently sold by the acre foot, would more than double from 24,000 acre feet per year to 50,000 acre feet per year-again, with no further saltwater intrusion resource loss.
What would it cost to buy this land? According to the Bureau of Reclamation Environmental Impact Statement prepared for Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency, the cost for the land would be around $29,000 per acre or $232 million. Additionally figured into costs was around $160 million in lost ag production and 5,000 lost farmworker jobs if this fallowing plan was followed.
This tells us that each farmworker job lost produces only $32,000 of ag revenue for the employer, not enough to pay a local living wage even if the entire amount were dedicated to this purpose. These farmworker positions, therefore, are hardly the greatest job opportunity or circumstance for our community members.
But how could we ever compensate for this ag revenue and job loss if we pursued this course?
Here's how — according to the Local Agency Formation Commission: About 5,000 living wage jobs could easily be created on less than 250 acres in the city of Watsonville, a federal enterprise zone with tax credit job creation incentives. On less than another 250 acres, 5,000 decent and affordable housing units could easily be constructed as well, to provide the housing for the new jobs and households. At four people per household, this represents a retooling of 5,000 farmworker jobs into the kind of new jobs we need here, and helps lift 20,000 of our residents out of abject poverty and into decent housing and steady taxpaying status.
It is true that this could cost us up to 500 acres of ag land urbanized and annexed to Watsonville. However, this also would create a model for our region, which would preserve the balance of the 30,000 acres of ag lands remaining in perpetuity with local, sustainable groundwater, the best kind, available to meet our entire community's needs from Santa Cruz through Pajaro, in a more diversified and robust economy.
Most importantly, this plan would stop the flooding of seawater into our groundwaters, which yearly creates this massive groundwater resource loss of around 15,000 acre-feet of water a year.
What's the value of this annual loss? Well, at the very low end that Santa Cruz anticipates paying for its new desalination plant not including operations and maintenance, that's a rate of around $20 million per 1,000 acre feet of water, or an annual loss of around $300 million — most "inconveniently" almost $70 million more loss annually than the entire cost of buying this land.
Doug Deitch is a local resident and founder of the Monterey Bay Conservancy of Santa Cruz.
