Water Year 2015 will be historic. Precedential groundwater governance, new water bond regulations, permanent conservation innovation, habitat considerations — and that’s just a partial list. Managing our precious resource is complex, as we all know. Water is not just for drinking, it’s for producing food and maintaining economic growth.
California grows 400+ crops and hosts a multiplicity of industries in an array of geographic micro-climates. Gov. Brown and his father gathered the multiple stakeholders together to craft broad agreements and actions, based on this array of water-use variables. Most recently, the governor, legislators and all of us who participated in crafting the groundwater act and water bond formally recognized the concomitant needs for local decision-making in water resource management supported by integrated regional surface water and groundwater planning. To paraphrase the late House Speaker Tip O’Neill, “All water is local.”To call for restrictive statewide rules, as some are doing, is wrong and ill-timed. State regulators cannot dictate global consumers’ market demands for safe, nutritious, and affordable food. Governing land development is not analogous to restricting what kind of crops are planted. History has proven repeatedly that agricultural land use policy does not at all lend itself to a “one size fits all” solution set. (In fact, Natural Resources Secretary John Laird and California Department of Food & Agriculture Secretary Karen Ross have stated they will work together next year to write the state’s first ag land policy that we hope takes into account markets, local land uses variabilities, micro-climates, water availability, soil types, and other key factors.)
Let’s focus on the groundwork for prudent, locally-driven groundwater management in 2014 and begin Water Year 2015 with a handshake and not pointed fingers.