LETTER: California, agriculture and the Colorado River
One can understand California’s hesitancy in offering voluntary cuts in its Colorado River allotments when, contractually, the water is theirs. It built the Imperial Valley — America’s winter salad bowl. So which farms do you close so that upstream states can continue watering their golf courses?
On the other hand, California also knows that if voluntary cuts aren’t made all along the river, eventually Lake Mead will reach dead pool. At which point, California will get nothing at all. That will then leave us upper states all the water we want. So California must do something in the way of cuts.
Because 80 percent of the water goes to agriculture, the elephant in the room is watering animal food rather than people food. Granted, some alfalfa goes to dairy cattle for our milk supply. But the nation’s milk producers already receive large state and federal subsidies. California knows where it needs to cut.
