Editorial: Big Ag should be part of water equation
Publisher’s note: This editorial is from the April 4, 2015, Sacramento Bee.
As the rest of California comes to grips with the state’s historic new water mandates, there’s an elephant in the room. And it’s wearing a farmer’s hat.
Gov. Jerry Brown’s order for a 25 percent cut in water consumption homed in hard on towns and cities. From now into an uncertain future, the nice voluntary things many of us have been doing – the drought-tolerant flowerbeds, the slightly shorter showers – are going to have to be just the beginning of a much more water-conscious lifestyle.
Heaven knows, it is long past time for homeowners here to wake up and smell the Dust Bowl. But with groundwater tables shrinking and the Sierra snowpack fading toward zero, with new rules that are going to cramp everyone from cemetery owners to car washers, even those of us who have already taken a hit are rethinking old habits.
So why isn’t more being asked of the constituency that uses 80 percent of the state’s developed water?
What about agriculture?