What’s orange, green, and hairy all over with a penchant for gulping up water and a sweet crunch that’s satisfyingly healthy? Anyone?
Carrots.
They like at least an inch of water per week during the growing season and will get misshapen or develop a bitter taste if the soil gets too dry, according to San Diego State University’s extension program. Yuck! Who wants a bitter carrot?
Not this little bird.
And where do we grow this thirsty little vegetable? In one of the hottest, driest spots in the county: Cuyama. Which is why it makes sense that the Cuyama Valley Groundwater Basin is one of the most overdrafted water basins in the state. The basin is in trouble. Not just because of carrots, of course. The legacy of farming in places that we probably shouldn’t goes back a hundred or more years.
But what matters more at this point is how the next hundred years go. So, everyone in the basin is cutting back their water pumping, right? Kind of. For now, all of the cutbacks are focused in the area of the basin that is experiencing the largest drawdown of water: the central basin. But carrot growers aren’t too happy about all of that.
Maybe they feel picked on?
Grimmway Farms—“the world’s largest producer of carrots,” according to the company’s website—and Bolthouse Farms—which produces “carrots, smoothies, juices, and dressings to be reckoned with” and believes “making one better choice each day is something we can all do”—joined forces to file a lawsuit against “all persons claiming a right to extract or store groundwater in the Cuyama Valley Groundwater Basin.” Having representatives who chair and serve on both the Cuyama Basin Water District and the Cuyama Valley Groundwater Sustainability District, which is in charge of putting together a sustainability plan for the basin, isn’t enough!
The power they hold over the valley just isn’t enough. What the companies seem to want is a prescriptive right to the water under their fields that is undeniable.
And 1st District Santa Barbara County Supervisor Das Williams, whose district includes Cuyama, is not very happy.
“It’s disturbing, because they voted for the plan, and now they think they can get a better deal, after we’ve all worked for over five years on a plan … a plan that means all of us will need to sacrifice. They are now suing to get more water. It’s very disappointing,” Williams, who also serves on the GSA, told the Sun.
They want a court to decide what their water rights are and what everyone else’s water rights are, too. They would like to continue to use the overhead sprinklers that rain on their carrots during 100 degree days, until a court tells them otherwise, apparently.
Bolthouse recently called the sustainability plan “hydrologically and legally inappropriate.”
“Pumping reductions are necessary to align pumping with the sustainable/safe yields of the basin,” Bolthouse correctly stated in a letter to the groundwater sustainability agency. But “the cost of projects and actions to protect the entire basin is borne primarily by parties in one area of the basin and not shared by all water users in the basin.”
Meaning, corporations are bearing the brunt of pumping reductions. And screaming: “No fair!”
Fair is fair is fair, maybe? Send comments to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jun 2-9, 2022.