More than 1,000 people live in the valley, many in the rural communities of New Cuyama, Cuyama and Ventucopa. In all, the study found, nearly two-thirds of valley cropland, including carrots, potatoes, grapes, onions, garlic, lettuce, olives, peaches, pistachios and alfalfa, would go out of production, and gross annual revenues would plummet from $121 million to $45 million by 2040.īut without massive pumping reductions, Williams said, residential wells will go dry. According to an economic study for the agency, it would idle 5,000 out of 6,300 acres currently in carrot production, slashing gross annual revenues from $69 million to $14 million by 2040. Williams concedes that a two-thirds cutback in agricultural pumping in the Cuyama Valley would be “catastrophic” for some growers. The deadline for bringing the basin back into balance is 2040. The first cut – 5% – is set to go into effect in 2023, followed by a similar cut every year until 2038. 31 deadline for basins in “critical overdraft.” ![]() The board recently submitted its pumping reduction plan to the state, meeting a Jan. “It was clear the future was borrowed against, and now there are consequences,” said county Supervisor Das Williams, who represents the valley and serves on the 11-member board of the Cuyama Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency. The world’s two largest carrot producers – Grimmway Farms and Bolthouse Farms of Bakersfield, Calif. Now, to the rescue – belatedly – comes the state Groundwater Sustainability Act of 2014, which aims to halt “significant and unreasonable reduction of groundwater storage.”Īccording to a story in online publishing outlet Edhat, to comply, growers in the central Cuyama Valley may be required to cut their pumping by as much as two-thirds over the next 20 years. Heavy irrigation on carrots, a water-intensive crop in the high desert of the Cuyama Valley, has contributed to the dramatic decline of the underlying groundwater basin (Photo: Santa Barbara Water Agency) Water quality in the valley is poor.Ĭounty, state and federal agencies have been documenting the de-watering of this basin since the 1950s, even as the Cuyama River marshlands turned into desert, the cottonwoods died and an entire oak woodland vanished. ![]() Some of the water being sprayed on crops is 33,000 years old. In the heavily farmed central portion of the Cuyama Valley, studies show, the water table is dropping as much as eight feet per year, the ground surface is sinking and well water is 1,000 feet deep in places. That’s three times the sustainable yield of the basin, or the amount of water that reliably flows in from rain and runoff. Most years, farmers pump 60,000 acre-feet of water out of the valley’s giant groundwater basin – enough water, in theory, to supply six cities the size of Santa Barbara. Yet for the past 75 years, this high desert region has been a mecca for water-intensive farming on an industrial scale – first, alfalfa, and now, carrots, a $69 million annual crop. ![]() The Cuyama Valley in California is the driest agricultural region in the county the valley floor gets just a little more rain than the Sahara.
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