Open Letter to Mr. Adam Hill and the SLO County Board of Supervisors
by Rouvaishyana
I was gratified to see your Viewpoint in the SLO Tribune (Tuesday, June 25) on the subject of protecting water resources, and agree that this is the the kind of issue that must be addressed by local government action. Without this, the issue may be settled by physical water limits or by government action at a higher level, most likely at the regional or statewide level.
Much has been written about water use by the burgeoning wine industry and vineyards, and about the growing trend of rural homeowners having to deepen their wells, drill new ones, or bring in water by truck. The latter are expensive solutions for those with limited resources (except for those homeowners who are independently wealthy), and/or should not be seen as sustainable.
The problems with the Paso Robles groundwater basin are part of a larger California issue, and of course a wider Western US issue, but I will limit my comments to this county and adjacent areas in Central California.
One proposal to provide new water sources in the Paso Robles area has been to connect a pipeline to the Nacimiento Lake watershed and draw water from there. In a similar fashion, residents in Nipomo are taking steps to build a pipeline from Santa Maria and draw water from that area. Agribusiness in the Central Valley has had to resort to deepening wells and of course to the state's complex water projects, which move water from moist regions to more arid ones. In the Central Valley, many wells have gone from 500 feet deep to 1000 feet, 1500 feet, and perhaps even deeper. Serious problems have resulted from this practice, including soil subsidence, and bringing up water that is more acidic, more saline, or both. Neither of these are good for crops, and sometimes the long-term effect of using water from these very deep wells can be poisoning of the soil, so that the land becomes less valuable for agriculture. We should consider these effects and do everything we can to prevent them in our own county.
I would like to introduce two terms to this discussion, namely "carrying capacity" and "limiting factors." These terms come from ecology, the study of the interactions between living organisms and between organisms and their habitat or environment. If someone has previously used these terms in this discussion, my apologies. I think they are apt.
"Carrying capacity" refers to the maximum population of plants or animals that a given habitat can support. "Limiting factors" refer to such things as available space, soil productivity, and as in this discussion, the amount of water available, which determine how many life forms can exist in that habitat and which prevent increases in population without increasing those resources.
None of us knows what the carrying capacity of SLO County is in terms of vineyards, urban or rural residents, or total human population. However, we must acknowledge that such a limit does exist, and we seem to have reached — or exceeded — the carrying capacity of the Paso Robles groundwater basin, as evidenced by the impact upon thousands (as stated in your Viewpoint) of rural residents in that basin. Water resources are, and have always been, a limiting factor on how many people can live in a given area, and indeed in some cases a lack or change in these resources has caused human populations to move elsewhere or go extinct, as far as we can tell through archaeological records. We are using a finite resource in this county as if it has no physical limits — but it does.
Clearly, we cannot expect private market forces to place limits on this. At present, there are about 32,000 acres planted in vineyards in the Paso Robles region, with another 3,000-8,000 acres set to be planted in the coming year. This is an increase of just under 10% to 25% in one year alone! Pure market thinking is that if a certain amount of economic growth is desirable, more would be better. From a purely economic point of view, this is probably true. However, we have run up against a limiting factor which determines how many water users there can be in this particular area.
As Mr. Hill has pointed out, it is not fair for the vineyard operators to get the majority of the economic benefits, while individual homeowners bear the majority of the financial burden. He has correctly stated that solutions will be complex, for reasons of law, jurisdiction, and hydrology — and also of politics and ecology. Some people will view water controls as government infringement that could stifle business. But we must work toward solutions to these problems together. Otherwise, we may be headed toward either the impoverishment of our soils or a future "Dust Bowl," expensive solutions such as pipelines and massive water projects, or the disenfranchisement of individual homeowners who cannot keep paying for ever-deeper wells which begin to poison their surroundings. There is potentially a lot more at stake here than whether vineyards and business can continue to grow in our county.
None of these outcomes would be desirable. Ecology tells us that unless we pay attention to this most critical of limiting factors and take timely action, we will eventually run up against the carrying capacity of the Paso Robles groundwater basin and perhaps of our entire county. How long this may take is not known at this time, but the warning signs are already clearly evident. Nor can I offer any ready solutions, but I am willing to take part in discussions that have solutions as a goal.
Belted Kingfisher Image on Banner by Cleve Nash |
