Corporate agribusiness and fossil fuel drilling is taking a huge toll on the state’s beleaguered water supplies during a deepening cycle of long-term drought, punctuated by brief periods of extreme rainfall and flooding, according to a new report from the national advocacy group Food & Water Watch – “Big Ag, Big Oil, and the California Water Crisis.”
Corporate agribusiness has steadily increased water-thirsty almond acreage, while Big Oil has expanded oil drilling in a state the media and the state's politicians have claimed is “green” and “progressive.”
”During persistent drought conditions, the state has continued to allow the expansion of water-thirsty corporations,” according to a report summary.
The oil and gas industry alone in California spent over $34.2 million in lobbying expenses in the 2021-22 Legislative Session, resulting in the approval of many new and reworked oil and gas well permits by CalGEM, the state oil and gas regulator. Since 2019, CalGEM has approved an astounding 13,725 total permits for oil and gas drilling in California, according to Consumer Watchdog and the Fractracker Alliance: c212.net/...
CalGEM approved a total of 3,382 permits in 2022, including 551 new well permits and 2,831 oil well rework permits. And these drilling operations need water to operate.
FWW found that from January 2018 to March 2021, the oil and gas industry in the state used more than 3 billion gallons of freshwater for drilling operations — water that may otherwise have supplied domestic systems.
“That is the equivalent of around 4,570 Olympic-sized pools or more than 120 million showers. The freshwater sucked up by the oil and gas industry during this period could have provided everyone in the city of Ventura with the recommended amount of daily water for 22 months,” the group reported.
The report also revealed that nut crops have expanded considerably; between 2010 and 2022, almond acreage increased by nearly 78 percent in California.
“In 2021, almond and pistachio growing required an estimated 523 billion more gallons of water for irrigation than 2017. That increase alone is equivalent to the indoor water use of 34 million people, or 87 percent of California’s population. What’s more, more than half of the state’s almonds are exported – which amounts to shipping out over 800 billion gallons of water,” the group continued.
The current total of 1.6 million acres used to grow almonds consumes almost four times more water than the 19 million customers (1.3 million acre-feet) served by the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) of Southern California, according to another report released last week by Patrick Porgans of Planetary Solutionaries.
The FWW report notes that California produces 82 percent of the world’s almonds. California’s almonds generated $4.7 billion in foreign sales in 2020 to markets such as Europe, India, and China. The majority of the state’s almonds (55 percent in 2020-2021) are produced in the southern part of the Central Valley. “This region of the state is also suffering from severe water scarcity,” the group wrote.
”From almond empires and alfalfa exporters to mega-dairies and fossil fuel polluters, corporate interests have taken advantage of the state’s water allocation system to benefit their own interests over public needs,” the group wrote.
The report noted that irrigation for alfalfa – an industry dominated by several major players and located in some of the state’s hottest and driest areas, including the Imperial Valley – requires nearly one trillion gallons of water every year.
“Alfalfa is also a key export crop; one major company, Fondomonte Farms, is a subsidiary of the Saudi company Almarai. Its operations in California and the southwest came after the Saudi government determined that these crops would put a strain on the country’s water supply.”
The Food & Water Watch report also calculates that the state’s expanding mega-dairies industry is now using more than 142 million gallons of water every day – “a notable finding given that there is very little data tracking water usage in the dairy industry.”
The report calls on Governor Newsom to use executive and emergency power to stop the misuse of the state’s water resources.
“This would include preventing new water-thirsty crops like alfalfa and almonds, banning new mega-dairies, and ending new oil and gas drilling. State lawmakers could also move to define water as a public trust resource, which would enable the state to prioritize public interest before corporate profits,” the group concluded.