Quick quiz for the county of tall cotton and thick prison guards

Background: Tulare Lake is an enormous lake dammed for the past 10-15,000 years by two large “alluvial fans” jutting out into the San Joaquin Valley (Figure 1). Before river diversion associated with modern irrigation practices, Tulare Lake was one of the largest freshwater lakes in North America. Currently it is mostly irrigated farmland.--Ancient Tulare Lake: Investigating Changes over the Past 15,000 Years
Adapted from CSUB Geology Department Lab developed by Dr. Rob Negrini
http://www.csub.edu/geology/CSTA_Paleoclimate%20Lab.Teacher.pdf

Dr. Negrini of CSU Bakersfield developed these course materials for middle and high school students. Presumably, many graduates of Bakersfield area secondary schools know that once, almost within living memory, most of Kings County was covered by a gigantic fresh-water lake, Tulare Lake. The present lack of subsidized irrigation water for subsidized cotton in Kings County would seem to be a problem man made in the 20th century.
Badlands Journal editorial board

3-26-10
Hanford Sentinel
County’s water imports drying up...Seth Nidever
http://hanfordsentinel.com/articles/2010/03/27/news/doc4bacf496bd4d4352175547.txt
Quick quiz: What is the one thing Kings County cannot survive without?
If you answered irrigation water, you're on the right track, a point underscored by a three-hour water-policy meeting at the Kings County Government Center in Hanford on Thursday.
Kings County's $1.7 billion agricultural industry, linked to countless spin-off jobs as the top private employer in the area, can't live without it.
Industry leaders and local officials know it, and they're worried, because Kings County imports most of the desperately needed resource from out of county, sometimes way out of the county.
The attendance said it all: City officials, county officials, farmers, even somebody from Lemoore Naval Air Station. The purpose of the meeting? To give the Kings County Water Commission enough information to eventually recommend a course of action to the Kings County Board of Supervisors.
Nobody was there by accident.
The reason for LNAS participation is that the Navy jet base depends on a "greenbelt" of crops to protect the runways from blowing dust and wandering wildlife, said Roman Benitez, a senior planner at the base.
And cropland, of course, is tied to a reliable and plentiful water supply. Lately, a number of issues have conspired to make the water supply both unreliable and scarce.
Environmental problems in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta have led to Endangered Species Act restrictions on pumping. The biggest beneficiary of that pumping is fertile farmland from Fresno to Bakersfield.
Drought has magnified the problem, intensifying the struggle among different interests for a bigger piece of the shrinking pie.
But though the southern San Joaquin Valley is rich in cropland, it isn't as rich in political clout and it doesn't boast the abundant local water enjoyed by areas north of the delta -- an area controlled by interests tied to the Bay Area and the Sacramento area.
And with water a jealously guarded and increasingly limited resource, and every region seeking to hold on to what it has, the result is predictable: Districts in the Bay Area and Sacramento want to hold onto all the water they have and send less and less to distant farmers in Kings, Fresno, Tulare and Kern counties.
"Water is power," said Eric Hansen, a grower near Corcoran.
Based on the indications, that power is in danger of slipping more and more away from local control.
The numbers for one strip of land -- Dudley Ridge Water District -- are sobering. The district along Interstate 5 in western Kings County is totally dependent on water from the distant delta, some 180 miles to the north. The cost of irrigation water to grow pistachios, almonds, pomegranates, grapes, peaches, plums and nectarines has more than doubled since 2001, said general manager Dale Melville.
Local officials are worried because a big chunk of Kings County's revenue depends on agricultural land staying in production.
Dudley Ridge isn't the only part of Kings County that would be a dustbowl if it weren't for imported water. If you count the Kings River, which originates in Fresno County, Kings County land depends on water coming from somewhere else.
Without it, the county furiously pumps groundwater, which is diminishing rapidly. To replenish the overdraft, the county needs to bring more water in. Like somebody slowly turning off a tap, those available sources are becoming less and less available, according to Don Mills.
That means a major groundwater deficit for several parts of the county, particularly on the Westside.
Hanford is part of the equation, because it sucks 13,000 acre-feet of water out of the ground annually, according to Lou Camara, public works director.
Camara said the city has been forced to adopt an ordinance requiring less water-hogging landscaping in new development. The city also sends about 60 percent of its treated wastewater to grow crops, he said.
The city has set up zoning rules so that when it annexes land, and the property values go up, the land stays in whatever agricultural irrigation district it was in -- thereby increasing the property tax revenues the irrigation district can use for water projects.
But with Hanford's water use amounting to a drop in the bucket compared to thirsty agriculture, the growing problem is to better manage groundwater for irrigation purposes. Officials warned that unless they figure out a way to replenish dwindling supplies, the state may eventually do what many growers dread -- issue permits for how much groundwater you can pump.
"As surface water supplies are cut, it directly impacts groundwater in the basin," said Tom Glover, deputy general manager of Westlands Water District.
The entire southern San Joaquin Valley is notorious for groundwater overdraft, so attention is likely to focus there.
"I think the Legislature is going to identify [groundwater basins] of concern and come after them, and that puts us right in the bull's-eye,"said David Orth, Kings River Conservation District general manager.
Orth told audience members -- about 35 people -- that better regional management is needed to head off state control. One aspect of that is to capture more floodwater off the Kings in wet years and store it in undergroundwater banks, Orth said.
Some participants complained about what they see as state water policy that discriminates against the state's agricultural heartland.
"I think there's an overall attack on the Central Valley," said Craig Pedersen, water commission member.
Pedersen said he thinks Northern California interests wouldn't mind if Kings County's imported water supplies dried up.
"They're winning," he said.#