[Magdalen] California drought

[M J [Mike] Logsdon]

Almonds?  Forgive the insensitivity, but... please.  Almonds?  CA's Central Valley is hurting, and understandably so.  But the US can live without almonds.  How many could live without the Salinas Valley?  The Salad Bowl of CA, and much of the world.  Lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, artichokes, berries uncountable.  (And yes, a lot of wine grapes, believe it or not. Travel between Paso Robles and Salinas and count the grape orchards, if you can.)

What's missed in the news of the CA drought is the areas, like this one, where it's not just a matter of no rain, but other disastrous factors as well.  In the Salinas Valley, we've been forced to worry about flooding, of all things.  And why?  Mainly because of vegetative overgrowth in the Salinas River, particularly that bastardy plant called Arrundo (a monstrous reed).  Introduced in CA decades ago for bank stabilization.  I guess no one thought they'd grow like demons.  Estimates vary, but one Arrundo plant can suck up from 25,000 to 50,000+ acre-feet of water per year.  (For those unfamiliar with the term, an acre-foot is the amount of water that covers an acre of land up to one foot in depth.)  For comparison, the City of Salinas (near 200,000 pop) uses, annually, 24,000 acre-feet.  Absolutely amazing.  Luckily, in the face of Perpetual Opposition from environmental groups and agencies (whom I respect, so please don't get me wrong), Gov Jerry recently decreed two of the worst stretches of the Salinas River clearable of vegetation.  That, combined with the mere piffle of rain we're getting so far, will help.

Help with what?  The flooding I mentioned.  It of course is a good thing if that bastardy Arrundo isn't sucking up so many tens of hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of water, but the other element is free passage of water in an otherwise highly alluvial, highly sedimentary river that needs to move water in flooding conditions FAST, and EFFICIENTLY.  Means a lot of sediment being dumped in the dearly precious Monterey Bay Marine Sanctuary (which I saw first-hand from above in a Chinook in 1995), but in a world of lesser of evils, it's about what nature originally intended (the free flow of water to the ocean) or flooding damages totalling in the millions... in the Salinas Valley.  Back to the original point.

I know all about this because of where I work.  I don't work with it directly, but in such an attritionally small Agency, it's hard not to know.  (Monthly All-hands Meetings help too.)

Off my MCWRA (Monterey County Water Resources Agency) Orange Crate, for the time being.
_________________________________________
"O perplexed discomposition, O riddling
distemper, O miserable condition of man!"
- The Rev Mr John Donne
(in a not-so-chipper moment)


_________________________________________
"O perplexed discomposition, O riddling
distemper, O miserable condition of man!"
- The Rev Mr John Donne
(in a not-so-chipper moment)