Drought, Water Law, and the Origins of California's Central Valley Project

Drought, Water Law, and the Origins of California's Central Valley Project
Author: Tim Stroshane
Publisher: University of Nevada Press
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2016-10-27
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 087417001X

This book is an account of how water rights were designed as a key part of the state’s largest public water system, the Central Valley Project. Along sixty miles of the San Joaquin River, from Gustine to Mendota, four corporate entities called “exchange contractors” retain paramount water rights to the river. Their rights descend from the days of the Miller & Lux Cattle Company, which amassed an empire of land and water from the 1850s through the 1920s and protected these assets through business deals and prolific litigation. Miller & Lux’s dominance of the river relied on what many in the San Joaquin Valley regarded as wasteful irrigation practices and unreasonable water usage. Economic and political power in California’s present water system was born of this monopoly on water control. Stroshane tells how drought and legal conflict shaped statewide economic development and how the grand bargain of a San Joaquin River water exchange was struck from this monopoly legacy, setting the stage for future water wars. His analysis will appeal to readers interested in environmental studies and public policy.

The Dreamt Land

The Dreamt Land
Author: Mark Arax
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 577
Release: 2019-05-21
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1101875216

A vivid, searching journey into California's capture of water and soil—the epic story of a people's defiance of nature and the wonders, and ruin, it has wrought Mark Arax is from a family of Central Valley farmers, a writer with deep ties to the land who has watched the battles over water intensify even as California lurches from drought to flood and back again. In The Dreamt Land, he travels the state to explore the one-of-a-kind distribution system, built in the 1940s, '50s and '60s, that is straining to keep up with California's relentless growth. The Dreamt Land weaves reportage, history and memoir to confront the "Golden State" myth in riveting fashion. No other chronicler of the West has so deeply delved into the empires of agriculture that drink so much of the water. The nation's biggest farmers—the nut king, grape king and citrus queen—tell their story here for the first time. Arax, the native son, is persistent and tough as he treks from desert to delta, mountain to valley. What he finds is hard earned, awe-inspiring, tragic and revelatory. In the end, his compassion for the land becomes an elegy to the dream that created California and now threatens to undo it.

Salinity and Drainage in San Joaquin Valley, California

Salinity and Drainage in San Joaquin Valley, California
Author: Andrew C. Chang
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 429
Release: 2013-11-19
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9400768516

This book documents the history of irrigated agriculture and drainage in the San Joaquin Valley, and describes the hydrology and biogeochemical processes of salts and selenium, remediation technologies for salts and trace elements and policy and management options. The contents are comprised of fourteen chapter-length independent treatises, each depicting with fresh perspective a distinctive salinity drainage topic. The opening chapters detail the evolution of irrigated agriculture, and depict the geochemical and hydrological processes that define the San Joaquin Valley, including the physics, chemistry, and biology attributes that impact water management policies and strategies. Next, the contributors address the biogeochemistry of selenium, the role of plants in absorbing it from soils, and the processes involved in retaining and concentrating dissolved salts in drainage water. Further chapters describe on-farm and plot-level irrigation provisions to reduce agricultural drainage outputs and examine their effects on plant performance. This volume offers realistic policy analysis of water management options for irrigated agriculture in the Valley and assesses their respective outcomes, if implemented. Also included is an international perspective on the sustainability of irrigated agriculture there.