From what I can tell, the Imperial Valley in southern California — about 100 miles due east of San Diego, and stretching from the southern shores of the Salton Sea to the Mexico border — is not a particularly happy place nowadays, even though the Imperial Irrigation District (IID) has been blessed with an enormous supply of irrigation water from the Colorado River.
As mentioned in Part Eight, the IID water rights from the river equal the Colorado River water rights for the entire states of Nevada and Arizona, put together: about 3.1 million acre feet per year. The state of Colorado has legal rights to about 3.9 million acre feet from that river source.
In spite of its continuing bounty of irrigation water, times have been tough lately.
Last month, reporter Sasha Abramsky wrote about the Third World economic conditions in Imperial County in an article published on the Capital & Main website, June 13, 2019: “Hard Times in the Imperial Valley”.
Roughly 180,000 people live in towns and hamlets dotted around the 4,597 square miles of stark desert and agricultural land that make up [Imperial County]. And while a few do very well — agribusiness is a multi-billion-dollar concern — many are struggling to make ends meet.
More than one in six seniors in Imperial County live in poverty — as do about a third of its children.
“Twenty percent are below the federal poverty level, and the numbers, we are sure, are probably double that if you include lack of access to health care and so on. Because so many are undocumented. There’s a lot of fear, especially now,” says Maribel Nunez of California Partnership, a statewide anti-poverty coalition…
The median income for an individual in the Imperial Valley is a mere $17,000.
Imperial County is among the most fertile agricultural areas in the nation, and many of the residents were once farm workers… who have now grown too old to work in the fields. From Ms. Abramsky’s article:
The county’s politics run conservative — 80 percent of the population is Hispanic, but it has historically been controlled by what [a local Methodist minister] describes as a good-old-boy network, and few tax dollars are made available for anti-poverty programs. In recent years, much of what little discretionary cash the county does have has been diverted to law enforcement instead of social services…
The same good-old-boy network is likely responsible for the April lawsuit filed by the Imperial Irrigation District, challenging the 2019 Drought Contingency Plan — the plan endorsed by the US Congress and the seven states that consume water from the Colorado River, aimed at keeping the water level at long-suffering Lake Mead from dropping further.
The IID lawsuit claims that the Drought Contingency Plan will further harm the Salton Sea, which has been shrinking — and also becoming an environmental hazard. The sea was initially a freshwater lake, but by the 1960s, its rising salinity had begun to jeopardize some of its species. With a salinity now exceeding 5.0% — saltier than seawater — most species of fish can no longer survive. Fertilizer runoffs have resulted in eutrophication, with large algal blooms and elevated bacterial levels. The dust from the exposed lake bed contains toxic particles that are causing respiratory issues. By 2014, large swaths of lake bed were exposed, resulting in fish kills, interrupting bird migration, and negatively impacting tourism.
Defenders of the seven-state Drought Contingency Plan argue that the plan will not affect the Salton Sea. But it’s also possible the Salton Sea issue is a red herring tossed out by powerful agribusiness farmers.
Last summer, the Palm Springs Desert Sun published an investigative story by reporter Sammy Roth, titled “California farm baron offered to drop water lawsuit — if his family got a special exemption”.
A lawsuit in California’s Imperial Valley could determine who controls the single largest share of Colorado River water in the West — a few hundred landowning farmers, or the elected five-member board of the Imperial Irrigation District.
But a newly obtained document shows that the farmer who filed the lawsuit, Mike Abatti, was willing to sidestep that explosive legal question — if he and his family got a special exemption from a plan that could have limited his access to Colorado River water.
Abatti’s lawsuit has caused an uproar in Imperial County, an agricultural area in California’s far southeastern corner that produces much of America’s winter vegetables. The valley’s multibillion-dollar farming economy is made possible by imported water from the Colorado River, which has turned a bone-dry slice of the Sonoran Desert into a lush green oasis with nearly half a million acres of farmland…
Mr. Abatti’s suit challenged an IID plan designed to keep the Imperial Valley’s water use within its 3.1 million acre-feet limit. It characterized the plan as an illegal power grab by the IID board that could threaten the ability of farmers to get the water they need.
But according to Mr. Roth’s article, Mr. Abatti was willing to let the controversial water plan remain in force for most Imperial Valley farmers — so long as IID exempted him, his brother Jimmy and their father Ben. The IID declined the settlement offer.
The lawsuit was subsequently decided in Mike Abatti’s favor by Judge L. Brooks Anderholt of Imperial County Superior Court.
From Mr. Roth’s article:
IID is appealing the decision from Judge L. Brooks Anderholt of Imperial County Superior Court, who ruled for Mike Abatti last year. Anderholt presided over the case despite his long history of business and social ties to members of the Abatti family, including Mike’s brother Jimmy and their father Ben, as The Desert Sun has reported.
Imperial County’s economy and politics are dominated by a few hundred mostly white landowning farmers, despite a population that is more than 80 percent Latino and income levels that are among the state’s lowest. Mike Abatti is one of the area’s most powerful farmers. He once served on the board of the Imperial Irrigation District, and in recent years he has gotten tens of millions of dollars in contracts from the public agency to build energy projects, despite having no prior experience as an energy developer.
While building his second career in the energy industry, Abatti has continued to farm thousands of acres, growing crops including melons, broccoli and sugar beets. In 2012, IID supplied 26,500 acre-feet of water to fields owned by Abatti. That water use accounted for nearly 1 percent of the Colorado River water used in the Imperial Valley in 2012…
…The final outcome of Abatti’s water lawsuit could have sweeping implications.
In his ruling, Judge Anderholt was dismissive of the Imperial Irrigation District’s right to allocate water in a manner that would affect access to irrigation water for agribusiness farmers like Mike Abatti. The judge described the water rights of Imperial Valley farmers as “a constitutionally protected property right…”
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.