Guest commentary by Trudy Wischemann
Last Tuesday I felt called to make another trip to Cuyama, solo this time. They were having a meeting of the Small Farmer and Rancher Network (SFAR) for small pumpers, and I was pulled viscerally by that term. “Do you consider yourself a small pumper having minimal impact on the Cuyama groundwater basin?” the flyer read. “Then come learn about and plan with the Small Farmer and Rancher Network…”
What an incredible identity to proclaim. Small pumper. Minimal impact. And beyond, that those who fall into that category can “work together to keep our water rights and create a sustainable Cuyama Valley.” I had to see who had the heart and mind to declare that vision.
There definitely are leaders in Cuyama Valley, educated, intelligent people who live there, work the land, and care about the whole ecosystem in that arid place. They are neighbors as well, who believe in each other and share thoughts, observations, experiences. When I entered the Cuyama Valley Family Resource Center just as the sun went down, two men were discussing organic weed control methods they’d seen the giant carrot producers employing, comparing it with their own.
And as I walked into the meeting room, there they were, these beautiful people: the meeting organizers, with cookies and orange wedges, coffee and water set up, handouts in neat stacks. Nametags, in case somebody new came, like me. Tables set up with many chairs, sheets of newsprint taped to the wall, laptops ready for the zoom attenders and powerpoint slides. A clear agenda, which the meeting chairwoman, Robbie Jaffe, moved us through with grace and competence.
The two main items for that evening were the GSA and the pending adjudication. Two outside entities have joined with the SFAR group: an engineering firm with a grant to assist small farmers, and the UC Davis Small Farmer Law Clinic. The engineering firm has taken the data used by the GSA’s engineering firm and re-calculated pumping figures by tiers of use, an analysis which the GSA’s firm was unwilling to produce. Their report shows that the two largest users – Bolthouse and Grimmway – alone are pumping more than twice the sustainable yield of their aquifer and 70% of the total amount being pumped. That leaves 30% of the total for everyone else, whose current uses easily would be sustainable without the carrot guys, with some room to grow.
The materials from the law clinic were focused on two important elements. The first was how to use the state’s review authority to bring attention to the Cuyama Basin GSA’s complete lack of responsiveness to the community’s needs and concerns. The second element was the pending adjudication, which was more sobering. In groundwater management basins where large, absentee ownerships prevail, adjudications are almost guaranteed to follow groundwater management plans that infringe upon their excessive pumping. Cuyama’s experience could prove important for many of us on this side of the Coast Range.
Adjudication (of groundwater rights) is a long-established legal process that pre-dates SGMA, and its rules are rigid as well as obscure. The Cuyama carrot guys’ legal team is well on top of it, while the small pumpers are left to respond one by one or in small groups represented by terribly expensive legal counsel. The small pumpers’ options are few in this arena; suggestions from the UCD law clinic’s staff were helpful and daunting at the same time. The first trial date is in May. There are deadlines to meet, some of them already past, with the likelihood looming that the adjudication will override whatever protections SGMA might have made in a society of equals. In Cuyama, both processes are heavily weighted toward two gigantic, absentee agribusiness corporations.
What these small pumpers are fighting against, essentially, is capitalist hubris, the inhumane project of stripping a place clean of value and moving on. What they are fighting for is their lives there, their place to call home and their modest ways of making a living.
The good news from Tuesday’s meeting is that now, with their new data in hand, the small pumpers can see that they belong to a class of people: members of a community who have minimal impact on their common-pool resource, groundwater. With facts in hand and deadlines to meet, Mother Necessity may yet pull them through.
Trudy Wischemann is a born waterbaby who writes. Send her your dreams of an equitable society c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247
COMMENTARY: From Carrot Kings to Small Pumpers: The Unequal Fight for Cuyama’s Water
Guest commentary by Trudy Wischemann
Last Tuesday I felt called to make another trip to Cuyama, solo this time. They were having a meeting of the Small Farmer and Rancher Network (SFAR) for small pumpers, and I was pulled viscerally by that term. “Do you consider yourself a small pumper having minimal impact on the Cuyama groundwater basin?” the flyer read. “Then come learn about and plan with the Small Farmer and Rancher Network…”
What an incredible identity to proclaim. Small pumper. Minimal impact. And beyond, that those who fall into that category can “work together to keep our water rights and create a sustainable Cuyama Valley.” I had to see who had the heart and mind to declare that vision.
There definitely are leaders in Cuyama Valley, educated, intelligent people who live there, work the land, and care about the whole ecosystem in that arid place. They are neighbors as well, who believe in each other and share thoughts, observations, experiences. When I entered the Cuyama Valley Family Resource Center just as the sun went down, two men were discussing organic weed control methods they’d seen the giant carrot producers employing, comparing it with their own.
And as I walked into the meeting room, there they were, these beautiful people: the meeting organizers, with cookies and orange wedges, coffee and water set up, handouts in neat stacks. Nametags, in case somebody new came, like me. Tables set up with many chairs, sheets of newsprint taped to the wall, laptops ready for the zoom attenders and powerpoint slides. A clear agenda, which the meeting chairwoman, Robbie Jaffe, moved us through with grace and competence.
The two main items for that evening were the GSA and the pending adjudication. Two outside entities have joined with the SFAR group: an engineering firm with a grant to assist small farmers, and the UC Davis Small Farmer Law Clinic. The engineering firm has taken the data used by the GSA’s engineering firm and re-calculated pumping figures by tiers of use, an analysis which the GSA’s firm was unwilling to produce. Their report shows that the two largest users – Bolthouse and Grimmway – alone are pumping more than twice the sustainable yield of their aquifer and 70% of the total amount being pumped. That leaves 30% of the total for everyone else, whose current uses easily would be sustainable without the carrot guys, with some room to grow.
The materials from the law clinic were focused on two important elements. The first was how to use the state’s review authority to bring attention to the Cuyama Basin GSA’s complete lack of responsiveness to the community’s needs and concerns. The second element was the pending adjudication, which was more sobering. In groundwater management basins where large, absentee ownerships prevail, adjudications are almost guaranteed to follow groundwater management plans that infringe upon their excessive pumping. Cuyama’s experience could prove important for many of us on this side of the Coast Range.
Adjudication (of groundwater rights) is a long-established legal process that pre-dates SGMA, and its rules are rigid as well as obscure. The Cuyama carrot guys’ legal team is well on top of it, while the small pumpers are left to respond one by one or in small groups represented by terribly expensive legal counsel. The small pumpers’ options are few in this arena; suggestions from the UCD law clinic’s staff were helpful and daunting at the same time. The first trial date is in May. There are deadlines to meet, some of them already past, with the likelihood looming that the adjudication will override whatever protections SGMA might have made in a society of equals. In Cuyama, both processes are heavily weighted toward two gigantic, absentee agribusiness corporations.
What these small pumpers are fighting against, essentially, is capitalist hubris, the inhumane project of stripping a place clean of value and moving on. What they are fighting for is their lives there, their place to call home and their modest ways of making a living.
The good news from Tuesday’s meeting is that now, with their new data in hand, the small pumpers can see that they belong to a class of people: members of a community who have minimal impact on their common-pool resource, groundwater. With facts in hand and deadlines to meet, Mother Necessity may yet pull them through.
Trudy Wischemann is a born waterbaby who writes. Send her your dreams of an equitable society c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247