Plenty Of Stormy Weather To Come With Water Issues

When it rains it pours.

At the beginning of this year the relentless drought that plagued California and the American West was considered the worst dry spell in 1,200 years. Measuring historical moisture patterns by looking at thousands of tree rings, scientists concluded that the West was in a “megadrought”  from 2001 to 2022. Such perennial dryness has not been seen in the region since the Vikings sailed the North Atlantic and Mayans built temples in Mexico and Central America.

Flip the calendar to 2023 and the majority of those that live in the Golden State have gone from begging for rain to begging for it to stop. In fact, there has been so much precipitation in the first three months of the new year that as of March 16th, the U.S. Drought Monitor determined that over 44 percent of the state was officially relieved of drought conditions altogether and no areas were now in the extreme or exceptional level of severity. Compare that to the end of last year when all of California was in some sort of drought category and almost 43 percent fell into that extreme or exceptional ranking.

The reason for the western deluge is due to a significant change in the overall weather pattern.

One factor is that the waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean are heating up. The cool water La Niña pattern has waned and El Niño is back on the clock. This has ripened weather conditions to set up an atmospheric river, known as the “Pineapple Express”. This river of moisture has reached impressive levels and has delivered a perpetual barrage of systems, dropping both heavy rain and snow that the West has not seen in years.

If 2023 marks the official end of this historical drought, those in agriculture had best not be complacent in thinking the West’s water issues simply quiet down and go away. Weather and the politics surrounding water issues — not just in the West, but worldwide — are about as fickle as Goldilocks trying to figure out which chair to sit in. 

The unfortunate reality is that agriculture’s current focus on water issues has been drowned out by all the noise surrounding greenhouse gas mitigation and climate change. While everybody was so focused on the shiny ball of carbon credits and zero emissions, there has been a host of water related issues quickly rising to the surface. Some of these topics, we’ve seen before. Others are new. All will affect agriculture.

The newest development on the water front is that water rights and stewardship has now been adopted as the latest global initiative by the United Nations.

In a report released in March, experts from the Global Commission on the Economics of Water warned that the world is “heading for massive collective failure” in the management of the planet’s water supply and demand that governments treat water as a “global common good.” 

The 32-page document, titled Turning the Tide: A Call to Collective Action, may not become a best-seller but its impact could flip control of water rights from local to global. This could dramatically affect everyone from strawberry farmers in California, to corn farmers in Illinois, down to even regional watershed organizations, and even your local NRCS agents.

Of course, in the report is the standard doom and gloom. Because of “policymakers’ failure” nearly 2 billion people lack a safe drinking water supply. Then for real impact, the study floats “the prospect of a 40 percent shortfall in freshwater supply by 2030, with severe shortages in water constrained regions.”

Those who read the report, and are a part of U.S. agriculture, should be shaking in their boots. Such global water policy could weave itself into what crops you can grow, the phasing out of agricultural subsidies (this could include crop insurance), and also adding new “water standards” to future trade agreements. Pardon the pun, but this is the tip of the iceberg that proponents hope will propel water issue to climate change level fervor. Get ready for your global United Nations Kenya Water Accord. No this hasn’t happened yet, but you can bet that the bureaucrats that brought you the Paris Agreement on Climate Change have their private jets fueled and ready to taxi.

Speaking of bureaucrats, on December 30, 2022, the EPA announced their final “Revised Definition of ‘Waters of the United States’” rule.

As you may recall, this is the same issue that got the Obama Administration’s EPA in hot water with production agriculture and rural communities in general. The heat was turned down on WOTUS during the Trump era, but just as Biden did with the Paris Agreement, the WOTUS has been revived.

According to the Water of the United States landing page on the EPA’s website, it notes that the rule went into effect March 20, 2023. In their expanded explanation of the ruling, you get a sense of the level of “irritation” that the powers that be at the EPA have toward those questioning the current ruling:

The agencies’ final rule establishes a clear and reasonable definition of “waters of the United States” and reduces the uncertainty from constantly changing regulatory definitions that has harmed communities and our nation’s waters.

Most agricultural groups don’t share the same sentiments as those at the EPA. One of the harshest responses came from the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture. 

“The EPA’s latest rule on defining “waters of the United States” is a statement of federal overreach that ignores states authority to regulate intrastate water quality and the Clean Water Act’s statutory mandate for cooperative federalism,” said NASDA CEO Ted McKinney.

A long line of other ag organizations were quick to pile on including the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, The Fertilizer Institute, and the list goes on. In these organization’s minds the biggest unresolved issue is clarification on what is and is not a navigable water. What defines a waterway in the first place? Is it only a stream on a rainy day? The problem is that the EPA wants to be the judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to answering such questions says critics.

U.S. agriculture and all those tied to it cannot afford to take its eye off the ball when it comes to issues of water. The above examples are just the beginning of more to come. Local, regional and state control needs to remain sacred. When it does that’s when conservation and stewardship works best, because those gifts of nature are then tended to by those that live on that land and in that community. Farming water rights out to those in far away lands and far away places like Washington D.C., or Paris, or Kenya is nothing but a fools errand. For them water is nothing more than the new oil.