We’ve entered Orange Blossom Week with no orange blossoms left on the trees, a combination of the drought-induced early bloom and the late timing of the event (caused in part by trying to avoid conflict with Easter.) It struck me as odd until I remembered silver linings.
The whole idea that there are silver
linings to even the darkest storm clouds is really a biblical concept: that in dire conditions God may be sending a
hidden blessing. Reading Habakkuk this
weekend, I discovered that the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians was
God’s winnowing hand, a way of recovering His people from their lust for other
gods and the domination of the common people by the sin-filled, greedy Jewish
elite.
An orange grower friend called last
week to catch up. Living outside the boundaries of the Lindsay-Strathmore Irrigation District, he pumps groundwater
to irrigate his trees. In normal years all he has to worry about is the winter
recharge of his wells, Edison rates, and the lifespans of his pumps. This year his worry is doubled by the possibility
that neighbors, again having no surface water deliveries from the district,
will draw down the aquifer and leave his pumps high and dry.
“The bloom was light,” he added,
contemplating the possibility that there may not be enough crop to warrant
irrigating beyond keeping the trees alive.
“That could be a silver lining,” I thought to myself. Then he said “But I see the baby oranges
already.” I knew immediately that this
true farmer will do everything he can to get those oranges to maturity and to
the packinghouse, where my neighbors will find work this winter and be able to
keep living here.
The drought itself may have a silver
lining. I find myself holding my breath
a lot, too aware (thanks to my education) that our population is well above the
natural carrying capacity of this land and that the physical, political and
social infrastructure we have created to amend that natural capacity is
fragile. In many places it is broken,
perhaps beyond redeeming.
That awareness has made me super-conscious
of my domestic water use. I find myself
dedicating more of my day conserving the water I use and hauling the best of
the used water outside to my plants and trees. “Run once, use twice” has become
my new motto. These efforts have a silver lining: they connect me to this
little piece of land I live on and give me a supportive role in its life.
It has also led me to look for
models of how we here in California might begin to resolve some of the raging
conflicts over water supply and use.
Most people who think this drought is man-made look to Sacramento as the
location of the evil-doers. But if
they look west, like where my walnut
grower friend who sits on the board of the Tulare Irrigation District looked,
discovering a 40-acre “pump farm” where Boswell is pumping Tulare ID’s
conscientiously-recharged aquifer with 29 huge pumps running 24/7, they will
see that we have neighbors to blame (or at least hold accountable) in this
shortage.
In the early 1990’s, in a similarly-raging water war in Idaho, a woman named Janice Brown, who ran a trout-fishing
motel on the Henry’s Fork of the Snake River, teamed up with Dale Swenson, the
head of the local irrigation district, to form the Henry’s Fork Watershed
Council. The council brought together
all the competing interests to learn to manage the flows of the Henry’s Fork
for the benefit of all. The first two
years were fearful. But by the late
1990’s, more than 150 people participated in the coalition, including
river-runners, loggers, farmers and land managers, and the coalition had
reached a point where it stood for equitable use of the river’s flows for all
the economic sectors involved. (Visit www.henrysfork.org to view their
continuing efforts.)
For those of us served by the
Friant-Kern, who live outside the watershed where the majority of our water has
come for 60 years, this concept may be more difficult to fathom. But the need is there. Maybe the silver lining of this drought is
that we will begin to acknowledge the conflicts over water development and use,
and begin finding solutions - together.
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Trudy
Wischemann is a faithful water and community development researcher who
writes. You can send her your silver
lining stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.
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