So you probably heard something about this in the news recently.
State regulators approve water restrictions to aid Sonoma County salmon streams
SACRAMENTO — With fish perishing in drought-diminished Sonoma County streams, state regulators said Wednesday they felt pressed to approve sweeping new limits on water use affecting thousands of rural landowners.
The emergency regulation will apply, starting July 3, to about 10,000 landowners on 130 square miles across four watersheds: Dutch Bill and Green Valley creeks in the west county, Mark West Creek north of Santa Rosa and Mill Creek west of Healdsburg. About 13,000 properties will be covered by the rules.
Residents and businesses, including wineries, will be prohibited from using water drawn from creeks or wells for sprinkling lawns or washing cars, while irrigation of other landscaping, such as trees and plants, will be limited as it is in many cities.
Irrigation for commercial agriculture is exempt from the water conservation rules, an issue that prompted harsh criticism from several county residents attending the meeting and was acknowledged by Felicia Marcus, the water board’s chairwoman.
So the new regulations mean you can’t draw water from wells along Dutch Bill Creek, Green Valley Creek, Mill Creek and Mark West Creek. Let’s reduce this to it’s simplest terms shall we?
- Step 1) The water board admits our salmon are in grave danger
- Step 2) The water board admits that drawing groundwater depletes the streams and elevates that danger.
- Step 3) The water board finds that drip systems suck a lot of that water and says they have to stop.
- Step 4) Commercial growers are exempt.
So we admit that our fish are hurt by the wells we allowed property owners to dig. That’s a start. 
Okay, now think of our state’s water table like a big class of soda at one of those 50’s drugstore counters with everyone crowded together drinking from it with their individual straws. And the board tells everyone to stop sucking from their straw – except for the big guys who are making a profit from it. They should keep right on sucking. Maybe they can even suck more because they’ll be more left in the glass. And oh, we’d like everyone else to keep track of how much soda they drank, but we know the money makers are so busy counting they’re profits they don’t have time to do it, so don’t worry about that now.
Farming interests strongly protested the mandatory reporting of water use, a step that state officials have acknowledged could serve as the foundation for tighter restrictions. The water board, sensitive to those complaints, agreed to postpone that part of the order until a series of public meetings is completed in Sonoma County in early July.
Ann Maurice, a west county water activist, asserted that the dramatic decline in Russian River coho salmon that began in the 1990s coincided with the advent of drip irrigation in Sonoma County vineyards.
The irrigation exemption for agriculture drew some of the sharpest public comments on the day.
Woicicki accused the state of turning a “blind eye” as “grape growers have been sucking water out of our aquifer.” The apple grower said his well water level has dropped 20 feet in the last seven years as grapes were planted near his property.
Things have surely gotten to a tipping place in California when the grape and apple grower are at each other’s throats. But I’m thinking we should all sit down with cool glass of California Chardonnay and talk about this magical cure I know about that saves water, recharges aquifers, and has been shown in research time and time again to help salmon and steelhead.
Can you guess how many times the water board or article mentioned this undervalued cure?
