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Since the 1960s and 1970s, the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project have supplied irrigation water to approximately 1.3 million acres of drainage-problem lands on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and Tulare Lake Basin.

According to the Pacific Institute, retiring these lands would save up to 3.9 million acre-feet of water annually.  C-WIN agrees.

The Bureau of Reclamation's Land Retirement Demonstration Project in the Tranquillity area of the San Joaquin Valley showed significant progress in reducing the elevation of high groundwater.  The Bureau of Reclamation's 2001 Annual Report stated that groundwater elevations declined an average of 4 feet between August 1999 and October 2001.  The report stated further:

 

"The area of the site underlain by a shallow water table within 7 feet of the land surface decreased from 600 acres (30% of the site) to 34 acres (less than 2% of the site) during the time period from October 1999 to October 2001."

C-WIN recommends that:

• Legislators, regulators, and the courts need to be encouraged and persuaded to find that irrigation of these lands is not in the public interest, unacceptable as the basis for water service contracts, and a wasteful and unreasonable use of water under the meaning of the California Constitution, Article X, Section 2.
• The majority of drainage-problem lands in the western San Joaquin Valley and Tulare Lake Basin be retired from irrigated agriculture, and use the saved water to secure the Delta environment and support other reasonable and beneficial uses of water. Dryland farming could continue on these lands, as they were used prior to the San Luis Unit's creation. Other uses for the lands could be found too, perhaps including photovoltaic solar "farms."
• In collaboration with the Environmental Justice community, land retirement programs would include strategies for reducing job impacts to farm workers and their communities in affected areas of the Valley, including potential trade occupations and apprenticeships that take advantage of new sectors promoting energy and water conservation, improving local drinking water quality and community water self-sufficiency, and increasing other "green" jobs.

Taking much of these poisoned lands out of production would reduce demand for Delta water diversions and significantly improve water quality in the San Joaquin River, the Delta and the San Francisco Bay through reduction of selenium contamination and bioaccumulation. A planned program of land retirement and other drainage volume reduction actions should also provide for mitigation of impacts to the farm labor community. Even if irrigation deliveries continue, these lands will ultimately go out of production, become sterile alkali land and cause air quality hazards from toxic dust. Unfortunately, if that comes to pass, it will be too late to avoid and mitigate the harm done to the Valley's environment and agricultural labor market.