Growers in Paso Robles basin have new way to save water: fallow fields
San Luis Obispo County has designed a new program to support farmers who wish to stop irrigating their land.
The goal: To reduce overpumping in the Paso Robles Area Groundwater Basin.
It’s one of 21 basins in the state considered “critically overdrafted” by the California Department of Water Resources, which means more water is pumped from the basin than is returned.
On Tuesday, the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors voted 4-0 to create a registry for farmers who voluntarily decide to fallow their land. Supervisor John Peschong abstained from the vote.
Farmers who enroll in the program will maintain county property tax benefits related to their status as agricultural producers. Meanwhile, contrary to county law, they also will be allowed to resume irrigating their land when they want to, even if it is fallowed for more than five years.
“I think this program truly does recognize that sustainable groundwater management and a strong agricultural economy can go hand in hand,” Supervisor Jimmy Paulding said.
Why start a fallowing program?
Farmers use 90% of the water pumped from the basin, so the county is focused on reducing agricultural pumping without harming the agricultural industry, the staff report said.
“This reduction is challenging since wine grapes, the largest crop in the basin and a key part of the economy, already uses less water per acre than most crops,” the staff report said. “The real problem is a result of too much irrigated acreage.”
As a result, the county is working to reduce the amount of acreage irrigated by the dwindling supply of water in basin.
The program is set to launch at the same time many of the area’s wine grape growers have already started to voluntarily fallow their land due to intense economic stress amid a weak wine market, according to the county’s groundwater sustainability director Blaine Reely.
“Growers are looking for ways to reduce their operational costs, and one of those ways is to reduce their irrigated footprint,” Reely said during the meeting. “We wanted to give — through the fallowed land registry — the growers a framework to do that and ... remove some barriers along the way.”
The registry will benefit the growers, he added, as well as ultimately reduce the groundwater being extracted from the basin.
How will the fallowing program work?
Participating farmers must register at least 2 acres of farmland as fallowed with the county.
To qualify, the land must have been irrigated with water from the Paso basin during the previous five years, and it must have been planted in compliance with the county’s Agricultural Offset Ordinance.
That ordinance says a farmer can’t irrigate their land with water from the Paso basin if the land hadn’t been irrigated within the previous five years. However, farmers participating in the fallowing program will be exempt from the Agricultural Offset Ordinance.
In the registry, the farmer will identify how long they plan to fallow the land. When that time passes, they will have the right to resume irrigation of the land — even if more than five years has passed.
Meanwhile, the Williamson Act allows owners of farmland to apply for reduced property taxes if they use their land for agricultural production for 10 or 20 years, the staff report said.
Most of the agricultural landowners over the basin have entered into Williamson Act contracts with the county, and many of those contracts require landowners to irrigate their land.
“Stopping irrigation to fallow land would violate the terms of these contracts and jeopardize landowner tax benefits, which could potentially impair an owner’s ability to maintain the viability of agricultural operations,” the staff report said.
The board voted to allow participants in the county fallowing program to maintain their tax benefits under Williamson Act contracts.
The county will monitor the farmers’ water use using satellite-collected evapotranspiration data. If the farmer starts irrigating their land without the county’s permission, they will be removed from the registry and subject to the Agricultural Offset Ordinance.
‘Hallelujah’ moment for some SLO County growers
Paso Robles Wine Country Alliance spokesperson Patricia Wilmore said she’s been receiving emails practically every day from wine grape growers waiting for the registry to open.
“If there was ever a moment to shout hallelujah, this will be it,” she said.
Matt Turrentine, a board member for the Shandon-San Juan Water District, also praised the board for supporting the fallowing registry.
“This has been a long time coming,” he said during public comment. “There certainly is a meaningful amount of acreage around the Paso Robles basin, and that’s being irrigated simply to preserve water rights, and that’s a waste of water that, you know, benefits no one. So this is the first step in this process, but it’s an important one.”
Supervisors were generally in support of the registry, though Peschong abstained from the vote due to apprehensions that vines could be replaced by solar panels in fallow fields, all while growers still reaped tax benefits.
Reely told The Tribune he hopes the registry will be “active and ready and live” for enrollment by April 1.
