SISKIYOU COUNTY—At their ranch in Scott Valley, about 40 miles from the Oregon border—Theodora and Dave Johnson saddle up their horses to drive their cattle herd to a fresh pasture. As sixth-generation ranchers, they enjoy their way of life, but like other ranchers, they’re worried that state-imposed water restrictions for livestock and irrigation could threaten their livelihood.

The California State Water Resources Control Board issued two orders, effective July 25, restricting surface and groundwater diversions for agricultural use in the Scott River watershed.

The orders require an immediate stop of the use of any water from diversions.

The restrictions do not apply to water used in firefighting efforts and allow exceptions for those under evacuation orders, which were recently in place in the area because of the Shelly fire, which was largely contained as of Aug. 6 after burning more than 15,000 acres.

A U.S. Drought Monitor map shows that as of July 23 nearly 55 percent of Siskiyou County was facing “moderate drought” conditions while the rest of the nearly 6,300-square-mile county—California’s fifth largest—is “abnormally dry.”

Theodora Johnson, a spokeswoman for the Scott Valley Agriculture Water Alliance, said ranchers in Scott and Shasta valleys are calling for an end to California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s emergency drought proclamation, which has been in place since 2021.

“We’re not in an emergency drought, so all of this is bogus,” she said. “We’ve just had two good winters with plentiful rain and snowpack and yet the state is treating us though we’re in some extreme drought emergency.”

The Johnsons and other ranchers are facing a voluntary 30 percent water curtailment under the emergency regulations.

To irrigate the land they own and lease and to water their livestock, the Johnsons draw surface water from two creeks that flow into the Scott River, a tributary of the Klamath River. The creeks are both intermittent streams from snow melt in the Marble Mountains that run dry in the summer. So by July, they must rely on groundwater.

But in January, the water board unanimously readopted emergency regulations that curtail water rights for agriculture in the Scott and Shasta watersheds.

Newsom signed a statewide executive order in 2023 removing emergency drought regulations in select watersheds.

But the Scott and Shasta watersheds received less precipitation than other parts of the state, according to the water board. Consequently, the Klamath River watershed remains under the emergency regulations, which limit surface-water diversions and groundwater pumping to protect threatened salmon and other fish.

Johnson said the ranchers have sent two petitions to the governor to lift the emergency regulations, but their requests have been ignored.

Newsom’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the matter.

‘Voluntary’ Plans?

The emergency regulations force ranchers and farmers to submit voluntary plans to the water board promising to reduce water use by 30 percent in the Scott River and 15 percent in Shasta River watersheds or run the risk of losing all access to water for agriculture use.

Recently, when the Scott River dropped below the water board’s July minimum flow levels of 50 cubic feet of water per second, ranchers and farmers who did not have an approved or pending water-use reduction plan were forced to turn off all water for irrigation. A similar order was made in Shasta Valley early July.

Fines for failing to comply with such orders had been set at $500 a day but were hiked to $1,000 a day, according to certified letters the water board sent to landowners July 24.

The letters caused confusion and angst among many rural residents who aren’t using any water for agriculture but were worried they could be fined, Johnson said.

And for those who are using water for farming, the letters caused even more anxiety, she said.

“We have neighbors who were fined thousands of dollars in 2022 because they accidentally did their reporting wrong, so it makes us all extremely nervous every time we get a formal letter from the water board requiring some kind of reporting,” she said. “It’s not like we have a friendly neighborhood water board guy we can go to for guidance. They’re all far away in Sacramento.”

For many ranchers, the 30 percent reduction is hard to quantify because they hadn’t measured their water use in the past, so there is no baseline with which to compare, Johnson said.

“We had estimates but no hard numbers. The water board says that’s why they want well meters installed now,” she said.

It basically equates to a 30 percent loss in plant growth, and in some cases “total crop failure,” especially in the case of pastureland, and means that some ranchers have been forced to sell 30 percent of their livestock, Johnson said.

According to the state-approved Groundwater Sustainability Plan for Scott Valley released in December 2021, precipitation has been less in the past 20 years, but “water levels have remained steady, with seasonal fluctuations.”

As Johnson points out, the state water board’s “severe curtailments of groundwater use seems to be based on the assumption that the aquifer is suffering in Scott Valley, but the data show otherwise.”

“Historic and recent water level data do not indicate overdraft or long-term declines in groundwater data,” the plan, which was developed with the help of a team of hydrologists, reads.

Ryan Walker, president of the Siskiyou County Farm Bureau, which has nearly 600 members, told The Epoch Times that smaller cattle operations could be disproportionately affected because they might not have the resources to adapt and survive water restrictions year after year.

When the curtailments were first imposed, hay prices were high, so it was easier for producers to absorb costs, but this year it will be extremely difficult for those farmers to make money because they’ll have to cut production, he said.

Producing a significantly lower amount of hay with the same fixed costs such as mortgage, seed, fertilizer, and tractor payments is “a problem,” he said.

Ranchers in Scott Valley are in an even worse position because their cattle are in constant need of feed, according to Walker, who runs a 6,000-acre ranch with a cow-calf operation outside the water-restricted areas.

“They’re in a really bad spot,” he said. “If you have to curtail in late July, when normally you would irrigate all the way through October, that is a lot of feed you’ve got to find for your animals, or you’ve got to sell animals ... and then you’re eating away at the factory.”

Ranchers in Siskiyou County have had to sell “thousands and thousands” of cattle over the past four years, Walker said.

“So it’s very much an existential threat to those operations,” he said.

Walker questions how voluntary the water use reduction plans—called Local Cooperative Solutions—really are.

“[The plans] aren’t really voluntary because you’ve got a gun to your head with curtailments, and they’re not really local because they’re being run out of Sacramento,” he said. “They’re cooperative in the sense that we’re cooperating, I guess, and they’re probably not solutions either.”

After two wet years, with snowpacks measured at 100 percent this year, Shasta Lake at full capacity, and Trinity and Whiskeytown lakes close to full, an end to the drought emergency regulations is long overdue, Walker said.

“We would like the governor to rescind his proclamation,” he said. “We raise crops for a living. We know when we’re in a drought, and we know when we’ve got water.”

Under the emergency regulations, the state doesn’t have to comply with normal due process involving the California Environment Equality Act—better known as CEQA—which requires public hearings and environmental impact reports, Walker said.

“I think the time has come and we’re owed due process like every other citizen in California,” he said.

Under California law, the water board can impose emergency flow regulations if there is evidence of certain drought conditions or an emergency proclamation by the governor.

“The governor has got an emergency drought proclamation despite all the evidence to the contrary, and that’s not something that’s very easy to fight. That’s a political issue,” he said. “At some point, you would think that the governor’s office would be chagrined enough by the fact that every reservoir in the state is bursting full that we probably can’t sustain that drought order.”

At least through due process the state would have to account for the economic loss to farmers and ranchers and justify the benefit to fish, he said.

“None of that’s been done. The emergency regs don’t require any of that,” he said.

Water Board Response

The state water board said in an Aug. 6 email to The Epoch Times that the emergency regulations “do not deny” farmers and ranchers their rights to due process and that “there have been dozens of public hearings on this topic.”

The amount of the fines is “in alignment with existing statute” set by the state Legislature, the water board said.

“Letters were sent to all known water users, which could include some smaller types of wells such as domestic drinking water supplies,” it said. “The state does not track groundwater use and does not have records of what types of wells are on specific parcels. Recipients must respond, but that does not mean they will be curtailed. Domestic well users can claim exemption from the curtailments.”

The water board said it strives to balance water needs in its decisions, which must consider agricultural, domestic, and municipal supplies as well as tribal uses, water rights, and the protection of “California’s iconic species,” the email states.

“While farmers and ranchers in the Klamath Basin are rightfully concerned about future water supplies, California’s commercial salmon fishery has been closed for two years, and tribes that have depended on salmon for generations have canceled their own fishery and cultural ceremonies due to declining fish populations,” the water board said.

Rulemaking

In July, 2021, California’s Karuk Tribe—indigenous to Humboldt and Siskiyou counties and one of the state’s largest—and the Environmental Law Foundation, an Oakland based environmental advocacy nonprofit, petitioned for “emergency rulemaking” to the state water board for minimum flow regulations in the Scott River.

Then, in May 2023, the tribe, foundation, and fisheries submitted another petition asking for permanent regulations for the river. Since then, several environmental groups have sought permanent regulations for the Shasta River.

Although the water board directed its Division of Water Rights staff to move forward with emergency regulations and “identify the scientific work needed to pursue long-term flows in the Scott and Shasta watersheds,” in August 2023, it has so far denied all petitions calling for permanent minimum flow regulations.

Irrigated Acres

Each watershed represents about 30,000 irrigated acres. In Scott Valley, for example, about 30,000 of 600,000 acres are irrigated, Walker said.

“So, a very small chunk of the whole watershed is being irrigated,” he said. “There’s more than enough water that falls into that watershed to irrigate those 30,000 acres and provide streamflow. It’s a timing issue more than anything else.”

Dam Removals

The Klamath River Dam Removal Project, which is currently in progress and ultimately will see the demolition of four dams, has been such a “divisive” issue for decades, making it difficult to work out long-term water management solutions in the region, Walker said.

The project will allow the river to flow freely and restore its salmon population, which authorities say is important to Native American tribes and commercial and recreational fishing.

“Now that the dams are out, we’re having different conversations and that’s a good thing. We will see how that plays out,” Walker said.

If the dam removal doesn’t achieve fish returns and hurts fish populations, the ranchers will have to pay with even less water for their operations, he said.

“We’re the ones that are going to be paying the consequences of a failed dam removal, so no one is hoping for the benefits of dam removal more than landowners,” he said.

The reservoirs, which held more than 45 billion gallons in Copco and Iron Gate lakes alone, were not used for irrigation, only hydroelectricity, according to the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, a nonprofit formed to oversee the dam removal project.

Even though it is about an hour’s drive from the closest former dam site, Scott Valley is part of the Klamath River watershed, so ranchers and farmers there are concerned that if the fisheries don’t recover as planned, they could face even harsher water restrictions.

“That’s where it comes back to us,” Johnson said. “We know from experience that whenever there is a problem with the Klamath fishery, farming and ranching in the watershed get blamed.”

Ranchers in Scott Valley love the wildlife and open spaces and understand they have to take care of their land, aquifers, and streams or they won’t continue to be good habitat for anyone or anything, she said.

“Scott Valley is our home,” she said. “We could never replace it. Our roots are here—generations of roots. It’s a wonderful place to raise kids. It’s rural, it’s safe, and it’s where Dave and I learned how to work hard and how to produce food that people need.”

She said she wonders what will happen if more family-run ranches are forced out of business.

“I worry about our national security. I worry about our independence as a nation and what will happen to our citizens’ quality of life,” she said.

Not Enough?

Ann Willis, California regional director for American Rivers, one of several environmental groups that advocated a free-flowing river, told The Epoch Times that the dam removals alone “will not be enough to resuscitate and sustain a healthy river.”

The group is now shifting its focus to “improve the health of the entire watershed” by restoring habitats and tributaries of the Klamath River, according to its website.

“We applaud the landowners who have voluntarily reduced their agricultural water use by 30 percent and hope their efforts serve as a model to their community,” Willis said via email. “We encourage landowners and regulators to continue the difficult work of adapting to increasingly extreme water years.”

Johnson said she anticipates more disagreements with such groups in the future.

“They showed their cards right there. They’re absolutely coming after every drop of water they can get,” she said. “That’s what I see coming down the pike.”

Irrigated Agriculture

Craig Tucker, a natural resources policy consultant for the Karuk Tribe, told The Epoch Times that in some ways the dam removals on Klamath River are unrelated to irrigation because none of the dam reservoirs was tapped for agriculture.

“That’s kind of unique on the Klamath,” Tucker said. “It’s not always the case, and I think it’s one reason why Klamath dam removals were successful because we’re not disrupting irrigated agriculture.”

He said the ranchers should get behind the project.

“It is in the self-interest of ranchers and farmers to support the dam removals and help restore the fish because the more fish there are the fewer regulatory burdens there will be for everyone,” he said.