More water is coming to Valley farmers, and they can thank Joe Biden for it | Opinion

Food grows where water flows.

So goes the saying on signs I have seen in farmlands in Fresno, Tulare, Merced and Kings counties since I moved to the San Joaquin Valley 10 years ago.

The signs, and others like them, are protests against cuts to water deliveries to growers in those regions. More often than not, farmers were angry with whoever was California’s governor. Since the Republican party has been stuck in super minority status, California’s governors have been Democrats, namely Jerry Brown and now Gavin Newsom.

Despite persistent droughts, they often get blamed for whatever water cuts are happening, along with Fresno congressman Jim Costa and his colleague from San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi. They also are Democrats.

Former Republican Rep. Devin Nunes of Tulare did a lot to stoke the farmers’ anger over the years with his nonstop attacks on the “radical left” and its supposed environmental agenda that would ruin agriculture. Who backed the environmentalists? Democrats, Nunes would argue.

It was always curious to me how Nunes would rail constantly while Valley farmers and dairy owners posted some of the highest earnings, year after year, among agricultural producers in the nation. Fresno has had its share of being the No. 1 farming county in America; so has Kern and, most recently, Tulare.

That proves how enterprising Valley farmers have been despite the droughts.

Opinion

I bring up this history to provide some context to an event that occurred earlier this month at the San Luis Reservoir. That is the big man-made lake that Valley drivers see when they take Highway 152 out of Los Banos and head to Monterey or the Bay Area.

Officials with the federal Bureau of Reclamation and the Delta-Mendota Water Authority celebrated the final approval of a project to raise the height of the B.F. Sisk Dam, which forms the reservoir, by 10 feet. That will capture 130,000 acre-feet of new water — some of which will flow to Valley farmers as part of the Central Valley Project. Among those to get supplied is the Westlands Water District, on Fresno County’s west side.

And just who should get credit for the dam raising? Joe Biden, for one. His administration has provided $35 million for the work through the infrastructure act that Biden championed.

Another $60 million for the project comes from the WIIN Act, a landmark, bipartisan law whose staunch advocate in the U.S. Senate was the late Dianne Feinstein from San Francisco, also a Democrat.

The bureau notes that this marks the first major water-storage project in California since 2011.

Republican opposition

The infrastructure bill was formally known as the Invest in America Act. When it came up for a final vote in the House of Representatives, not a single California Republican supported it — including Nunes, Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, David Valadao of Hanford and Tom McClintock of El Dorado Hills, near Sacramento

All but Nunes remain in Congress today and speak regularly of the need for Valley farmers to have more water.

Apparently, partisanship was more important in that 2021 vote than actually providing a water project for Valley growers. The bill passed because of Democrat support, including Costa.

After the act was passed, he worked on the dam-raising project with Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton.

Strengthening Sisk Dam

The Sisk Dam is also to undergo an earthquake-strengthening project. The federal government is spending $100 million for that work. The money also comes from the infrastructure bill.

Roads, bridges, airports and dams don’t happen by themselves. They need backing by Congress — ideally, in a bipartisan way. Whether a Republican or Democrat president proposes it, the point is to get the work done to improve the nation’s facilities.

So while partisans like Nunes can demagogue an issue, in the case of the Sisk Dam, it was Democrats — chiefly, Biden — who dedicated money for the enlarging.

It is only fair to give credit when it is due — and to highlight the reality that defies hyper-partisan rhetoric.