From the Desk of Steve Sprinkel

F O R A G E R

VENTURA COUNTY WATER DATA

28 September 2022

Not knowing enough about how our water arrives at the shower head or kitchen faucet is a main challenge to knowing what to do to assure the water keeps flowing. We begin and end the day depending on this liquid mystery. All the reporting we get about the drought has an effect similar to the sound of a needy child shurkling the bottom of a finished smoothie with a dry straw. He can’t believe it’s gone.

“It’s done, son.” All that’s left is a wistful noise.

We look up, thinking to have another, only to hear the grim cashier tell us that the smoothie bar has closed. If only we had known, we would have ordered one to go, or perhaps a whole reservoir brimming with refreshing Mango Mandate delight. 

If only we had known. The WE should always be in all-caps as we resolve to navigate our way out of this rather dire circumstance. There have been quite enough recent do-or-die trials to overcome. Maybe you didn’t take January 6th personally, perhaps because you thought it didn’t happen. 

The pandemic was a perfect preparation in terms of cooperation. When Covid first set in, masks were ordained as a way to keep the virus at bay. Plenty of patriots thought masking was a preamble to tyranny, however they had probably never been to Japan, where they have been wearing masks for over 100 years, since the 1919 flu pandemic. Most of us trusted in one another and kept down the incidence of disease. Covid experts are sure masks reduced deaths by a factor of two. No, they didn’t own a mask factory.

There are a few brave souls who think those aerial photos of Lake Mead have been photoshopped so we have to let our lawns die and buy gravel from Governor Newsome’s evil cousin to cover the front yard with. You never heard of Newsome Sand and Gravel? They’re big. But the mudflats are true evidence. We are running out, at least of ready access, to the most precious commodity on earth. If we but knew what to do with what we have left, a plan would be better than moving to Arkansas. Believe me, I worked in Arkansas one summer, and the south is plenty wet and plenty green and nice, but the air itself is full of water and though you might be a bit fatigued by the heat and the dry right now, you may not be well suited to the humidity along the Tex-Arkana. 

Having Casitas reservoir to stare at on our way to Carpinteria is not a bad thing. The lower the lake, the more concerned we become. Casitas is a constant visual illustration of our poor preparation and management of water. If the lake fills up again (a dubious prospect, but still possible) the brimming will only be momentary. Back in the late 1980’s, when there were many fewer straws shurkling it, Casitas was way down. I was working in a lemon grove on Casitas Pass Road back then and we irrigated with tall 20 foot risers with a big Rainbird on top. This we did to water all the clover cover crop in the orchard and to wash off the dust that the mealies and aphids enjoyed on the yummy lemon leaves. The irrigation was like a 12 hour rainstorm every two to three weeks. Moving these fifty sprinklers was tedious, usually accomplished at the end of the day when you were already bagged, frequently collapsing into a gopher hole while carrying a heavy pipe and tugging hoses enraptured by clover. Normally the process was only necessary between May and October, but the drought made extra work necessary because no rain fell out of the sky. We got six inches. We were going to drill a well but then it started raining. Now the well would cost five times as much to drill. 

When it starts raining again, we should still be planning for the next drought. 

Water Data’s executive director, Theodora Holt has a commonly favored reaction when she learns a new data nugget about Ventura Water: “That’s amazing!” She says.

It’s “amazing” that water use in Ventura County rose ten percent while population rose thirty percent over the past fifteen years. This shouldn’t imply we want to build more because now that ten per cent is ten per cent of nothing. You don’t have it any more. I had heard, and it amazed Theodora, when we corroborated that there is scant difference between water use on a field of broccoli or a field of town homes. Sand and Gravel people argue that, in terms of water use, planting fetching townhomes on the picturesque cabbage lands is, to sport a term, a “wash”. Meaning equal. Meaning, bring more sand and gravel. However, one should not employ the same math in Camarillo, where much building  has been done on hillsides that were virgin chaparral, implying that new water will be used to green the manscape, rather than the old water once used on the agricultural plain below. Ventura city’s infill townhome frenzy is built on commercial ground long abandoned. 

If you love math, you are going to nuggetize the revelations of Ventura County Water Data. If you don’t love math you may be even thirstier than before you started reading this. Now you are becoming thirsty, so thirsty. Go to the sink. Ooh. No water. Go to the corner lottery store for a cold bottle of Fiji. All out. Come back. Sit down. Drink this data. Try it over ice, with a slice of lemon. Enjoy the relief only knowledge can convey. Ahh!