Владельцы ранчо в Калифорнии призывают штат снять ограничения на воду, поскольку наводнения затопили Северный округ

Authored by Brad Jones via The Epoch Times,

Cattle ranchers in Siskiyou County who are under a drought emergency order imposed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom in January now find themselves in the midst of a massive flood.

A torrent of water from heavy rains, called “atmospheric rivers,” in February has inundated the farms and ranches in the Scott River and Shasta River valleys, where the governor’s executive order—which authorizes the California State Water Resources Control Board to enforce emergency regulations and place water-use restrictions—remains in effect.

Newsom has renewed the drought emergency for several years in a row, and the farmers and ranchers say it is high time for the governor to end it.

The Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on Feb. 18 to declare a local flood emergency.

Siskiyou County Supervisor Jess Harris (District 1) told The Epoch Times that Siskiyou is the only county that is still under the drought emergency order, despite raging floodwaters.

“It’s the most asinine thing I’ve ever seen,” Harris said.

“The state has a drought emergency on us, and we have a flood emergency at the county level.”

The county states in the flood emergency proclamation that heavy rain-induced ground saturation has damaged infrastructure; strained local government resources; “drastically affected” residents and their livelihoods; and caused “daily landslides, rock falls, and roadway undercutting.”

The floodwaters have breached irrigation canals; washed out roads and city streets; and inundated the Shasta, Scott, and Klamath rivers with debris, according to the county, which has also warned of flooding along the tributaries of these rivers with warmer weather and runoff from snowmelt on the way.

The governor’s office did not respond directly to an inquiry, deferring to the state water board.

Drought Emergency?

In May 2021, Newsom declared a drought emergency in several counties throughout California, including the Klamath Basin, citing critical low river flows. He extended emergency regulations to all 58 counties in October 2021, urging all Californians to voluntarily conserve water by reducing consumption by 15 percent, according to the state water board.

Nearly three years later, on Sept. 4, 2024, the governor rescinded many of the order’s provisions because of significant precipitation and improved conditions in several watersheds, particularly in the Sierra Nevada range.

“However, the order specifically found that continued action is needed—including the authority to impose future curtailments—to abate harm to native fish in the Klamath watershed,” the water board said in a Jan. 7 statement. The board declared that the emergency regulations were readopted to set minimum flow levels for both watersheds and authorize water-use restrictions if water flows were to fall below such levels.

Flooding in Scott River Valley saturates ranches and farms in Siskiyou County, Calif., after rains in late December 2024. Courtesy of Mel Fechter

The water board maintains that the emergency regulations are necessary after “years of dry conditions” that are still affecting native fish such as the coho salmon, Chinook salmon, and steelhead trout.

The Scott and Shasta rivers are key tributaries in the Klamath River watershed, crucial water sources for Siskiyou County and habitats for “federally and state-threatened coho salmon” that are of “immense economic, ecological and cultural importance” to Native American tribes and the surrounding communities, the release states.

Precipitation in the Klamath watershed improved significantly in 2023 and 2024 following drought conditions in 2021 and 2022, when flows in the Scott and Shasta rivers dropped below minimum levels set by the board from 2021 to 2024. Although rain and snowfall are above average so far this year, conditions could change, according to the water board.

“Successive years of dry conditions have severely impacted critical fish populations … requiring us to take measures to protect their very existence,” E. Joaquin Esquivel, state water board chairman, said in the statement. “Continuing the emergency regulation enables us to maintain minimum flows in the Scott and Shasta rivers and to help with the recovery from long-term drought impacts.”

Flooded fields in Scott River Valley in California’s Siskiyou County after heavy rains in late December 2024. Courtesy of Mel Fechter

If the state is wrong, and it turns out that there is ample water for farming and ranching, the governor’s refusal to lift the emergency regulations will needlessly hurt the local economy for another year, Harris said.

“They’re risking the livelihoods of thousands of people,” he said. “A 30 percent water-use curtailment is a 30 percent reduction in income for ranchers because you have 30 percent less acres that you can hay. That’s like asking the government to take a 30 percent pay cut. They have no issue with applying that to the ranchers and saying that the lack of fish is all their fault.”

Without Newsom’s executive order, the water board would not have the authority to impose water-use curtailments, and the state would be violating adjudicated water rights, Harris said.

“They’re using this emergency declaration to trample on those water rights,“ he said. “This is the only way that they can continue to keep their foot on the throat of the rancher.”

It is ironic, he said, that the state removed three dams in Siskiyou County, the only county that is still under a drought emergency declaration during a flood.

A saturated pasture in Shasta River Valley in Siskiyou County, Calif., Feb. 5, 2025. Courtesy of Lisa Mott

Klamath River Dams Removed

The demolition of the hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River last year—the reservoirs of which were not used for irrigation—were supposed to increase flow and reduce water temperatures to save the fish, Harris said.

When asked if the dams’ demolition has helped to increase water levels, especially with the recent deluge from the winter storms, Ailene Voisin, a spokeswoman for the state water board, told The Epoch Times in an email that the dam removal restored about 400 miles of vital habitat for salmon and other species that are essential to the river’s ecosystem and the communities that depend on them.

But because the dams blocked the natural flow for more than a century, Voisin said, it is “going to take some time for the species to recover,” and “removing the dams did not address the issues impacting its tributary streams.”

Voisin also said in the email that the water board has “no comment” about whether the ranchers and farmers have a legitimate case for eliminating the drought emergency regulations.

Theodora Johnson rides a horse on her ranch near the Scott River on May 8, 2024. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Ranchers Resist Restrictions

Theodora Johnson, a spokeswoman for the Scott Valley Agriculture Water Alliance, and her husband, Dave, told The Epoch Times that ranchers in the Scott and Shasta valleys are calling for an end to the emergency drought proclamation.

As sixth-generation ranchers, the Johnsons said the continuous state-imposed water restrictions for livestock and irrigation are threatening their livelihoods.

“It’s a third good water winter in a row,” Theodora Johnson said. “So if we’re having winters like these and they can’t lift emergency restrictions, then I can’t see there ever being a year when they would lift them.”

Water is running at about 10 cubic feet per second in a “dry gulch” on some leased land near the ranch, Dave Johnson said.

“Everybody that lives here says they never see it run,” he said.

The Scott River and creeks surrounding their ranch are overflowing and many of the hay and alfalfa fields are saturated and submerged, the Johnsons said.

Swollen Shasta River in Siskiyou County, Calif., on Feb. 5, 2025. Courtesy Lisa Mott

Debbie Bacigalupi, who runs a cattle ranch with her parents in Siskiyou County near Yreka, California, told the Epoch Times that the flood has wreaked havoc on the land.

“We have waterfalls in places we’ve never had waterfalls before,” Bacigalupi said.

One pond that has been used for decades will be empty for the first time this summer because a levee broke from all the floodwater, Bacigalupi said.

“There’s so much water, it’s absolutely ridiculous that we are in an emergency drought order still,” she said. “We have so much flooding and erosion. Our ditches—not all but many—are overflowing and breaking. We’ve got dams that are breaking. It’s so bad. It’s thousands of cubic feet going downstream every second.”

Floodwaters erode the banks of a pond at the Bacigalupis’ ranch in February 2025. Courtesy Debbie Bacigalupi

State agencies, including the water board and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, met with local farmers and ranchers to discuss what are known as Local Cooperative Solutions (LCS) on Feb. 25, according to Harris, who attended the packed meeting of about 40 farmers and ranchers in a small room at Etna City Hall.

“The farmers and ranchers are tired of the state water board’s opinions and want to see facts that their curtailment of water is actually helping anything,” he said. “In a year with so much water, it’s hard to fathom being curtailed another year.”

They are “frustrated” at the irony of being asked by the state water board to cut back on water usage during a flood, he said.

The LCS plans are the state’s way of “forcing the farmers and ranchers into doing what they want,” he said.

Signing an LCS can mean ranchers have to put meters on their wells “and jump through a bunch of hoops” to be allotted a certain amount of water up to a certain point or face a possible 95 percent reduction by September, Harris said.

“The state water board has got this down to a science,” he said.

Debbie Bacigalupi and her mother, Donna, tend to cattle at their ranch in May 2024. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Bacigalupi said her family has not signed an LCS agreement with the state and does not intend to.

“Where’s the evidence so far that any of this stuff has worked?” she said. “These people who aren’t boots on the ground and [don’t] live in the area are coming up with these solutions, and yet they don’t have to live with the consequences of these plans.”

The LCS plans are not truly “local cooperative solutions” because the restrictions are dictated by the state, she said.

California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot, who has advised Newsom since 2019, said in a video interview at an Agri-Pulse Food & Ag event in Sacramento on July 11, 2022, that voluntary plans were needed to break out of “the endless cycle of regulation and litigation” over water rights adjudicated in federal courts.

He said Newsom wanted to create “more of a shared approach to managing water” to protect fish and water quality and avoid litigation.

“So we came up with these voluntary agreements,” Crowfoot said. “And they’re enforceable but they’re called voluntary because they’re bringing everyone together.”

Flooded ranchlands in the Shasta River Valley in Siskiyou County, Calif., on Feb. 5, 2025. Courtesy of Lisa Mott

Surveying the Flood

Lisa Mott, a Montague resident who grew up on a ranch in the Shasta Valley region and has photographed the swollen Shasta River, told The Epoch Times that she has not seen this much flooding since 1997.

“The Shasta River is well beyond the flood stage in these two storms that we had,” she said.

The first storm hit in late December more than a week before the governor renewed the drought emergency order, and the most recent one hit in the first week in February, Mott said.

“Even the Klamath River was flooding,” she said. “The last storm definitely raised the river quite a bit because we were already saturated from that December storm.”

The Shasta and Scott rivers have been targeted because the state is going to need more water flow for the Klamath River now that the dams and the reservoirs are gone, Mott said.

Mel Fechter, a photographer in Scott Valley, said “it was storming like crazy” the day before the meeting in Etna.

“I feel so sorry for these farmers and ranchers,” Fechter, who has talked to many of them about the state water restrictions, said.

“I just don’t understand where these people are coming from,” he said of the state agencies.

“I’ve lived here almost 50 years now, and this is the most standing water I can remember seeing all throughout the valley—not just the flood, but the standing water,” he said.

Submerged ranchland in the Scott River Valley in Siskiyou County, Calif., on Feb. 24, 2025, after heavy rains and snowmelt. Courtesy Mel Fechter

Competing Bills

Meanwhile, competing legislative bills—Assembly Bill 430 and Assembly Bill 263—dealing with water restrictions were introduced in the state Legislature this year.

AB 263, introduced by Assemblyman Chris Rogers (D-San Francisco) on Jan. 16, would keep the emergency regulations in place in the Scott River and Shasta River watersheds “until permanent rules establishing and implementing long-term instream flow requirements are adopted for those watersheds,” according to the bill text. It would also make “legislative findings and declarations as to the necessity of a special statute” for these watersheds.

AB 430, introduced on Feb. 5 by Assemblyman Juan Alanis (R-Modesto), would require the state to conduct a comprehensive study to reassess the economic effects of the emergency regulations each year in these two watersheds before a governor could renew them. It would also require the state water board to make the study available to the public on its website no later than 30 days before the date of the renewal.