FRESNO,
Calif. — President Obama arrived in the heart of California’s parched
farmland on Friday afternoon to offer tens of millions of dollars in
federal assistance to the state, where the lack of rain and snow this
winter has led to the severest drought in its modern history.
Meeting with farmers and ranchers around Fresno — where electronic signs along highways flash entreatingly to drivers, “Serious drought. Help save water”
— Mr. Obama pledged $183 million from existing federal funds for
drought relief programs in California. Though the announcement won
cautious support in this region, Mr. Obama also pressed ahead with the
more difficult task of enlisting rural America in his campaign on
climate change by linking it to the drought.
The
president was accompanied on his tour by the state’s top Democrats, a
show of solidarity that underscored the emerging partisan battle over
the management of the drought in the nation’s most populous state and
the source of half of the country’s fruits and vegetables.
Seated
at the center of a horseshoe table at a water district building where
he met with community leaders, Mr. Obama spoke of the difficulties of
dealing with the drought in the face of California’s intricate water
politics, which have traditionally cleaved along regional lines and have
often become mired in epic court battles.
“Water
has been seen as a zero-sum game: agriculture against urban, north
against south,” he said.
“We’re going to have to figure out how to play a
different game.”
“We can’t afford years of litigation and no real action,” he added.
Mr.
Obama also spoke of climate change, drawing links to the drought as
well as hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean. Mr. Obama announced that he
would ask Congress for $1 billion in new funding for a “climate
resiliency” program to help communities invest in research, development
and new infrastructure to prepare for climate disasters.
Visiting
the farm of Joe and Maria Del Bosque, where one field that would have
normally been planted with melons now lies fallow, Mr. Obama said, “A
changing climate means that weather-related disasters like droughts,
wildfires, storms, floods are potentially going to be costlier and
they’re going to be harsher.”
Gov. Jerry Brown, who accompanied the president, declared a drought emergency
a month ago. But many communities had already imposed water
restrictions, and more than a dozen remain at risk of running out of
water within a couple of months. For the first time in its 54-year
history, the State Water Project, the main municipal water distribution
system, said it is unable to provide water to local agencies, including
farmers.
Water
scarcity has forced cattle ranchers to sell portions of their herds.
Farmers have left hundreds of thousands of acres of agricultural land go
fallow.
Democrats
and Republicans have been dueling with separate drought bills. Much of
that rivalry has focused on the Central Valley — not only because it is
California’s breadbasket, but it also represents, in an overwhelmingly
Democratic state, a rare battleground between Republicans and
conservative Democrats.
Ryan Jacobsen, executive director of the Fresno County Farm Bureau
and a Fresno Irrigation District board member, said that Mr. Obama’s
announcement was “a great start, though it won’t fix long-term issues.”
The Central Valley, he said, needs major upgrades in water
infrastructure and needs the federal authorities to release more water
from the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta, north of here.
“Mother
Nature is not the only reason we’re in this mess,” he said, expressing
skepticism about linking the drought to climate change. “California has
gone through dry periods in its history, and instead of focusing on
something that is questionably tied to this or not, we just want to
focus on the immediate drought.”
After
Speaker John A. Boehner met with farmers in the Central Valley last
month, House Republicans passed emergency legislation that would provide
more water to the valley by allowing federal and state officials to
keep pumping water out of the environmentally fragile San
Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta.
Democrats
say the bill was a water grab and would hurt environmental protections.
Early this week, California’s two Democratic senators, Dianne Feinstein
and Barbara Boxer, proposed an emergency drought bill that would offer
$300 million in aid, including provisions that would simplify the
purchase of water from other areas and that would allow the diversion of
more water from the delta to farmers.
Friday’s
announcement was the Obama administration’s second effort in two weeks
to sell its climate policies to rural America. Last week, after passage
of a sweeping farm bill, the White House announced the creation of seven regional “climate hubs” aimed at helping farmers and rural communities respond to the risks of climate change.
Agriculture
Secretary Tom Vilsack, who joined Mr. Obama here on Friday, announced
the move at a White House news conference. The Obama administration is
increasingly deploying Mr. Vilsack, a farmer and former Iowa governor
who wears cowboy boots and speaks with a Midwestern twang, as an
emissary to bring the climate change message to farm country.
Despite
Mr. Vilsack’s appeal, selling climate change to rural red-state
lawmakers may be an uphill battle. Representative Devin Nunes, a
Republican who represents Fresno, was not invited to Friday’s event. He
attributes California’s water crisis not to weather, but to interference
by the federal government.
“Global
warming is nonsense,” Mr. Nunes said. He criticized the federal
government for shutting off portions of California’s system of water
irrigation and storage, and diverting water into a program for
freshwater salmon. “There was plenty of water. This has nothing to do
with drought. They can blame global warming all they want, but this is
about mathematics and engineering.”
Of Mr. Obama’s proposal to create a $1 billion climate resiliency fund, Mr. Nunes said, “We want water, not welfare.”
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