The Green Desert

This program is made possible in part by the California Farm Water Coalition food grows where water flows learn more at farmwater.org additional funding was provided by the Family Farm Alliance protecting water for western irrigated agriculture (tense solemn music) (tense solemn music continues) - And the completion of the All-American Canal, I think it is the greatest thing that ever happened in the Imperial Valley.

- This canal not only serve what is now known as the Yuma Valley in Arizona, but also the West Mesa of Imperial County, and also the Coachella Valley, with an area of approximately a million acres in California alone.

- Thank you.

(crowd applauding) (tense solemn music continues) (tense solemn music continues) (tense solemn music continues) (tense solemn music continues) (tense solemn music continues) - [Terrance] Absent any proactive measures, yes, we could run outta water.

- [Pat] That river system collapses, and you watch the dominoes start falling.

- [Andrew] I really think we're heading for a cliff.

We really need to make some more monumental cuts.

- [Pat O'Toole] Agriculture's in a tough spot, and the pressures are building and building.

The reality is we're now in competition for the big resource.

- [JB Hamby] Supplies are nowhere near what the current demands are.

- [Jack] Sleepless.

There are nights it's very hard to sleep.

There's dire consequences ahead.

- [Pat O'Toole] Yeah, the food supply is at risk.

Scary risk.

Now we're competing for the same resources.

Water being the main one.

- [JB] Without that water being delivered to us, we're all toast.

- [Pat] I think Arizona, California, Mexico, will have a very rude wake up call.

(tense solemn music) (water pattering) (train chugging) - The Coachella Valley is about six to eight weeks ahead of any type of crop.

So if you plant grapes, it's about six to eight weeks earlier than the San Joaquin Valley.

But it comes with a lot of challenges.

In the Coachella Valley, we are always in a drought.

(tense solemn music continues) Because we're in a drought, we have been planning for this for over 100 years.

- Two sources of water.

One is the ground water, the aquifer, but most of our water is from the Colorado River, the Coachella Valley Canal, which comes into reservoirs, settling ponds that we have, and that's why we're able to farm here the way we do.

(tense solemn music continues) - In the late 1800s, farmers came here, and they found this abundant supply of water here, and they saw these huge artesian wells.

They were 20 feet high, so they started planting these type of varieties.

They also put in about 400 wells The artesian wells were dropping and they needed a new source of water.

Back in the early 1930s and 1940s, when they were bringing in Colorado River water, developing the All-American Canal, there were many farmers here that didn't want the Colorado River water.

They were pumping fresh, clean water from our aquifer for free and didn't wanna pay for it.

Luckily enough, the majority of the farmers figured that for the long sustainability of farming here, that bringing in the Colorado River was worth it, even though they were gonna have to pay for not only the water, but for the construction of the All-American Canal.

- Yeah, that's what brought farming to such a large scale to both these valleys.

(gentle solemn music) (farmers chattering) Belk Farms goes back to 1979.

Cauliflower, celery, that type of thing, spinach, which we still do most of those crops, and it's slowly transitioned to bell peppers being the main crop that we grow We have to have a high quality product that will survive the transportation.

The desert valleys, and you would group Yuma into that as well, produce the vast majority of winter vegetables for the country.

Leafy greens, as well as you know, broccoli, cauliflower that get shipped all over the country.

(gentle solemn music continues) (machinery whirring) (gentle solemn music continues) - The unique part about the Imperial Valley is we're in the middle of a desert, and this garden was created in the middle of a desert through Colorado River water.

Without that water, we wouldn't be able to produce all the vegetables we do, that basically between, you know all the areas of the desert Southwest, use Colorado River water to produce over 90% of the leafy greens consumed in the United States in the winter months.

- Well, it's interesting when you go to the Imperial Valley 'til you get there, it is as bleak a desert as it could possibly be, and you see the effect of water.

- This is a huge linchpin in America's food supply chain.

It is thus significance.

It is everything that has to do with food security in America.

This valley produces somewhere between 60 and 70% of the leafy greens consumed in North America for roughly six months out of the year.

If you're having a wedge salad at a steakhouse in Manhattan in January, it's incredibly favorable that it came from here.

- We're looking at a system that was developed over 100 years, you know, essentially to fill a void in our ability to consume.

The miracle of Imperial Valley is both the scope, the ability to produce a lot of different things, and the ability to deliver at a time when America doesn't have alternatives for those crops.

- A lot of times you'll hear people say, 40 million people rely on the water on the Colorado River.

If you come in the wintertime and you look at where my produce that I grow and my neighboring farmers grow, packing sheds will be shipping lettuce and broccoli to New York, to Florida, to Seattle, you name it, all over the country.

The number's much higher than 40 million that's reliant on Colorado River water.

- Vessey and Company was started in 1923.

We'll be celebrating our 100th anniversary here shortly.

(bright uplifting music) We grow lettuce, romaine lettuce, leaf lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and a few other items.

(bright uplifting music continue (tractors chugging) (engine rumbling) (machinery creaking) (machinery whirring) (gentle solemn music) - Imperial County's the largest gravity fed irrigation system in the world.

From the Hoover Dam through the All-American Canal.

(gentle solemn music continues) It comes into what's called the Imperial Unit.

The Imperial Unit is a series of delivery canals.

There's three arterial canals.

We'll open these slides here, and the water will run via gravity down the field a certain amount of wets.

Once it gets to a certain amount we'll shut these gates here and move to the next set.

So we have very little spill.

There are accidents that happen occasionally, but generally speaking, the water will just creep to the end of the field, and that'll be the end of it.

- And our irrigation district has a series of drain canals.

Those drains run to either the Alamo or the New Rivers and the Alamo and the New Rivers end up in the Salton Sea.

(tense solemn music) - My name is Pat O'Toole.

I'm president of the Family Farm Alliance.

We represent irrigators in the Western states.

Something's happening with climate.

Everybody understands it.

And testimony that I've done to Congress and the issue really on agriculture generally, we're willing to implement the flexibility we've gotta have to survive.

We have the biggest snow pack in the upper part of the Basin I've ever seen in a lifetime.

Will it end up at the dams, who are totally dependent on that water?

We're gonna find out this year, because the hydrology is different.

- It was a banner year.

Only 2011 in recent times has been bigger.

It's 150% of average.

Lake Powell and Lake Mead together, we'll see about an additional 6 million acre feet in storage over this water year.

The source of the Colorado River is snow melt, essentially from the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and Wyoming.

90% of the water comes from that source.

- The effects of climate change have made this area much warmer than it was before.

It gets hot very quickly.

The winds pick up and the snow evaporates.

It never turns to water.

Just the evaporation alone would prevent it from being able to come back to what it was before.

(instruments chiming) - In the last 20 years, it's been down 20%, and over the last 10, it's not recovered at all.

We're still in this drought.

- Most scientists along the Colorado River are not calling what we're experiencing droughts.

Their new term is aridification.

These lower amounts of inputs are not droughts.

It's a new normal.

- There are two major storage reservoirs on the Colorado River.

One is Lake Powell, right above Glen Canyon Dam.

(tense solemn music) And one is Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam.

(tense solemn music continues) Between those two reservoirs, there's almost 60 million acres feet of storage, and it is the balancing of those two reservoirs and Lake Mead, primarily for the Lower Basin, that regulates the water supply to Arizona, California, and Mexico.

Nevada's intake sits above the dam, so we're in a much more comfortable position should things go awry, than Arizona and California.

- A few years ago, Las Vegas put a third intake in.

They tunneled underneath Lake Mead, just right out here behind us, about two miles, and set a third intake at the bottom of Lake Mead.

Even at dead pool, when water can't come out of Hoover Dam by gravity, Las Vegas would still have access to their third intake.

(tense suspenseful music) (water rushing) (insects chirping) - It's 895 foot of water above sea level is dead pool, and that means there would not be enough water in Lake Mead for water to go down river to Lake Mojave and to Lake Havasu, and then down to California and Mexico.

- Dead pool means it's the point past which no water can flow from Hoover Dam through gravity means.

It's just stuck there.

My view of what dead pool would be if we reached it, it would mean a total system failure.

Absent any proactive measures, yes, we could run out of water.

- I think for purposes of those of us that live dependent on Lake Mead we should expect it to not come back to the levels that we saw in 1983 when the spillways were open.

- Over time, if we have done our due diligence in terms of global warming, the system will recover.

- In the late '90s, early 2000s, Lake Mead was almost full.

From that point on, a drought started.

You know, they called it a 10 year drought.

That drought has now been going on for over 20 years.

It's just been going every year.

It's been a step down every year - It's really like a checkbook at Lake Mead.

If we keep writing checks for water delivery, we have to have deposits, and that's from snow.

It just simply means more cuts.

- The river's been over allocated, and we've been living off that 15 year storage, and the decisions need to be made to curtail some of those water uses in order to build back those reservoirs.

Because those reservoirs are critical, not only for my farm, but also the whole power grid on the West Coast.

- The hydropower that's generated from both Lake Powell, Glen Canyon Dam, and Hoover Dam, it serves on the order of 2 1/2 million to 3 million people.

However, the better value, I would say, of the hydro power is it provides stability on the grid.

As the signal is presented to it in real time, it adjusts the output from the turbines.

- If you think about why the Hoover Dam and the Boulder Canyon Act came to be, that created Hoover Dam and the All-American Canal, it was because Imperial County with Yuma was looked at as the bread basket of our country during the industrial revolution Remember, the Northeast, just the majority of the population was frozen.

We find that if we're grow a population down here or we grow a country, we can't just eat six months outta the year and hang out for the other six.

We have to figure out how to supply that constantly.

- Hoover Dam was built first.

Primary objective was for flood control.

(bright energetic music) - [Narrator] Flooding fertile valleys along its banks, destroying farmlands, homes and cities.

- That was to allow folks that were downstream farming to be able to sustain their farming and not get wiped out by every Colorado River flood.

Imperial irrigation district wouldn't exist without the Colorado River and Hoover Dam, and that's a big part of why we built it.

- [Narrator] The non-surplus food fiber and forage crops grown on lands nourished by water from Hoover Dam, find ready markets throughout the nation.

While snow covered lands lie idle, winter fruits and vegetables grown in the warm southwest with Colorado River water are shipped to dinner tables across the nation.

(gentle solemn music) - So the IID Board is the trustee of the water rights for the Imperial Valley.

My great-grandfather came from Texas in the middle of the Depression, came here on the back of a freight train with $10 in his pocket.

He began by digging ditches for IID and doing some other work for some local farmers.

Coming from that legacy and understanding of the value of the water to the Imperial Valley, it was the appropriate time to have a change in leadership.

(gentle solemn music continues) So the Imperial Valley is located just on the border with Mexico and about 120 miles east of San Diego.

And so back in the late 19th century, there were some farsighted people who saw the opportunity.

Colorado River could be diverted through Mexico up across the border, and then divert that water and spread it across the valley to create some of the most productive farmland in the country.

So they were successful in doing so.

(machinery clanging) (engine revving) - We are located about 100 feet below sea level where we are now Back before the Civil War, surveyors were able to look at the surrounding mountains in this valley and see that the sea had once been higher than the level of the valley.

So they knew the Colorado flowed to the ocean at that point, they could get water to this valley without any power.

(water rushing) (tense suspenseful music) - There was a flood between 1905 and 1907, where the entire contents of the Colorado River actually poured through the Imperial Valley, creating the Salton Sea.

(water rushing) (tense suspenseful music) (train chugging) (horn blowing) All of the water that comes to the Imperial Valley and the Coachella Valley starts at the Colorado River.

It begins at Imperial Dam, which is the diversion works.

Water goes several ways from Imperial Dam.

There's one side of it that's the Gila Gravity Main that goes to basically Yuma, Arizona, some of the districts over there (tense suspenseful music) Another is the continuation of the Colorado River, although in a smaller size at that point.

And then the other side goes to California to serve the Bard Water District the Imperial Irrigation District and the Coachella Valley Water District.

There's de-silting basins that take all the heavy silts out of the water, puts that back in the Colorado River, and delivers that water into the All-American Canal, which then goes on its way to the Imperial Valley.

(tense suspenseful music) And then also to the Coachella Valley, there's a turnout called the Coachella Branch of the All-American Canal that delivers water to the Coachella Valley.

(water rushing) (gentle solemn music) The Imperial Irrigation District holds the largest rights to river water, 3.1 million acre feet.

For all intents and purposes, pretty untouchable, and that includes IID's present perfected rights.

100% of our water comes from the Colorado River.

(tense ambient music) - Well, first of all, let's talk physics.

If the drought gets so bad that no water can pass through Hoover Dam and go downstream, you can take that water right, you can frame it and you can admire it every day.

It's totally useless.

(water rushing) (gentle solemn music) - [JB Hamby] So IID has 2.6 million acre feet per year of present perfected rights, which are basically sacrosanct, and those have been adjudicated in the United States Supreme Court multiple times.

- I believe it's mismanagement by the Bureau and the federal government.

There is a series of compacts, there's a series of laws in place.

No one wants to make difficult decisions.

- You have law after law, layer after layer after layer, and at the end of the day, who cares?

- I don't see a 100, 120 year old rule of the river staying put.

The US government's essentially "Look, we're not gonna cut off Arizona and Nevada and let California have every... You know, that's just not gonna fly."

- I completely understand their reluctance to have their water taken away from them.

It's their livelihood.

They are an intricate part of our agricultural chain.

However, that being said, if you are facing a crisis, then it would behoove you to become a part of the solution.

- I'm an irrigator at the top of the Colorado River.

We have 1880s water rights.

But when you understand the critical importance of the Lower Basin production, that's our winter vegetables and fruit.

They're under incredible stress because of the calculations on the Colorado River.

(machinery whirring) (gentle solemn music) (machinery clanging) As a farmer rancher from a family that's been at our place since 1881, six generations on the ground we wanna survive.

- The estimate is 40 million people in this country depend on this river system, and that includes agriculture, it includes municipal.

- So in 1922, the framers of the Colorado River Compact originally envisioned there would be, like, something, like, 16 or 17 million acre feet per year in the Colorado River.

Nowadays it's either at 13 million acre feet, 11 million acre feet, 9 million acre feet.

However, in the last few years we've been getting even less than that.

There's so limited storage at Lake Mead and Lake Powell that we're just one or two very bad years away from just getting to dead pool.

So it's in everybody's interest to use a little bit less to make sure that we don't have nothing, because without that water being delivered to us, we're all toast, Imperial Valley in particular.

- Sleepless.

There are nights it's very hard to sleep.

I understand the Colorado River is in a dire position, but I've got over 100 people that work with me every day on this ranch.

Multi-generational from a grandfather to his son, to his son.

You know, looking in the mirror trying to decide what I'm gonna do in the next three to five years and how we're gonna get through this.

There's dire consequences ahead.

- I really think we're heading for a cliff.

We really need to make some more monumental cuts.

- Where are we gonna get our winter vegetables?

Where are we gonna get our lettuce?

Where are we gonna get our spinach?

Health issues and how important vegetables are in a healthy diet.

And we're doing everything we can in our power to conserve as much water as possible.

What we've done over the last 10 years to conserve water, we've switched a lot of our crops from gravity flow furrow irrigation what we call it, to sprinkler irrigation.

(sprinklers hissing) We sprinkle the crop the whole way through from germination water to harvest.

Most of our fields, we believe, have saved anywhere from 1/2 foot to one acre foot of water per acre.

It could be drip irrigated, but we'd use about the same amount of water as we do right now.

(water sloshing) Our farm uses approximately 55,000 acre feet of water on a yearly basis.

- Because of the amount of water storage capacity we have, it has worked up 'til now.

However, given development fully in the Lower Basin, this will continue to be tight.

Layer on that a severe drought, and we have a major problem.

(engine revving) - So the Coachella Valley is a little different than Imperial Valley.

We're similar in terms of climate and neighbors in our region here on either side of the Salton Sea They have three different sources of water.

They have the Colorado River, they have this natural aquifer that's pretty robust.

And then they also have State Water Project water.

- Well, we have the aquifer here.

Certainly an option.

If for some reason Colorado River water would be cut to the point where we would need to supplement.

- You know, sometimes things have to get worse before they get better and we may be in that junction right now.

Most areas, like in Imperial Valley, they don't have this aquifer.

- But the problem is, is Coachella Valley isn't really the biggest place in the world to produce what is necessary to sustain a country.

If you go back and look at the history of why Hoover and the All-American were built in the first place, you know, Congress did that in the teens and the '20s for this place that we're standing in now.

I mean, we weren't alive when that happened.

So what were they thinking?

They had quite a bit of foresight to think about why this area deserved that opportunity and that insight.

- [Participant] Imperial Irrigation District has 1/5 of all priority to the Colorado River, which is pretty amazing.

Anything we have left over can be sold to LA and/or San Diego.

(gentle solemn music) - And this All-American Canal was completed in 1949, which not only gave lifeblood to the Coachella Valley and its agriculture.

The Palm Springs area would not be here with 120 golf courses and a vibrant tourism community without the All-American canal.

Every time a farmer is using water, it is replenishing the aquifer.

The water districts have wells that suck that water up, which is relatively clean for us, used for domestic use.

(gentle solemn music) Seems like farming is in our blood.

You know, I'm third generation farmer and this is what we do, this is what we love.

We grow approximately 5,000 acres in cities, including Coachella, Thermal, Mecca, Oasis.

(gentle solemn music continues) Labor and our standards has put us at a disadvantage.

We're paying $15 an hour, and Mexico's paying $15 a day.

It's hard to stay in business.

- [John Vallet] We are heavily regulated with our organic program.

We have audits.

We question how much Mexico with their organic program is being audited.

(tense introspective music) - We're a survivor.

There used to be 18,000 acres of table grapes and today there's probably 4,000 acres of table grapes.

And Mexico, when I started out here, there was no Mexico.

So they've killed us with the labor and et cetera, et cetera.

They've done it not only with that, they've done it with the lemons that we have here.

We have beautiful lemons here.

The same thing with Argentina and Peru.

- Farmers from California and Arizona have left the United States almost driven out to Mexico and to South America to produce 'cause they want to be farmers.

We don't want the cartels of Mexico driving food policy and ultimately people policy.

- [Anthony Bianco] COVID has taught us is that we need to be self-sufficient in our foods.

- This country used to be a major exporter of agriculture.

Now we're a net importer.

(tense ambient music) (traffic bustling) (gentle solemn music) - Yeah, a majority of our workforce currently are day labor, we call it, they cross the border daily from Mexicali, Mexico.

We're just north of Mexicali, Mexico, which has a population of over 1 million people.

Probably about 70% of our labor crosses daily to work.

They have what they call a mica.

They have a card that allows them to cross daily, but they have to go back home every day.

(farm workers speaking Spanish) (farm workers speaking Spanish) (farm workers speaking Spanish) - Yeah, I grew up here, my house I live five miles down port of entry.

I cross into Mexico to go eat dinner sometimes.

I was born and raised on the border.

So I probably don't notice it as much as other people might.

(bright uplifting music) (farm worker speaking Spanish) - And it's very important for California and the United States to recognize that there is a difference.

There may not be a difference between the taste of the grapes between Mexico or the Coachella Valley, but there is a difference in the people that are producing them.

(farmer speaking Spanish) - No.

- No?

Okay, okay.

(speaking foreign language) (farmers chattering) - We're here today to do a trial with Belk Farms.

We're gonna do a experiment with a couple of varieties of green bell peppers.

We're gonna put 'em in with a crew and use their transplanter to help us put 'em in the field (farmers speaking Spanish) - So now in southern California where we're at, it'd be too hot to grow them in a good climate.

So you want to have a little cooler climate so the plants could survive rather than getting heat stressed.

So we sent 'em up north to King City, where they have a big, huge nursery over there.

After about 60 days in the nursery, they come down from King City, and they're able to be transplanted.

(machine chugging) (metal clanging) It's a lot of regulations where workers can't work in the heat.

You know, if it's above 105, they gotta take breaks every hour and make sure there's water.

So we have to work at night or else we can't get them in.

(machinery booming) (gentle solemn music) (machinery chugging) (machinery buzzing) (gentle solemn music) (train thudding) (machinery chugging) (water sloshing) - Yes, in the Coachella Valley, we are leaders with regard to water usage and water efficiency.

Most everything's under drip.

We do grow some crops under sprinklers.

A 40 acre field of bell peppers, you're looking at probably six to eight acre feet of water, probably three to four gallons to produce one bell pepper.

- Well, the reality is that we've reached the era of limits in my view.

Freedom of expression and of opportunity is gone.

Now, we're competing for the same resources, water being the main one.

- It will be a very difficult several years in Southern California.

(water sloshing) (gentle solemn music) - Colorado River water has a lot of the micronutrients that these crops need not only to survive, but to prosper.

(birds singing) - The dates were one of the first crops that were brought in from the Middle East a long, long time ago.

Dates, grapes, and figs were mentioned in the Bible.

Are very popular with retailers, because they have a very long shelf life.

Dates is a natural snack with natural sugar.

It's like God's candy.

(machinery chugging) (gentle solemn music) (metal clanging) (machinery beeping) (machinery whirring) (tense solemn music) (machinery beeping) - I work for Anthony Vineyards under general supervisor, and I oversee their date operation.

80% of the ranches, roughly 1,800 acres that I oversee are organic.

(machinery beeping) (tense solemn music) 90% of the groves that we have are on a drip system.

Makes it easier to manage, control, direct the water right to the tree itself.

89% of the water that we use is canal water from the Colorado River.

(bag crunching) (tense solemn music) Sort the fruit and give it a rough pack out so that they can do more process at the packing shed where, you know, it's fumigated, it's washed.

The fumigation process is a freezing process.

(gentle solemn music) - The elephant in the room right the water cutbacks and how it's gonna affect farming.

- Well, farming can definitely survive if there are severe cutbacks.

The farming industry isn't the only one using the water.

We're using a lot of this in replenishment.

We're replenishing our aquifer with tens of thousands of acre feet a year.

- The aquifer in this end of the valley has actually risen over the last 15, 20 years.

If there were drastic cuts, we still have water, even if they were cuts.

Drastic cuts, I can't answer that question.

- [Pat Mulroy] Water in a climate change world is all about adaptation.

Power is mitigation and mitigating the effects of carbon Water is how do we adapt to a very changed environment?

- With the way Lake Mead and Lake Powell are dropping, it presents a big, big problem.

(tense ambient music) - About five years ago, it was busier.

The lake was obviously higher.

It was probably up halfway up this ramp.

We were launching kayaks on the ramp.

It was about 70 feet, 70 to 80 feet higher than it is today.

Right now it's about 25% of the full pool.

I think it's been continuous for, you know, 20 some years.

If you look at snow data, it's gone down each year it seems, and the winters have just been less and less intense.

(tense ominous music) The marina has had to move a lot They've had to move the parking lots.

They've had to move the docks.

They've closed down one of the ramps.

(tense ominous music continues) - Well, in 2018, when I started working here in October of 2018, it was about probably 50 feet higher than it is today.

As the water continues to drop over the years, we've had to continue to make changes.

This marina floats and is held together by cables on each side of the river.

We have to tighten, drop the anchors, and constantly be moving things as it goes down.

Water was at one point, up to those hills, long time ago.

- They didn't expect any of this would ever happen and that's why they built the dam the way they did, 'cause they didn't expect it to go so low.

- So they've almost allocated and promised more water to everybody.

They've over-committed what's even available.

(gentle wistful music) - [Max LePekas] The water that gets released, it goes down to Lake Mead.

They vary the releases per acre feet of what is the demand of the power generation for the dam.

- We can store almost four times the average inflow into this river system in these reservoirs.

That was by design because we knew the variability.

We knew there were droughts, and the idea is store it when it's good and use it when it's not so good - The West would not have been settled without these dams.

(bright uplifting music) (water sloshing) - It is an extremely important river.

Without this river, these populations would not be sustainable in the arid West.

- [Narrator] At Imperial Dam and Desilting Works, 300 miles downstream from Hoover Dam, Colorado River water enters river size canals to irrigate farmlands in California and Arizona.

The All-American Canal system carries part of the Colorado's flow westward to the Yuma, Imperial and Coachella Valleys.

When water reaches its farthest point on this canal system, it has traveled nearly 500 miles after leaving Hoover Dam and has required 10 days to make the trip (gentle wistful music) - The Colorado River, well, it's 90% of Southern Nevada's water, 1/3 if not more, of Southern California's water.

(gentle wistful music continues) It is 60% of Arizona's water.

It fuels some of the most productive agricultural fields in the country.

Some of the largest food producers for the country goes through national parks and scenic wonders.

(uplifting music) - So if we stop using water to produce food, we destroy wildlife, we destroy our own food supply, we change the entire visual look of what the West is.

- That river system collapses, and you watch the dominoes start falling.

(water sloshing) (gentle solemn music) - Imperial Valley is a large producer of food for everybody in America It's pretty important that they probably need to have the water first.

- It's a matter of water rights.

So those farmers were there first.

They have the senior water rights.

We all want food security.

We all want food grown in this country, not imported.

That means water needs to be used for irrigation.

Metropolitan Water Authority came later, LA came later.

They have other sources of water other than the Colorado River.

They are able to make that work.

- It's imperative that we supply water, but it's also imperative that the people who are farming and the people in charge of all that, they're farming things that make sense to farm in the desert with water that's basically being brought in.

(tense solemn music) - My name's Andrew Leimgruber.

I'm a fourth generation farmer.

My family moved here from Switzerland and homesteaded.

I'd like to say that my farm has been on the cutting edge and very progressive in conservation methods, and over the years we've just continued to utilize technology to try to be the best stewards of this water that we can.

We understand it's a precious resource.

I deal with it every day.

- They use a lot of water down there, and they grow types of crops that don't lend themselves to a more efficient irrigation system.

So it's gonna be a big challenge - We don't grow peppers in this valley, but they grow peppers in Coachella Valley.

Why?

Because the ecosystems are different.

We can't do it and make it work.

But in the Coachella Valley it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for them to grow alfalfa or grass, whereas down here it does.

- Blythe, Yuma, Imperial Valley have a lot of alfalfa and stuff that is a real, real high volume of water to produce it.

You get seven to eight cuttings a year and you have to water every time after that, flood irrigations.

- It's because of the length of the growing season, they get huge yields.

If you're gonna grow it anywhere that's probably one of the best places to grow it.

- You don't get that anywhere else.

You can't replace it in Nebraska or Kansas or in any other growing region.

And it fuels our dairy industry, especially the California dairy industry.

- [Leimgruber] So because of our climate being dry and arid, it's an excellent region to grow alfalfa.

We're able to cure and preserve the nutrients in our hay much better.

We don't have the rain events that destroy hay.

A lot of people will say, you know, "Well, let's keep the produce and let's get rid of the hay and the forage crops."

But they work in unison.

The hay allows us to do the deep watering to leach the salt from our soil.

You know, alfalfa's a legume, so it fixes nitrogen from the atmosphere.

We don't have to put commercial fertilizers on alfalfa.

- And not understanding the role of alfalfa, it's the baseline of the pyramid of the food supply.

(gentle solemn music) (tractor chugging) - The reason we really grow the alfalfa is it provides us with a crop rotation.

After you grow lettuce and leafy greens year after year on the same piece of ground, it's not good for the soil, frankly.

It's starting to tire out, if you will.

So we know it's time to switch to grow a hay crop for four years, and then we'll go back to leafy greens right after that - We're now looking at hay stocks in the United States.

The lowest with incredible demand, both because of storms and drought.

- Livestock has to be fed.

I understand that.

But perhaps it can be done in areas that are in West Texas, parts of Arizona.

- No, no, we're not competing with alfalfa growing up in other areas.

Without our alfalfa, we produce so much alfalfa that it feeds so many animals that provide milk, beef.

- If you want milk, if you want butter, if you want those things we take for granted in the dairy section of the grocery store, then pounding on the Imperial Irrigation District because they're growing alfalfa, makes little if any sense.

- Do you like, you know, protein that's as healthy as anything produced in the world, that's all comes from having an alfalfa base.

- You know, if you're in Las Vegas and you go to a steakhouse, that cow probably ate some alfalfa from the Imperial Valley Just without the Imperial Valley alfalfa, I'm not sure what the price of beef or other items that are tied to a feed would be.

(gentle solemn music) We've already conserved a lot of water over the past 10 years.

We're gonna have to do our part and conserve more.

Is it different crops?

Is it different methods?

We're doing that now.

Now we'll continue to do that.

Evaluate what we're growing, how we're growing it.

(gentle solemn music) - We have done so much to support the desert Southwest with our water transfers in the history.

But it has gotten to a point where these areas around us, Los Angeles and Orange County and Phoenix and Vegas, we believe it's kind of time for them to kind of do a little bit more.

- Phoenix, Denver, in my view, I call 'em the unsustainable megalopoli.

So clearly Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver.

Phoenix just turned down 100,000 houses, 'cause they can't find water.

- You're gonna have to augment the system and bring water in from elsewhere.

- Pipelines from every system are being discussed.

There's discussions on the Mississippi, on the Columbia, the Red River, which floods a lot.

You know, that would be a scenario.

- Moving water, it sounds great, doesn't it?

We got the Mississippi or the Missouri, it's flooding.

Let's move the water here.

That's expensive.

There's a lot of environmental consequences to it, and it would take 20, 30 years to even put it in place.

It will take more water for population to continue to increase.

Where will that water come from?

From conservation still, but that at some point dies off.

You've done about all you can do Storm water recapture in some local communities makes perfect sense.

Other sources could in fact include de-sal plants.

(gentle solemn music) - But the growth that, for example, Las Vegas is asked to go from 2.2 million to 3.8 million.

That doesn't seem sustainable to me, and it seems like it's being done in a context of demonizing the food supply to ensure the growth.

- Where we use most of our water is outside.

We began to pay our customers to take grass out.

No more evaporative coolers in southern Nevada.

Pool sizes have been limited.

There can be no decorative grass on street scapes whatsoever.

For us, the only thing that matters is what we use outside.

If it hits the sewer system, it gets recycled and reused.

We recycle 93% of our wastewater - Las Vegas has a great track record and really is a model for urban water conservation.

Since 2000, the population has gone up by 50%, while the water use has gone down by 30%, and that's all due to this aggressive conservation.

- [Pat Mulroy] Metropolitan is building the largest wastewater recycling facility in the country right now, if not the world, and they're going to be right where we are.

They're going to treat the waste and rather than send it to the ocean, they're going to recharge their groundwater basins with it.

- Las Vegas, you know, is doing some wonderful things in terms of using the water they have, but they also want to demonize farmers and take that water for further growth.

People don't want to give up food production, agriculture, open spaces, wildlife for growth When you ultimately come down to the question, what is the West that you want or the West that you deserve, people are on the side of, we want to have sustainability, and growth is defining itself by un-sustainability right now.

Growth is not the top of the list of opportunity in my view.

What we have to do is find sustainability and balance.

(gentle introspective music) (gentle solemn music) (gentle solemn music continues) (gentle solemn music continues) (gentle solemn music continues) This program is made possible in part by the California Farm Water Coalition food grows where water flows learn more at farmwater.org additional funding was provided by the Family Farm Alliance protecting water for western irrigated agriculture for more information and how to rent or buy the feature length film visit greendesertfilm.com