Lemoore in a dustup over water restrictions - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Lemoore in a dustup over water restrictions

SAN DIEGO — California’s three-year drought and political water wars have forced water agencies to pump less water to homes and farmers, resulting in large swaths of fallowed farmland around Naval Air Station Lemoore.

Severe water restrictions this year in the state’s agricultural San Joaquin Valley have turned once-lush farmland surrounding the busy jet airfield into bare, abandoned, dusty fields, which naval officials say could threaten flight operations, health and air quality.

The Navy leases about 12,000 acres of the 18,000-acre federal property at the master jet base for agricultural uses, which brought about $1.3 million into the Navy’s national resources management program, Navy officials said. Fields are usually farmed for wheat and cotton, air station spokeswoman Melinda Larson said.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the largest water manager in the Central Valley, in February took a historic step by ordering no water allocations for agricultural users because of critical dry conditions. In recent months, the federal agency has opened the tap slightly, but allocations remain far below average.

Lemoore air station gets its water from the Westlands Water District, which pipes water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta into the west part of valley. But federal cuts in the water supply, driven in part by the continuing drought and diversions to protect threatened fish, and local cutbacks by water agencies that draw from groundwater supplies and aqueducts, have reduced the supply to many farmers who depend on the water to irrigate their fields, including those who lease the Navy land.

All that bare, browning acreage has alarmed Navy officials, including Capt. James Knapp, Lemoore’s commander.

“Agriculture surrounding the base is conducive to flight operations because it provides an encroachment buffer,” Knapp said in a statement, “and acts as a control against rodents, bird strikes, grass fires, tumbleweeds, debris and dust with subsequent increased release of the spores causing Coccidioidomycosis,” a fungal disease known as “Valley fever.”

Abandoned fields turn dry and dusty, which can affect flight operations, officials say. The open lands often attract wildlife, which, in turn, poses greater hazards to jets and other flight operation, Knapp said. “Birds and other animals can interfere with jets that take off and land on the twin runways.”

As of late August, the air station reported three BASH, or bird aircraft strike hazards, each involving red-tailed hawks, and two near-misses, he said. The three birds were hit by the aircrafts’ landing gear, but the planes were undamaged.

While some dust storms aren’t unusual in the region, officials worry about the impacts if water restrictions continue, since dustbowls typically occur in the fall and winter months. “It’s just a matter of time,” Larson said.