Craig Elmore’s family history is the stuff of Westerns. His grandfather, John Elmore, a poor son of a Missouri preacher, arrived in California’s Imperial Valley in 1908 and dug ditches to deliver water to homesteaders.

Thanks to his marriage to a citrus magnate’s daughter, reputed good fortune as a gambler and business acumen, he amassed the Elmore Desert Ranch, part of roughly 12,000 acres that two branches of the family still farm.

All that land in the blazing-hot southeastern corner of California came with a huge bonanza: water from the Colorado River. In 2022, the present-day Elmores consumed an estimated 22.5 billion gallons, according to a Desert Sun and ProPublica analysis of satellite data combined with business and agricultural records. That’s almost as much as the entire city of Scottsdale, Arizona, is allotted.

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The Colorado River system, which supplies 35 million people in seven U.S. states and Mexico, nearly collapsed last year. Even after a wet winter, it is dwindling due to overuse and climate change. But no matter how low its reservoirs sink, the historic claims of these families and all of Imperial County place them first in line — ahead of every state and major city — for whatever water remains.

waiting for hours to be bused to fields, then back again. Meanwhile, Imperial had the highest unemployment rate in California in September, 19.7%, compared with 4.4% statewide.

Imperial Valley United

When the Great Depression hit, a flood of Dust Bowl “Okies” and other poor white and southern Black migrants arrived, upending the “whites first” racial caste system.

A few years later, during World War II, anti-Asian sentiment reached a fever pitch. FBI agents forced more than 100 Japanese community leaders from their homes in February 1942, including a Buddhist priest and a Christian minister. Then on two nights in May of that year, the entire Japanese population of Imperial County — hundreds of successful farmers, merchants, religious leaders and their families — was removed from their homes to be forcibly relocated to the Poston incarceration camp in Arizona. Some of the valley’s first farmers were among those imprisoned.

rally was held on the Brawley high school football field. A resolution was adopted petitioning the president, Congress and governor of California and protesting the return of any Japanese people to the Imperial Valley. Speakers at the rally condemned local churches for trying to aid their former neighbors.

There were financial motives behind the xenophobia. Powerful white shippers and growers organized the event, telling the local chamber of commerce that two people from the Poston camp “had appeared in town, announcing their intention to return to Brawley.” About 2,500 more former Imperial Valley residents of Japanese ancestry were due to be released.

A broad coalition of community groups dubbed “Imperial Valley United” vowed to permanently exclude Japanese people from the valley. Today, one Japanese-American farmer is listed on the Imperial Valley Vegetable Growers Association roster, and it’s not clear if he used any water last year.

‘Prior perfected’

Imperial officials lobbied for years for massive federal infrastructure to “tame” the Colorado and diminish the impact of drought and flooding. Growing southwestern cities wanted a steady water and power supply, too. It took until 1935 to complete what was then the world’s largest dam, in Boulder Canyon, Arizona.

wrote “yellow sheets,” denouncing Imperial landowners’ long-standing violation of the 160-acre homesteading limit and the irrigation district’s delivery of massive amounts of river water to them in violation of the 1902 Reclamation Act. He successfully intervened in a case challenging the water district, and California’s highest court eventually ruled the 160-acre irrigation limit had been illegally ignored.

But Elmore’s father and other major farmers fought back. In 1980, the Supreme Court ruled that the farmers could keep their large tracts and all the river water being delivered to them. The court ruled that the Imperial Irrigation District held “prior perfected” rights acquired from private irrigation companies under state law, neither of which had imposed limits on how much acreage could be irrigated. A framed copy of the decision hangs on Elmore’s ranch office wall.

U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston that year slipped language into a bill supposedly designed to reform the Bureau of Reclamation that permanently exempted Imperial County farmers from the 160-acre limit.The number of farmers continued to shrink. From the 1960s to the 1990s, hundreds of smaller Imperial County farmers — largely descendants of Filipino migrants and other people of color — were decimated. U.S. Department of Agriculture research led to sturdier tomatoes that could be transported long distances, including from Mexico, which slashed demand for tastier but more perishable tomatoes grown by more than 500 Filipino farmers in and around Niland, in the valley. The North American Free Trade Agreement sent even more farming across the border, wiping out more small Imperial operations.

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Sending water to cities

It was the Elmores who first cost their fellow growers some water. In 1982, Craig Elmore’s dad sued neighboring farmers and the irrigation district. The Elmores’ land sat at a lower elevation than nearly every other farmer’s fields, and they alleged that aging canals and overwatering by some had caused costly flooding on their fields.

The courts found that the irrigation district and its farmers were wasting water. The settlement agreement forced the district to partner with the urban Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which supplies 19 million residents in coastal counties. In exchange for a cut of Imperial’s water, Metropolitan Water District funded the lining of the earthen All-American Canal and miles of side ditches.

As cities and suburbs drew millions more residents, Imperial’s power continued to erode. In 2002, President George W. Bush’s Interior secretary, Gale Norton, threatened to take some of Imperial’s water for cities; a year later, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein bluntly warned Imperial Irrigation District officials that if they didn’t agree to transfer 300,000 acre-feet per year to suburban San Diego and the Coachella Valley, the U.S. Interior secretary might strip away their “senior” water rights. It would be the largest transfer of agricultural water to an urban area in the nation’s history, and the irrigation district would be paid handsomely by urban customers.

A thin majority of the district’s board approved the deal. Most farmers have now accepted that they, like everyone else, have a limit on how much water they can use. But with urban areas wielding far more political power, some are not sure there will be farming here in another century.

‘We adapt’

Ralph Strahm, who with his brother and nephews used an estimated 81,000 acre-feet of water last year, the second-highest amount in the district, thinks people’s need for drinking water may win out over the need for food in most politicians’ minds.

He and other prominent growers are willing to seasonally fallow some fields for two months during the summer, if they’re paid to do so and keep their “senior” river rights. The federal government is weighing whether to award Imperial Irrigation District and local growers more than $600 million not to farm certain fields.

Andrés, the historian, says that approach is what led to most of the county’s impoverishment. He has his own vision for the valley’s future: The irrigation district and farmers should sell less-productive or unused land and pay out of their own pockets to ensure they use water efficiently. Public funds and training should instead support the diverse group of small farmers, he says.

But Elmore says hefty public subsidies and possible private investments are needed for farmers to grow crops more efficiently, then be paid to possibly transfer the conserved water elsewhere or leave it in the river’s massive reservoirs.

Elmore’s son is the southwest region farm manager for Water Asset Management, a Wall Street investment firm whose mission is to tap into a potential trillion-dollar water transfer market. Elmore has spoken at WAM’s annual meetings, and like another top vegetable farmer, Jack Vessey, now leases and farms acreage that WAM has bought in the valley.

Elmore is building support in the irrigation-district for funding a $4.4 million pilot reservoir on his land, which could ultimately hold water for farming or for sale. The private sale of water outside the valley is currently prohibited, but that could change if public funding for conservation dries up.

However it shakes out, the Elmores and Imperial’s other dynasties will likely continue profiting from the Colorado River.

“I’m optimistic,” Elmore says in a throaty rumble. “Every time there’s a change, we adapt. If there’s one thing the Imperial farmer has learned how to do in these harsh conditions, it’s to adapt.”

Elmore, 66, says he’s thinking about who will benefit long term: “My grandson is 6 years old. I’d like to see him go into farming.”

Janet Wilson is Senior Environment Reporter at The Desert Sun. Her reporting was supported by funding from Stanford University’s Bill Lane Center for the American West. Nat Lash is a news applications developer at ProPublica.

We incorrectly identified Jay Famiglietti in an earlier version of this story. He is a global futures professor at Arizona State University.

This story is co-published by The Desert Sun and ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.

Source: desertsun.com