Wine & Spirits - October 2021 - 14

Redwood
Valley
Potter
Valley
Drought
Update
Restrictions Hit the
Russian River Watershed
By DAVID DARLINGTON
I
N THE FACE OF A HISTORIC
two-year drought, the California
State Water Resources
Control Board delivered a daunting
one-two blow to farmers. On
August 2, 2021, it ordered 1,500
water-rights holders to stop diversions
from the upper Russian
River, and the following day, the
board issued a similar emergency
directive for 5,700 rights holders
in the Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta watershed.
The second announcement
aff ected all of California's Central
Valley-not only the nation's
most productive agricultural area
(containing three million acres
of farmland), but the source of
two-thirds of the state's drinking
water and 80 percent of its commercial
salmon fi sheries. The
110-mile-long Russian River, for
its part, is arguably California's
most important winegrowing
watercourse, sustaining hundreds
of vineyards throughout Sonoma
and Mendocino Counties.
The Russian River's upper
watershed, reaching from RedWATER
RESTRICTIONS WERE PUT IN
PLACE IN AUGUST ON THE UPPER
RUSSIAN RIVER AND SACRAMENTOSAN
JOAQUIN DELTA WATERSHED.
L AKE
ME ND O C I NO
L AKE
S ON OM A
Dry Creek
Valley
R U S SIA N
R I V ER
Russian
River
Valley
Alexander
Valley
except the wastewater have been
curtailed in one way or another. "
Given that scenario, vine growers
throughout the North Coast
have had to alter their farming
practices. " We've been cultivating
since March, eliminating cover
crops we normally would have
mowed and left, in order to get
rid of competition with the vines
and seal moisture in the soil, "
said Pauli. " If we can continue
to have enough to drip on an
extended schedule, I think we'll
get to veraison and far enough
down the road to ripen the fruit. "
Reducing crop load is another
wood and Potter Valleys in the
north to Alexander Valley and
Healdsburg in the south, is fed
by Lake Mendocino, a manmade
reservoir northeast of Ukiah. On
August 1, the lake's water level had
fallen below 26,109 acre-feet (8.5
billion gallons), a threshold that
triggers the halt of downstream
diversions, so as to preserve water
for " health and safety " purposes
as well as federally protected fi sh
populations. The " lower " Russian
River extends from its confl uence
with Dry Creek, west of Windsor,
to the Pacifi c Ocean near Jenner.
Its primary storage source-Lake
Sonoma, northwest of Healdsburg-is
four times the size of
Lake Mendocino. Both are managed
(the latter with Russian River
Flood Control) by the Sonoma
County Water Agency, which distributes
water throughout that
county and parts of Marin.
Sonoma's water customers are
almost exclusively urban. Some
of them sell water in turn to vineyardists,
but during a drought,
drinking water has higher priority
than crop irrigation. In any
case, based on fl ow calculations
and hydrologic modeling, curtailment
of more than 300 water
rights in the lower Russian watershed
were issued on August 10th.
Everywhere, violators are subject
to fi nes of $1,000 per day.
In the recent past, the Russian
River has twice been subject to
water-rights curtailments-during
the droughts of 1976-77 and
2014-15. Never before, though,
have " senior " rights-awarded
before 1914, when permits began
to be required-been suspended.
" For this to happen is pretty
unprecedented, " confi rmed Janet
Pauli, a Potter Valley winegrower
who also chairs the Mendocino
SCARCE WATER AT LAKE
SONOMA, JUNE 2021
14
WINE & SPIR IT S OCTOBER 2021
County Inland Water and Power
Commission. " [Our water] runs
the gamut from riparian rights
to appropriative rights to the
Potter Valley Irrigation District
to a contract with Russian River
Flood Control to treated wastewater
from Ukiah. All of them
likelihood. " The last thing you
want is for crop to be stressed to
the point where you can't ripen
the grapes, " said Pauli. " Then you
lose everything. "
Many, if not most, vineyards
have alternative sources of water,
such as ponds or wells. But with
an unusually hot summer following
the drought, some of those
have been going dry. " From here
on out, the only water available
for agriculture is from alternative
sources-groundwater or
a fl ood-control contract, " said
Devon Jones, executive director
of the Mendocino County Farm
Bureau. " Those who don't have
[any] are most at risk. "
That cohort included Glenn
Mc Gourty, a Mendocino County
supervisor whose district includes
Lake Mendocino and Potter
Valley. The former U.C. Davis
Extension local farm advisor,
McGourty grows marsanne, roussanne,
viognier and arneis along
the Russian River between Ukiah
and Hopland.
Nevertheless, he said, " I'm
fi nished. I don't have a well, so
I can't irrigate. The good news
is that we're close to harvest, so
hopefully the crop will make it
without all the leaves falling off
the plants. But it's been a tough
year. There's some heat damage
and shriveling, so the crop will be
light, with lower yields, early ripening,
high pH and low acidity. "
" Winemakers can fi x those
things, "
McGourty
expected.
" Other than sunburn, the fruit is
pretty clean. There's just not a lot
of it. " ●
P
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MAP BY LISA LOK, PHOTO BY GEORGE ROSE
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Wine & Spirits - October 2021

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