One of California’s leading voices in rice farming is warning the State Water Resources Control Board that rejecting a set of voluntary agreements for its Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan would “generate turmoil.” Bryce Lundberg is a vice president at Lundberg Family Farms and serves as a member of the State Board of Food and Agriculture and as chair of the Northern California Water Association.
Testifying recently at a lengthy water board hearing on the plan update, Lundberg explained that dedicating 55% of the water that flows into the Delta to fish would “be devastating to cities and rural communities; farms, fish and wildlife; hydropower and recreation.” He called that approach “a product of old science that hasn’t worked.”
Lundberg went on to argue that it would unravel collaborative projects underway and “lead to fighting, instead of fixing.”
But Lundberg never passes up an opportunity to insert a little humor into a tough conversation. This time he ended with a song to the tune of Eric Clapton’s “Cocaine” that touts the benefits of on-farm floodplains to support salmon.
It's easy to be "in the know" about agriculture news from coast to coast! Sign up for a FREE month of Agri-Pulse news. Simply click here.
During the hearing, board chair Joaquin Esquivel blasted a former staffer who quit in protest to the agreements in 2022. The staffer, Max Gomberg, told reporters Gov. Gavin Newsom was pressuring the agency to approve the agreements, and he argued the “whole water rights system sits on a foundation of racism and violence.”
Esquivel said Gomberg, as a midlevel manager, never had access to such conversations with the governor and asserted that the board is “trying to build trust in a very difficult discussion and decision.”
