Hetch Hetchy

I am a San Joaquin Valley Farmer, making my major water source the Tuolumne River. As a farmer, many of you may not realize that my crops feed people all over the state of California. On our behalf, if the Raker Act is signed into a law, a big portion of the water will be diverted to the city of San Francisco, creating multiple reasons affecting us, the farmers, but also the people of California as well. The farmers of San Joaquin Valley need approximately 257,000 acres of farmland, which means we need about 3,600 acre-feet of water for daily consumption for our crops. The normal flow of the Tuolumne River is 4,700 acre-feet/day and during flooding periods 40,000-60,000 acre-fee flow down the river daily. This leaves only about 1,100 acre-feet of water that we are allowed to share and divert with the city and San Francisco, and as such an expanding city, they’ll need a lot of more water than that. If the Raker Act is signed, little by little the amount of water diverted will increase, and as farmers who make a living off of our crops we are concerned that we will not have sufficient water for irrigating our crops.
San Francisco is a city growing rapidly, and their water demands need to be met, will be constantly increasing meaning all the water of the Tuolumne River will have to be eventually diverted to their water supply, leaving all the farmers with insufficient irrigation capacities. Even though all of that sounds like it only affects us as farmers, it carries on and eventually affects people all over the state of California. The San Joaquin Valley alone produces about 250 different crops and has about 25,000 farms. We are the leading farming region in the country and probably in the world. Without proper irrigation farmers will not be able to produce as many crops, resulting in less food, also known as a food shortage or better yet, famine. Whether the city of San Francisco wants to admit it or not, they depend on us. Without our crops, there would be no