REDDING, Calif. – Farmers under the Bella Vista Water District were relieved to find out they would be receiving 100 percent of water allocations, but are still paying off costs from drought years.
Robert Nash of Nash Ranch in Redding said their main crops are hay, grains, and pumpkins.
"The pumpkins need a lot of water, and if we have alfalfa hay, that takes a lot of water," Nash said.
The irrigation for his crops come from the Bella Vista Water District and a pond on his ranch.
"We store rainwater, rain run-off there, it’s by permit, and there’s about 400 acre feet there that we can store and use, as well," Nash said.
Nash added that in 2015 Bella Vista Water District was not granted any water for farms, forcing him to cut back on irrigation.
Although it has been a wet winter, there is still a long road ahead to recovery for farmers.
"Irrigation is expensive, and we’ve had a couple years of drought.
So we’ve gotten used to not irrigating, and so, it’ll take a couple years to get things ramped back up into an irrigated crop rotation," Nash said.
However, he’s optimistic about the upcoming year and will be planting 20 percent more crops than previous years.