Keith Law: New garden doesn’t make sense in a drought
Merced College’s trustees have given a green light to the construction of a 10-acre botanical garden on the campus.
It’s a beautiful idea and everyone loves botanical gardens. But Merced College is not the place to build one.
We’re in a drought and the long-term future promises to hold substantial water shortages.
Some facts about our water:
We use more water than is collected from rainfall. According to a recent study conducted by between UC Davis and UC Merced, five times more water is allocated than is available. NASA researchers believe we have a one-year supply of water left in our reservoirs.
We use more groundwater than is replenished. Wells are running dry, and deeper wells contain more concentrated minerals. Parts of Merced County are sinking as much as 12 inches a year as water from ancient aquifers is removed.
Jay Famiglietti, director of the University of California Center for Hydrologic Modeling, claims “we may be only a few decades away from hitting bottom.”
In the Central Valley, nearly 500,000 farm acres went unplanted last season due to surface-water shortages. This season will no doubt be worse.
Global warming is expected to affect the Central Valley in at least two ways: More and more severe droughts; less water from snow. Scientsts predict the snowpack could diminish by 80 percent by the end of the century.
Gov. Jerry Brown has called this drought an emergency, and we all should consider it a crisis.
As one of two higher education institutions in Merced, faculty should be leading the way toward changing behavior involving water use. This would include the realization that it is a bad idea to build a botanical garden in the middle of a county suffering from water shortages.
No matter how efficient its irrigation system, the proposed garden would still increase the use of water if there are any plants that require water during arid times of the year.
There is a proposal to improve water practices on other parts of the campus to make up for the garden. Yes, we should lower water use everywhere we can, then save that water – not introduce a botanical garden.
The college staff says the botanical garden would be used to train students how to save water. Even if true, we will be using more water to teach people how to use less.
We live in one of the parts of California most in need of being saved from this drought. A new garden teaches the wrong lesson. The proper lesson is not to use plants for decorative purposes.
There are several arboretums and two world-class botanical gardens within a two-hour drive of Merced, so it isn’t necessary for us to build one.
As an alternative, Merced College might consider a smaller garden devoted exclusively to drought-resistant plant varieties. We could use it as a training ground for professionals and homeowners who want to be good stewards of our environment.
Law is a Merced resident and Merced College employee.
This story was originally published April 17, 2015 at 5:01 PM with the headline "Keith Law: New garden doesn’t make sense in a drought."