Water and Power - Southern Water, Southern Power - page 149

climate, utilities stand to lose more ground before public utility commissions and environ-
mental, conservative, and consumer advocate coalitions. 10
But who else uses southern water and energy? Following national trends, energy utilities
and the agricultural sector share the top two slots as the largest water users. Nationally, all
types of agricultural irrigation-water withdrawals amounted to 128 billion gallons per day
in 2005, second only to the energy sector. 11 In the Southeast and after the 1950s drought,
many people in the agricultural community assumed that enhanced water supply techno-
logies, such as massive Corps reservoirs or USDA-funded farm ponds, would save them
in the future. Some farmers adopted irrigation technology in Georgia and Florida after the
1950s drought, but many continued to think irrigated farming was not an economically
viable prospect. For example, one agricultural researcher concluded that Florida citrus ir-
rigation was not profitable for growers unless they used irrigation technology systematic-
ally and followed proscribed watering schedules. Additionally, portable pipes, pump guns,
and groundwater pumps were expensive and labor-intensive to operate and refuel. But by
the mid-1960s, irrigation had changed. Florida growers experimented with systematic ir-
rigation systems and were rewarded with improved yields that justified the expense. Fur-
thermore, Florida growers adapted efficiency-minded microsprinkler irrigation systems pi-
oneered in South Africa in the 1970s. Microsprinkler irrigation spread quickly in Flor-
ida when growers learned that the systems served dual purposes: Scheduled watering im-
proved yields and provided fruit with frost protection. With these revelations, well-capit-
alized growers and farmers tapped surface and groundwater supplies to expand irrigated
farming throughout the Southeast. 12
In Georgia, farmers primarily irrigated tobacco and peanuts in the 1950s before increas-
ingly watering cotton, peanuts, and corn. Over time, the geography of irrigation farming
spread from southwestern Georgia eastward across the Coastal Plain. By the early 1960s,
more than 6,400 Georgia farmers irrigated 110,000 acres of tobacco, corn and other ve-
getables, orchards, hay, and pastures. This was a significant, fivefold increase; farmers
had irrigated approximately 20,000 acres only a decade earlier. To water these expanded
crops, landowners relied on streams and groundwater wells, but 66 percent of irrigation
water came from farm ponds. 13 As for the technology, in the 1960s, tobacco farmers who
irrigated used labor-intensive portable pipe sections and petroleum-fueled pump systems.
Soon thereafter in 1967, at least one well-capitalized farmer installed the state's first center-
pivot system, a technology imported from the arid Great Plains. Farmers deployed more
cable-tow and center-pivot systems, though center-pivot systems carried a hefty price tag
of $78,000 to $80,000. Regardless of the system, the number of farmers using irrigation
technologies increased by 12 percent after 1970.
Farmers irrigated approximately 975,000 acres of cotton, peanuts, soybeans, pecans,
peaches, and sod farms in 1980. To power these systems, most farmers initially relied on