Flooded, Muddy Fields Leave Some Coachella Valley Farmworkers Shut Out

The heavy flooding and mudflows that Tropical Storm Hilary brought to the Coachella Valley have not spared the region’s farm fields.

On Monday, farmworker organizer Lourdes Contreras was among those assessing the damage as she tried to make her way around the eastern valley’s farmworker communities.

"Some of the fields are flooded with water, to where people have been unable to work,” said Contreras in Spanish. She’s an organizer with Lideres Campesinas, a group that advocates for farmworker women.

Water and mud have clogged some of the fields where a few days before, workers were planting crops like chiles, artichoke and eggplant, Contreras said. While the area’s grape season is over, many workers remained in the area for other crops, starting before dawn to avoid the worst of the heat.

Contreras, who spent the day checking on farmworkers in unincorporated communities like Mecca and Thermal, said some people couldn't have driven to the fields anyway, as some of the trailer parks where many farmworkers live were mired in mud, and roads were impassable, she said.

“The roads are slippery,” she told LAist from Thermal, where she was visiting one trailer park. “With all the water, the dirt rose onto the road, so what happened is the road is now covered in mud, and your car slides around.”

As of Tuesday morning, the Riverside County Farm Bureau had yet to hear reports from local growers as to the state of their fields; several growers LAist reached out to did not respond.

For many of those farmworkers temporarily unable to work, there’s no financial help; many of them are undocumented and therefore don’t qualify for unemployment, said Irene De Barraicua, the Sacramento-based director of policy and communications for Lideres Campesinas.

“They’re just left without any safety net, without unemployment benefits,” De Barraicua said. “They have to fend for themselves if there's any climate disasters … the floods, of course, right now, or extreme rains, extreme heat, fires, smoke.”

A California bill that would extend unemployment benefits to workers without legal immigration status remains pending.

On Monday, farmworker organizer Rosalba De La Cruz joined Contreras on her rounds around the fields and trailer parks — at one stop, they said, residents were trying to remove a fallen tree that had partially smashed a trailer.

They told LAist it’s unclear when flooded fields will be workable again. De La Cruz said her husband, a farmworker, is among those unable to work right now.

“They told him ‘until further notice,’” De La Cruz said.