[env-trinity] Los Angeles Times December 2

[Byron]

Point Man on Western Water Is Stepping Down

Interior Department's folksy Bennett Raley pushed marketing to shift
supplies -- and finally got California to go on a water diet.

Los Angeles Times - 12/2/04

By Bettina Boxall and Tony Perry, staff writers

Bennett Raley, architect of the Bush administration's Western water policies
for the last three years, announced Wednesday he was leaving his job as
assistant secretary of the Interior for water and science.

Raley oversaw federal policy during a particularly challenging time, when
the demands of a fast-growing region collided with drought. Yet he insisted
there was plenty of water in the West - it was just a matter of shifting its
uses through water marketing, an approach that many think represents the
future of Western water management.

In California, Raley may be remembered best as the folksy but firm
bureaucrat who finally made good on the federal government's long-standing
threat to put California on a water diet. He did it by forcing the state to
agree to stop using more than its share of the Colorado River, freeing up
water for other Western states. 

A major disappointment of his tenure was a failure to resolve one of the
West's angriest contests for water: the struggle that pits the irrigation
demands of farmers in the Klamath River basin along the California-Oregon
border against the needs of Native Americans and other fishermen who rely on
healthy downstream flows to sustain salmon and other fish. 

"At least we got people back to where they are at least working with each
other," Raley said.

Commenting on his resignation, Raley, a Colorado water lawyer with two
teenage daughters, said, "The primary reason is family." He added: "But also
I believe in jobs like this, you have a limited shelf life. You have to do
your best and move on."

His efforts at compromise gave short shrift to the environment, say
conservationists who argue that he helped weaken fish and wildlife
protections. And while Western agricultural interests stand to profit
handsomely from the farm-to-city water transfers that Raley championed, he
angered one of the West's biggest irrigation districts, in California's
Imperial Valley, by questioning its water use.

"I'm sorry I've made some people unhappy, but I sleep well at night," said
Raley, who grew up in a Colorado ranching family and never gave up his
cowboy boots.

He said he planned to resume his law practice and that he had no political
aspirations. He also said he doubted his departure would signal a shift in
the administration's water policies.

Raley's resignation is effective Friday. Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton
named Tom Weimer, principal deputy under Raley, as acting assistant
secretary, but did not say who would permanently fill the position.

"Bennett has been the linchpin of this administration's Western water
policy, tackling some of the most contentious issues facing the region
during a prolonged period of drought," Norton said. 

"As the lead federal negotiator on the 2003 Colorado River Water Delivery
Agreement, he helped to bring certainty and predictability to the long-term
water supplies of Colorado River basin states," she added. "The agreement
resolved issues that had divided water users in the lower Colorado River
basin for more than 70 years and led to the largest transfer of water from
agricultural use to urban use in U.S. history."

The complicated deal calls for California to phase out its use of Colorado
River surplus deliveries and for the giant Imperial Irrigation District to
sell some of its Colorado water to San Diego. 

To forge the agreement, Raley cajoled, imposed cutbacks and questioned
Imperial's water use. No agency got all that it wanted, and numerous prickly
details are still being resolved - including a controversial plan to fallow
farmland in the Imperial Valley. A plan to protect the inland Salton Sea
from rising salinity levels also has yet to be finalized.

Stella Mendoza, a member of Imperial's governing board, said she wished
Raley good luck, but that she was not sorry to see him go.

"I always felt he was not a friend of" the Imperial Irrigation District, she
said. "The best interests of the valley were not on his agenda. We were
threatened with the taking of our water and we were forced to act
prematurely. I felt at times the board was being intimidated."

Raley's cowboy boots and folksy ways never fooled her, she added. "He tried
to convince us he was one of us."

Still, getting California to agree to stop taking more than its share of the
river was widely seen as a historic breakthrough.

Ronald R. Gastelum, president and chief executive of the Metropolitan Water
District of Southern California, which long relied on the surplus Colorado
water, called Raley "pragmatic" and a "problem solver" who "also came to
terms with the fact that there are a lot of changes in California, and that
it is not going to be business as usual." 

Brenda Southwick, managing counsel of the California Farm Bureau, said Raley
was straightforward. "Overall, the thing we most appreciated about him was
that he was a straight shooter. You pretty much knew where he stood."

While conservationists prefer water marketing to new dams, they faulted
Raley for dragging his feet on environmental protections and too closely
catering to the needs of the federal government's biggest water customer,
Western agriculture.

"Bennett Raley has been the architect of the return of the water policies of
the 1940s and 1950s," said Barry Nelson, senior policy analyst for the
Natural Resources Defense Council. "He's worked very hard to protect the
interests of a small set of highly subsidized agricultural interests and
ignored the needs of the modern West. He's been tremendously
anti-environment."

Nelson cited the Klamath Basin in Northern California, where more than
30,000 salmon perished in 2002 after river flows were reduced to increase
irrigation deliveries. He also pointed to what he called the Interior
Department's "glacial movement" in restoration of the Trinity River, also in
Northern California.

He further criticized Raley for not backing funding for wastewater
reclamation projects to benefit urban areas.

"He's also not been very interested in solving the water supply needs for
urban areas," Nelson said. 

 

Byron Leydecker

Chair, Friends of Trinity River

Consultant, California Trout, Inc.

PO Box 2327

Mill Valley, CA 94942-2327

415 383 4810 ph

415 519 4810 ce

415 383 9562 fx

bwl3 at comcast.net

 <mailto:bleydecker at stanfordalumni.org> bleydecker at stanfordalumni.org
(secondary)

http://www.fotr.org

http://www.caltrout.org

 

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