[env-trinity] Page One Sacto Bee

[Byron]

Water worries never run dry; A battle rages once more over who gets what
from Central Valley Project


The Sacramento Bee - 3/14/05

By Dale Kasler, staff writer

 

Even torrential storms can't end California's water wars. 

 

While Southern California digs out from mudslides and much of the Sierra
Nevada lies beneath a heavy snowpack, an age-old dispute rages anew: how to
divvy up the spoils of the Central Valley Project. 

 

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the CVP's massive network of
dams, reservoirs and canals, has begun renewing long-term contracts that
ensure farmers will continue to control 70 percent of the project's water
for decades to come. 

 

The bureau says farmers are getting what they deserve and not one drop more.
But environmentalists and a prominent congressional critic are blasting the
renewals, which extend water allocations for 25 years and in some cases 40
years. They say the government is ignoring the crying need for water in
California's cities by allowing farmers roughly the same allotments they've
gotten for years. 

 

What's more, say critics, the new contracts perpetuate sweetheart pricing.
Although rates have risen, farmers will still pay less than cities for CVP
water - sometimes only half as much. Decades-old water rights mean some
farmers will continue getting water for free. 

 

Critics say the pricing lets agriculture make a killing: While rivers go
dry, farmers make money selling water they don't need to cities. 

 

Growers will "collect substantial personal profits" by reselling water, U.S.
Rep. George Miller says in a recent letter to Interior Secretary Gale
Norton. Miller, D-Martinez, who authored a landmark 1992 law that
reallocated a portion of CVP water to environmental uses, says the renewals
could be challenged in court. 

 

The criticism comes just as another farm-to-city water sale is in the
offing. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has just
signed options to buy water from three rice-growing irrigation districts in
the Sacramento Valley, its second such purchase in three years. If MWD
exercises the options, some 127,000 acre-feet of water would move south -
enough to irrigate tens of thousands of acres of rice. The farmers could
earn nearly $17 million combined. 

 

Farmers and the government defend the new CVP contracts. They say growers
are entitled to the allotments because they've shown they use all the water
in most years. The prices are in line with federal law, and while farmers do
make money selling water, the deals are occasional and limited in scope,
they say. 

 

"If anyone thinks we're getting a really good deal, they just need the
facts," said Mary Wells, a Colusa County rice farmer and president of the
Northern California Water Association. 

 

She said the price for CVP water on her farm is nearly tripling, to $28 an
acre-foot. An acre-foot is 326,000 gallons. 

 

"That may be cheap for Wilshire Boulevard, (but) that is not cheap for
agriculture," Wells said. "Our margin is very small in agriculture." 

 

The dispute underscores that the quest for water can be relentless in a
state that's largely irrigated desert. As experts cast nervous glances at
this year's anticipated water supply, few foresee a crisis - but no one's
feeling giddy, either. 

 

The Feather River watershed, which feeds Lake Oroville and is a key source
for much of the state, is drier than normal. The Colorado River, crucial to
Southern California, has benefited from rain but is still in a drought. 

 

"When you look at the extended drought we've been in, it's not like life is
good," said MWD chief operating officer Debra Man. 

The purchase options MWD signed with the Sacramento Valley ag districts
amount to "prudent water supply insurance," she said. 

The CVP, built over four decades at a cost of $3.2 billion, delivers about 7
million acre-feet of water annually. More than 70 percent goes to
agriculture, with the rest split between cities and environmental purposes. 

 

With 200 water contracts being renewed, just three farm districts north of
Sacramento will have allotments cut. A district near Redding, for example,
is getting less water because it's irrigating fewer acres due to creeping
urbanization. 

 

Otherwise, the renewals keep intact historic allocations. 

 

The Natural Resources Defense Council says "the contract renewals will
perpetuate an outdated status quo" that doesn't recognize the declining
relative importance of agriculture in California. 

 

While the value of ag production has nearly tripled in the past generation,
farming's share of the gross state product declined from about 2.2 percent
in 1977 to 1.2 percent in 2002, said economist Daniel Sumner of the
University of California, Davis. 

 

Meanwhile, farming's share of the job market has fallen to 2 percent from 3
percent in 1983, according to the state Employment Development Department. 

 

The NRDC says the most vivid example of the change is the Westlands Water
District near Fresno. The district is downsizing, taking more than 15
percent of its land out of production because of water-drainage issues. Yet
the Bureau of Reclamation is proposing to deliver its usual allocation of
more than 1.1 million acre-feet - 18 percent of the entire CVP. 

 

Bureau spokesman Jeff McCracken said Westlands deserves it, even with
reduced acreage, because Westlands wasn't getting the water it needed to
fully irrigate its farms to begin with. 

 

Price is another issue. While taxpayers paid for most of the project, CVP
customers were supposed to pay back more than $1.1 billion. But, 25 years
after the last dam was completed, less than $200 million has been repaid.
Ordered by Congress to accelerate repayment, the bureau is raising prices
for everyone. 

 

But farmers will still pay less than cities. Unlike cities, farmers don't
pay interest on the construction bill. That's federal law. 

"Farmers are paying for it at the price we're allowed to charge for it,"
McCracken said. 

 

Almost one-third of the CVP's water is doled out to Sacramento Valley
farmers for nothing. This is "settlement" water, delivered to farmers who
simply helped themselves to the Sacramento River before the CVP was built.
The settlement water compensates them for water now trapped behind Shasta
Dam. 

 

"That's not our water to charge for," McCracken said. 

 

Environmentalists say the pricing structure allows farmers to become
profiteers. 

 

"The farmers turn around and sell it and keep all the profit," said NRDC
lawyer Hal Candee. "Meanwhile, the endangered salmon species continue to
suffer." 

 

Certainly the state of farming makes a water sale tempting. 

 

Farmers will barely break even on a typical acre of rice this year, says the
California Rice Commission. Under the options agreement with MWD, three
Sacramento Valley districts would get paid $125 an acre-foot for letting
some water flow south. The deals would earn growers about $300 per acre
taken out of production. 

 

Farmers bristle at the suggestion of huge water profits. State law
discourages them from selling more than 20 percent of their water. So a sale
can help keep them afloat but won't make them wealthy, growers say. 

 

"It's not anything I can retire on," said Colusa rice and prune farmer Don
Bransford, president of the Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District. "I don't
understand where they're coming from in terms of this big windfall." 

 

Glenn-Colusa is one of three districts that signed options with MWD. Farmers
like Bransford are weighing whether to make a sale or simply plant their
entire crop. Though the ground is muddy and planting is several weeks off,
decision time is coming. 

 

Bransford, who sold some of his water four years ago to farmers near Fresno,
still wrestles with the idea of selling something that farmers consider
their birthright. 

 

"Farmers are in the farming business; they're not in the water transfer
business," said Bransford, who's been farming since 1980. "A farmer is
always going to farm if he thinks he can make a profit." 

 

CENTRAL VALLEY PROJECT

 

* History: Construction began in 1937; first water delivery in 1940. Shasta
Dam, the main cog, completed in 1945. Last dam, New Melones, finished in
1979. 

* Infrastructure: Includes 20 dams and reservoirs, 500 miles of major canals
and 11 power plants. 

* Water delivery: CVP provides about 7 million acre-feet of water each year,
or roughly 17 percent of all the water used in the state. (An acre-foot is
326,000 gallons - a year's water supply for one to two California
households.) 

* Allocations: Agriculture gets 5 million acre-feet, enough to serve about
one-third of California's farmland. More than 1 million acre-feet go to the
environment. About 600,000 acre-feet are delivered for municipal and
industrial uses.

 

 

Byron Leydecker, 

Chair, Friends of Trinity River

Consultant, California Trout, Inc.

PO Box 2327

Mill Valley, CA 94942-2327

415 383 4810 ph

415 383 9562 fx

bwl3 at comcast.net

bleydecker at stanfordalumni.org (secondary)

http://www.fotr.org

http://caltrout.org

 

 

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