[env-trinity] Federal buyout could boost troubled Delta

[Tom Stokely]

DELTA ISSUES:

Federal buyout could boost troubled Delta 

Stockton Record – 6/15/06

By Warren Lutz, staff writer

 

STOCKTON - The federal government proposes to buy half of the farmland in California's largest water district to stop a decades-long drainage problem, a plan that could bolster the ailing Delta.


What environmentalists and local water agencies can't figure out is why the feds are renegotiating a contract with the same district to send them even more water, which they say created the problem in the first place.

"It doesn't make sense," said Dante Nomellini, an attorney for the Central Delta Water Agency. "If land is going to be retired, the water ought to be withdrawn."

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, however, says its proposal to buy out as much as 300,000 acres in the Westlands Water District would eventually mean less water to the district, not more.

Westlands, a 600,000-acre swath of farmland located just east of Interestate 5 that spans Mendota to Kettleman City, receives enough Delta water for 2.4 million families a year. The problem is that the land drains poorly, leading to a buildup of water beneath the land's surface that can become contaminated with salt.

The Bureau of Reclamation is negotiating a contract with the district that would deliver another 30,000 acre-feet of water to the district.

But Jeff McCracken, an agency spokesman, said the district isn't actually asking for more water since it bought the water from another smaller, local district. "It's water that would have been delivered anyway," he said.

Westlands, for its part, isn't happy about the idea.

The district's 600 farms produce about $3.5 billion in agriculture annually, spokeswoman Sarah Woolf said. Besides potentially cutting the district's farm income in half, the government's plan would disrupt water-sharing agreements that local farmers have with each other, she said.

"Hopefully, Reclamation, Westlands, and other parties involved in the litigation can come to a better solution," Woolf said.

Since the 1960s, the federal government has looked at ways to drain farm water from the region, at one point building a drain to the Delta. But environmental groups complained, and the project was abandoned after being partially built.

Instead, the water drained at the Kesterson Wildlife Refuge, where the water-tainted selenium from farm runoff killed birds and left them with deformities.

The Bureau of Reclamation, which runs the Central Valley Project, is under a 2000 court order to solve the issue. Buying the farmland is the leading solution among several options that the agency considered in an environmental report released last week.

The bureau faces a tough decision, said Hal Candee, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group that is opposed to increasing Westland's take of Delta water.

"Will they combine the strategy of land retirement that is recommended by their own (report) with a reduced water export program, or will they ignore that recommendation and continue business as usual?" Candee said.

Environmental groups in general favor decreasing the amount of water sent south from the Delta, arguing that the exports hurt local water quality and contribute to the decline of Delta fish.

Nomellini said the federal government should drain the water to the ocean, since water sent to Westlands will continue to add to the Valley's growing salt problem. Salt intrusion from San Francisco Bay contributes to the Delta's poor water quality, resulting in lower crop yields and lower oxygen levels, which hurt fish.

But Westlands' drainage problem should have been solved before any water went there at all, Nomellini said.

"There's got to be some kind of balance," he said. #

http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060615/NEWS01/606150323/1001

 
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