[env-trinity] He was called the ‘Darth Vader’ of California water. Farmers now want a friendlier face
Tom Stokely
tstokely at att.net
Wed Dec 7 10:17:06 PST 2022
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| He was called the ‘Darth Vader’ of California water. Farmers now want a friendlier face |
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When Sen. Dianne Feinstein weighed complex water policy decisions that stood to impact the livelihood of farmers and fish, she often dialed Tom Birmingham. On visits to Washington, the longtime head of the state’s most influential farmland water agency would meet in her office over glasses of chilled California chardonnay.
Cultivating relationships with power is a hallmark of Birmingham’s 36-year career at the Westlands Water District, the nation’s largest farm water utility that serves a few hundred Central Valley families and corporations growing nearly $2 billion in nuts, fruit, and vegetables a year.
Birmingham spearheaded the agency’s quest to keep water flowing as its longest serving general manager, largely through attempts to loosen environmental regulations. Known for his pugnacious approach backed by mountains of litigation, he is reviled by environmentalists and is perhaps the most polarizing figure in the turbulent world of California water politics.
“When I hear people say Tom Birmingham is the ‘Darth Vader’ of California water, I think some people may have that opinion and they’re entitled to have it,” he said, soon after announcing his retirement on Nov. 23. “But the people who matter to me don’t have that opinion.”
He will leave by year’s end, forced out by a new generation of Westlands board members who want a different approach. It’s a political transition that speaks to larger debates within California agriculture, as some farmers forgo deep-rooted attachments to decades-old water promises and accept a climate reality that no number of lawsuits or important friends can sidestep.
“Landowners are tired of being known as big bullies and suing people. They just want to work with their neighbors,” said Sarah Woolf, a member of a large farming family in the district and political force behind the new leadership. “There is a desire for a gentler approach as an overall district philosophy, and a growing concern that we have to have some alternative revenue streams to keep our farms and district viable.”
What is Westlands?
Westlands Water District occupies more than 1,000 square miles on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. Its wealth and size means it plays a pivotal role in shaping debates on California water supply and management.
The $300 million-a-year agency has a large government and public relations budget that, in years past, included a now-defunct astroturf organization fronted by Latino community leaders. It employs lobbying firms and staff with Washington and Sacramento experience, and its leaders donate hundreds of thousands to candidates who might be helpful in office.
The federal government blessed Westlands farmers with subsidized water in the 1960s, a result of political jockeying that predates Birmingham but turned the district into an economic powerhouse. For almost five decades, the network of canals and reservoirs irrigating half of California agriculture brought farmers enough water from the state’s north to supply the city of Sacramento eight times over.
Paradoxically, the district is also last last in line for water from the Central Valley Project during drought. That’s because it has junior water rights, having entered farming decades later than most in the state. The district also has longstanding soil problems, with much of it sitting atop a clay layer that prevents water from draining easily and can concentrate toxic metals.
Westlands’ water supply dwindled dramatically in the last two decades, squeezed by the region’s prolonged drought and environmental regulations that gave fish such as winter-run Chinook salmon and Delta smelt more water to survive. Farmers responded by drilling into the ground, sucking out hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of water from aquifers each year and causing the land to sink dramatically.
Experts warn that the district’s future is bleak as tightened state regulations governing the use of groundwater come into effect. The Department of Water Resources also estimated that Westlands will see a 50% drop in surface water supplies over the next two decades.
“I don’t know what the future holds in terms of additional constraints,” said Birmingham. “But one thing that is almost certain is that as the climate continues to change and as laws continue to be implemented, it will be more difficult to supply water to farmers not just in Westlands Water District but up and down the San Joaquin Valley and potentially areas of the Sacramento Valley.”
A political force
Despite these worsening conditions, the district was a formidable political force under Birmingham’s leadership. At every turn, he used Westlands’ wealth, Washington connections, and the courts to obtain additional water for its farmers — with mixed success.
In an interview last week at his Sacramento office, much of which is already packed up in boxes, Birmingham expressed pride in his years advocating for Westlands interests and his relationships with members of elected officials in particular.
“When someone asked a question of Westlands Water District, they could be confident that the information provided to them was reliable,” he said. “We have a perspective but I said I’m willing to work with anyone interested in solving these problems. And I’m not talking just about supplying water to the district, I’m talking about achieving a reasonable balance among multiple competing uses of water in a way that doesn’t harm the environment and will sustain the economy and the state.”
Birmingham, 67, represented the district as an outside counsel starting in 1986 before becoming general counsel nine years later. He was hired as general manager in 2000 before the district split the jobs and hired a separate general counsel in 2016. Last year he took home $497,829.40 in salary and benefits, and will retire with a CalPers pension and 18-month severance package .
During his tenure, Birmingham employed high-priced Sacramento lobbyist David Bernhardt to get bills introduced and passed in Congress. They included the WIIN Act, which Feinstein was key to passing, that relaxed pumping restrictions in the Delta. Bernhardt later became President Trump’s Interior Secretary.
He spearheaded a controversial plan to raise Shasta Dam for more water storage, which has since stalled. Under Birmingham, the district went so far as to purchase land above the lake to facilitate the project. He regretted not making more progress, saying it would have benefited salmon in need of cold water to spawn in 2019, a recent wet year.
Apart from environmental advocates and regulators, the primary opponent to Westlands’ efforts expanding Shasta was the Winnemem Wintu Tribe because it would further inundate their cultural sites originally flooded by the dam’s creation in the 1940s.
In 2018, Birmingham used his political muscle to cut a deal with the federal government and Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration that gave Westlands more state water. And under his leadership the board effectively killed Brown’s Delta tunnels plan, which sought to make moving water south easier, by refusing to help pay for it.
Before Donald Trump was elected to office, he hired Johnny Amaral, Devin Nunes’ chief of staff, who coached Trump in 2016 as he promised to “open up the water” for farmers and mocked “a certain kind of three inch fish” in a Fresno rally — a reference to the Delta smelt.
Birmingham also played a role in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to back off from fighting President Trump’s rewrite of environmental rules to allow more water to be pumped south through the Delta, after Westlands threatened to withdraw from negotiations over the governor’s water-sharing plan.
And from the day he began working for Westlands as an outside counsel, Birmingham shifted responsibility for the district’s reason for being: a drain for toxins generated by irrigating impermeable soil. The need to expel contaminated water was an explicit condition for getting imported water half a century ago, but money to build the drain in full never materialized.
Infamously, a half-constructed drain that emptied excess salts into Kesterson Reservoir killed and deformed hundreds of birds in the 1980s. As outside counsel, Birmingham successfully argued it was the federal government’s problem to fix. Several lawsuits and more than a decade later, the district reached a contentious settlement with the Obama administration in 2015.
The settlement would have made Westlands water contracts permanent and relieved the district of $350 million in debt in exchange for transferring drainage responsibility to the district, but it was never approved by Congress. Birmingham said about 100,000 acres of problematic land have been fallowed since, and that the district can shoulder the drainage responsibility on its own.
Friends and foes
As a boy growing up in Yreka, a town in California’s conservative northernmost corner, Birmingham said he “didn’t really have a lot of choice” in his career path.
His mother Lulu, who lacked educational opportunities, pulled him out of school on days the local courthouse was hearing an interesting case to go see the trial. She had decided that her son would command a courtroom someday, and command it he did.
Birmingham studied political science at UCLA and graduated from McGeorge School of Law, where he was captivated by the profound implications of water history and law. The fascination led him first to a job at a private firm in Sacramento.
The lawyer prone to encyclopedic tangents attempted self-deprecation in a wide-ranging interview, habitually calling himself “not very bright” and “from a small town.” Still receiving phone calls with well wishes and job offers after his retirement announcement, he waxed nostalgic.
But Birmingham would be the first to admit his dogged approach to defending the interests of San Joaquin Valley farmers made him some adversaries. Members of California’s environmental movement saw his policies as flagrant attempts to erode the Endangered Species Act and uphold antiquated water contracts.
“Westlands hasn’t adopted policies that recognize we’re in this new reality of climate change, which Tom Birmingham denied. He was constantly looking backwards to get a contract for water that doesn’t exist in reality,” said Patricia Schifferle, who has papered the district with public records requests for decades and directs the environmental consulting firm Pacific Advocates.
“He is viewed as a stern and humorless opponent,” said Kathryn Phillips, former director of Sierra Club California. “Water use shouldn’t be driven by a small number of agricultural interests in a particular region, and that’s the problem. They’ve been the most powerful voice in the room.”
The Land Park resident is known to have little patience for opinions he disagrees with, which led to a reputation as the “Darth Vader” of California water politics coined by a group of fly fishermen whose land Westlands purchased in anticipation of raising Shasta Dam.
He also has an acerbic sense of humor, on display in 2016 when the Securities and Exchange Commission slapped Westlands with penalties for faking financial records. He joked that he and the board had engaged in “a little Enron accounting.”
But even those who disagreed with his advocacy for the district or his management style admired his sharp legal mind and exhaustive knowledge of water policy.
“Tom has played a huge role, often to the benefit of Westlands. Some good people will argue that he was sometimes overly aggressive,” said Jeff Kightlinger, former general manager of Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. “But it’s going to be a big change regardless of who steps into his shoes. And they’re big shoes to fill.”
Felicia Marcus, former chair of the state water board and fellow at Stanford University, offered a similarly nuanced view.
“Tom Birmingham is a very complex, accomplished and talented person who I’ve seen stick up against the pack and speak the truth on issues of conservation or water rights or curtailment when his peers wouldn’t,” she said. “I think he’s much more complex than the caricatures have been made out to be.”
A new era
It is Birmingham’s reputation and Westlands frequent appearance in the news that may have planted the seeds of his ouster. A coalition of reform candidates, frustrated with the district’s approach, took over the board of directors this fall with the explicit intention of making a leadership change.
Out of loyalty to the district, Birmingham said, he decided to step away to avoid unnecessary internal conflict. “You ride for the brand,” he said, something his pals often said in cattle country.
Much of the political force behind the coalition is Sarah Woolf, a member of one of the district’s largest farming families and former board member who resigned in frustration several years ago. Kevin Assemi, part of a family that moved to Fresno from Iran and became powerful growers, are also considered reformers.
The group of new board members, called the “change coalition,” identified a list of priorities. They included more investment in replenishing aquifers, providing growers with clear pumping regulations, and improving relations with neighboring water districts and disadvantaged communities.
Whether the board is simply looking for a new face on its old ways or a substantive change in their approach is unclear. Some environmental advocates are optimistic that Westlands may become more conciliatory and turn further toward reusing farmland for other purposes like solar energy.
But what is undeniable is that the original gift of cheap water from the state’s north was granted under expectations of a static climate. Long term outlooks show that to be far from the case, a reality impacting the district faster than other growers but forcing the state’s entire agricultural industry to adapt to less water.
“God himself could not have made a difference that would have satisfied growers. Tom has been criticized by many from the cheap seats because they don’t understand the moving pieces,” said Mark Borba, a fourth generation farmer in Westlands who lived through the district’s evolution from growing cotton and beets to almonds and pistachios.
“He is very black and white, and sometimes when you’re in discussions with others a little flexibility can be helpful. The new board wants to take the district in a new direction... I hope it works.”
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