Conservation News
Another Central Valley Water Grab
By Dougald Scott
Another Central Valley Water Grab
By Dougald Scott
Excerpted from the Associated Press and the Fresno Bee 2/16/07
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation wants to give Central Valley farmers partial ownership of the massive San Luis Reservoir to settle a lawsuit over drainage problems that led to the deaths and deformations of birds and other creatures, according to a draft plan obtained by The Associated Press.
The complex deal would transfer the federal government's stake in the San Luis Reservoir, pumping plants and miles of canals to some of the country's biggest farming operations, who also would gain rights to a large percentage of the water stored there. In exchange, farmers would be responsible for disposing of toxic runoff and cleaning up thousands of acres of tainted land that is too salty for crops after intensive irrigation.
In return for taking on the toxic cleanup responsibilities, the farmers would be forgiven $490 million in debt for construction of the San Luis Unit. Shifting the cleanup cost over to the private sector would save the federal government about $2.5 billion, said U.S. Bureau of Reclamation spokesman Jeff McCracken.
Environmentalists and congressional representatives briefed on the plan expressed surprise at the proposal, which was entirely different from previous plans. "It's being suggested now that one of the most significant environmental problems in the history of western water can be resolved by privatizing a major piece of the largest water project in the West," said Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez. "Is this new plan really in the best interest of the taxpayers?"
The San Luis Reservoir, located just off Interstate 5 between Los Banos and Gilroy, holds 2.5 million acre feet of water, almost one-third of which is used each year to irrigate the arid Westlands Water District. Westlands is the nation's largest water district and includes giants of agribusiness, such as Harris Farms, one of California's biggest farming operations and Tanimura & Antle, the nation's top lettuce grower.
Westlands farmers and those who belong to nearby water districts have been banned from disposing of agricultural runoff since the 1980s when millions of migratory birds were born deformed after nesting at Kesterson Wildlife Refuge, where federal officials initially routed the poisonous drainage. Irrigation runoff here carries concentrated levels of selenium, a naturally occurring trace element that washes down from the volcanic mountain range flanking the valley's western edge. Few realized selenium was toxic when agricultural water was first pumped into Kesterson, which is part of the 26,609-acre San Luis National Wildlife Refuge, about 80 miles northwest of Fresno.
After the environmental disaster, the bureau stopped allowing the drainage to flow into Kesterson. In 1995, the Westlands Water District sued, claiming federal officials who run the Central Valley Project a massive irrigation complex that makes farming possible in the arid western half of the valley reneged on their obligation to help them dispose of the tainted water.
Officials have proposed numerous solutions as the case has traveled through the courts. One of the bureau's proposals, favored by some environmentalists, was to retire vast tracts of farmland altogether. Other ideas included building huge ponds to evaporate the drain water, or piping it into the delta.
The plan would give 10 water districts the annual rights to 1.1 million acre feet of water, the largest water right granted since the 1950s. Information was not immediately available about the conditions under which that water would be provided in dry years, or in relation to other water users like cities and rivers upstream.
Bill Walker, who tracks federal subsidies in agriculture, blasted the proposal. "This deal may seem to relieve taxpayers of the costs of the drain, but it gives away more of California's most precious resource Ð water - to a group of irrigators who already receive millions of dollars in crop, water and energy subsidies," said Walker, a vice president of the Oakland-based Environmental Working Group.
Excerpted from the Redding Record-Searchlight 2/19/07
The nation's largest water district is now in the private fly-fishing club business. But Westlands Water District's $35 million purchase of the Bollibokka Fishing Club and almost 3,000 acres of pristine wilderness along a seven-mile stretch of the McCloud River just north of Lake Shasta has nothing to do with rods and reels and everything to do with crops in the San Joaquin Valley and raising Shasta Dam.
"We did not want to see the use of this land to be changed to impede the potential of raising the dam," said Tom Birmingham, general manager for Westlands, a Fresno-based district that counts more than 700 farms as members and covers more than 600,000 acres in western Fresno and Kings counties.
The Bureau of Reclamation has been studying the possibility of raising the dam since 1980 and expects to have a feasibility report complete next year that will detail whether the dam, and Lake Shasta, will be going up.
While the bureau is looking at possibly raising the dam 6 feet to 18 feet, the dam's base could support a raise of up to 200 feet. Boosting the dam by 18 feet would raise Lake Shasta, turning more of the McCloud River into reservoir. The new shoreline would extend about 3,500 feet, or two-thirds of a mile, upriver. Birmingham said Westlands bought the extra 6-1/3 miles of McCloud shoreline to make room for a potential dam raise of more than 18 feet, perhaps as much as 200 feet.
The Bureau of Reclamation estimates the cost of raising the dam 200 feet at $6 billion -- a price that, at least for now, rules out that possibility, said Donna Garcia, who is heading the bureau's study of Shasta Dam. The costs of raising a dam aren't just financial. The higher waters would wash away a long-sheltered trout fishery and American Indian cultural sites along the McCloud River, say opponents to Westlands' purchase of the land and the idea of raising the dam.
Bottom Line: Raising Shasta Dam or building new storage reservoirs at Sites and Temperance Flat (see January Catchy Releases) are not suitable ways to solve CaliforniaÕs water supply problems. None of them increase the amount of water available for fish and wildlife, agriculture or domestic use. They merely improve the ability to control the timing and distribution of water principally for benefit of agricultural interests, and lay the groundwork for more diversions out of the Delta.