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USGS critiques plans to clean up Westlands tainted irrigation water:

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 12, 2008 at 8:25 am

From Garance Burke of the Associated Press, via San Diego Union-Tribune, extensive coverage of the latest plans to clean up the drainage problem on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, primarily the Westlands Water District area:

A new report by the U.S. Geological Survey suggests the federal government’s plans to clean up acres of polluted croplands where thousands of birds died in the 1980s could, if poorly managed, put shore birds at risk again.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has been brokering negotiations over the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s proposals, which are intended to fix a botched federal drain project that left fields in California’s San Joaquin Valley too salty to grow crops. Two weeks ago, Feinstein met behind closed doors in San Francisco’s Ferry Building with bureau officials and the two USGS scientists who wrote the internal report the senator requested.

A copy obtained by The Associated Press Wednesday critiques a proposal previously floated by the bureau. That plan would give a group of wealthy farmers a perpetual contract for irrigation water if they took on the cost of the clean up, which is estimated at more than $2.6 billion. The bureau is considering using a new technology – a solar evaporation system – to separate harmful selenium concentrations from the runoff. “However, at this concentration there still may be a potential for selenium risk to wildlife, if performance does not meet specific criteria,” the report said.

Farmers and the government have been fighting over the drainage issue since the Kesterson disaster in the 1980’s, when thousands of birds were born deformed or died after nesting in contaminated irrigation water. Lawsuits ensued, and the federal government is under court-order to clean it up, at a cost of up to $2.7 billion dollars. How best to do that?

Growing crops on fewer acres of land is one option explored in the USGS report. But growers say fallowing fields would rob them of their livelihoods and cause major job losses throughout the region. Given the huge expense required to fix the drainage problem, farmers say they need a permanent water contract to ensure their financial viability, and to keep growing the fruits and vegetables the nation relies on.

Westlands and other water districts propose to fix the problem by shooting the polluted runoff through a sprinkler system that would allow the salts to solidify and be collected.

The report critiqued that proposal, and another to build the solar evaporation systems, calling them untested options that had not been proven to work at the scale required.

If necessary, Finnegan said the government would complete additional environmental reviews of the reuse projects, the sprinklers and other new techniques.

The study also suggested farmers boost the water they draw from underground aquifers to lower the amount of selenium brought into the environment.

Read more of this extensive coverage from the Associated Press & the San Diego Union Tribune by clicking here.

More on the Westlands plan to clean it up from the Fresno Bee:

As a cheaper alternative, Westlands last year offered to take over the job and use a combination of land retirement, water purification and evaporation on gravel. West-side farmers have been experimenting with such approaches for years.

In return, Westlands would be forgiven about $100 million of debt related to construction of the Central Valley Project, the state’s largest water project. The district also would receive perpetual federal water contracts that would not need to be renegotiated periodically.

But the USGS said the Westlands plan calls for retirement of 100,000 acres, while the Bureau of Reclamation’s approach would take 194,000 acres out of production. The retired land would not be irrigated, and no bad drainage would be produced there.

Under Westlands’ plan, there would be a lot more drainage than under the federal plan, because more land would continue in crop production, the USGS concluded.