Water Education Foundation
This is just one post in the Westlands Water District Category
Click here to view all posts

Westlands Water District: the “bad boys” of federal irrigation projects

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 28, 2007 at 8:18 am

Here’s an article posted on the Badlands Journal blog regarding the proposed Westlands Irrigation District deal. It is written by Lloyd Carter, a veteran journalist for United Press International and the Fresno Bee. From the article:

For more than half a century, growers in the fabled Westlands Water District have been the “bad boys” of federal irrigation projects in the American West, ignoring residency and acreage requirements for taxpayer-subsidized water, getting Congress to change laws they didn’t like, seducing both Republicans and Democrat politicians with a river of campaign contributions, and reaping more crop, water and power subsidies, tax breaks, and debt forgiveness than any other group of farmers in America.

Now they are poised to pull off the biggest coup in their controversial history. If they get what they are asking for, 260 billion gallons of publicly-owned water a year for 60 years, they will capture water worth anywhere from $20 to $40 billion – that’s billion with a B – with which they are free to farm tainted soils with, OR resell to urban interests at fantastic profit margins. At the current retail market price of $500-600 an acre-foot in Southern California, the Westlands water, purchased at a fraction of its true value could be worth $2,000 an acre-foot by 2050, when there could be 60 million Californians. The potential value of 15.6 trillion gallons of water in a drought-stricken climate staggers the imagination.

The catch? Westlands says it will solve a problem being caused by irrigation of its drainage-impaired, highly saline soils, contaminated with the toxic trace element selenium. Westlands makes this promise despite 52 years of federal research and hundreds of millions of dollars in studies that have failed to come up with a wildlife-safe, effective and affordable solution. It gets better. Westlands also wants forgiveness on an already interest free $489 million capital debt for taxpayer construction of its water delivery system it should have already paid off.

To read the rest of this article posted on the Badlands Journal, which includes a lot of history on the Westlands Irrigation District, click here.

August 28, 2007 · Filed Under Westlands Water District

Comments

Leave a Reply