Commentary/rebuttal: Hannity shed light on green agenda’s damage to California farms
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on February 7, 2010 at 7:56 amFrom the Sacramento Bee, this commentary/rebuttal to the High Country News/Sacramento Bee story on Westlands Water District by Harold Johnson of the Pacific Legal Foundation:
” “Famously hypertensive.” That’s how Matt Jenkins of High County News describes Sean Hannity, who blamed the San Joaquin Valley water shortages on the Endangered Species Act (”Tapping into Anger”; Forum, Jan. 31).
What’s really “hyper,” however, is the ESA dictates themselves: By starving farms and communities of water, they’re hyper-outrageous.
Federal regulators ordered dramatic cuts in pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to Central and Southern California, in a strategy to keep the endangered Delta smelt afloat. At least 500,000 acre-feet of water (163 billion gallons) were withheld last year. More pumping restrictions were proposed for other ESA-protected fish. … “
Read more of this commentary/rebuttal by clicking here.
PCFFA: Agribusiness giant Westlands moves to kill salmon: Seeks legal permission to double death rate of migrating baby salmon in Delta
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on February 2, 2010 at 8:26 amFrom the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, this press release:
“Fresno, CA – Westlands Water District has asked a federal judge in Fresno to issue a temporary restraining order to block a federal salmon restoration plan that protects salmon and other fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Westland’s move could put the survival of California and Oregon’s multi-billion dollar commercial and recreational salmon fishing industry on the line.
The group is requesting a court to order lifting restrictions on the operation of huge delta water pumps and canals from February through May. Pumping water from the delta south is restricted at this time to protect baby salmon that migrate from the Sacramento River to the ocean during this period. The pumps move massive volumes of fresh water from the Delta to farms and cities to the south. Past pumping during the spring salmon migration is known to have killed large numbers of salmon. The request is expected to be heard in U.S. District Court tomorrow.
The restrictions in question were put in place in 2009 as part of a federal salmon restoration plan, known as a Biological Opinion. Recent studies indicate that the salmon restoration plan may increase the baby salmon survival by at least fifty percent. The salmon restoration plan protects threatened species of salmon and other native fish. It also helps improve the survival of non- threatened, commercially valuable fall-run chinook salmon. Sacramento River fall-run chinook, commonly known as king salmon, form the backbone of Oregon and California’s salmon fishing industry.
“Fishing families along one thousand miles of U.S. coastline rely on healthy runs of Sacramento River salmon to make a living; they depend on keeping the current salmon protection plan inplace,” said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations. “Too much water is being taken from the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta estuary – salmon, fishing families, coastal communities and seafood consumers have paid a heavy price as a result.” … “
Continue reading this press release at IndyBay.org by clicking here.
Tapping into anger: Powerful Central Valley water district challenges friends and foes in campaign to turn on the Delta spigot
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on February 1, 2010 at 8:02 am
Yesterday, the Sacramento Bee ran a story on Westlands Water District, which was a reprint of an article published by High Country News earlier in January. I did not post the link because I had already posted the story when it first ran at High Country News. It is my policy not to repost articles I have previously posted (at least not intentionally).
When the story ran on Aquafornia on January 12, it was my top out-click for the day. It’s a great story, and I’m glad to see Matt Jenkin’s work and the High Country News get the exposure they & the story deserve. So, just in case you missed it, here’s the story once again, appearing in yesterday’s Sacramento Bee:
“On Sept. 17, the famously hypertensive Fox News commentator Sean Hannity rolled into the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, satellite truck in tow. Months earlier, the federal government had announced that it was slashing water deliveries to local farmers, after it became clear that a 2-year-old drought would grind on for another year.
Central Valley farms are muscular emblems of American-style production agriculture, growing everything from tomatoes for Heinz ketchup to organic spinach for Amy’s-brand pizzas and vegetable pot pies. The farmers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley are confederated as the Westlands Water District, the largest irrigation district in the United States, which has a reputation for bare-knuckle combativeness. But Westlands has fared badly in the face of both the drought and water-pumping restrictions to protect a threatened fish called the Delta smelt. Last year, farmers in the Westlands district received only 10 percent of the water they hold federal contracts for, forcing them to leave roughly 156,000 acres – about a quarter of the district – unplanted.
Hannity and many others quickly blamed the crisis on the Endangered Species Act. … “
Read more from the Sacramento Bee by clicking here.
Blog commentary: Water bond will continue California’s water rip off: “Why should taxpayers continue supporting agriculture that has to be bailed out of its self-made problems?”
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on January 26, 2010 at 8:12 amFrom the American West at Risk blog (I believe written by the authors of the book), a post that disputes that the drought affecting Westlands is man-made, and that Westlands farmers ‘feed the nation’:
“We, the U.S. taxpayers, paid for the projects that supply Westlands farmers with water, and for the drains that made it possible for them to continue farming in an area that traps highly polluted irrigation water in the soils. Those drains created Kesterson Reservoir, an ostensible wildlife refuge receiving poisoned agricultural water. Taxpayers eventually had to pay to fill in Kesterson’s collection ponds to stop the deforming of bird chicks and outright wildlife kills due to the high concentration of selenium in the drain water.
Recent tests of alternative drainwater disposal projects have shown that all have the same potential to poison and kill wildlife as did Kesterson. This also means that Westlands drain waters should never reach the San Joaquin River.
It’s time to get real about the level of taxpayer subsidies that allow Westlands agribusiness to thrive, when those farms continue to create environmental havoc, which taxpayers then have to pay to clean up. Why should taxpayers continue supporting agriculture that has to be bailed out of its self-made problems? … “
Read the full post at The American West at Risk blog by clicking here.
Tuesday’s top of the scroll: Westlands Water District, ‘the Cadillac of irrigation districts’ has more than a tiny fish to blame for its troubles
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on January 12, 2010 at 8:14 amFrom High Country News, a feature story about Westlands Water District. The article begins with a rundown of Sean Hannity’s show in September:
“But there was more to the story than the drama that Fox News beamed out of Westlands that day. Congressman Nunes had been hard at work in Washington, D.C., introducing a series of amendments that would force the federal government to ignore the Endangered Species Act when it determined how much water to deliver to farmers this year. His efforts were repeatedly turned back. Then, five days after Hannity’s broadcast, Jim DeMint, a conservative Republican from South Carolina, introduced a similar amendment in the Senate, with Westlands’ endorsement. That’s when the needle skipped off the record.
California’s warhorse Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, has been a longtime champion of Westlands, but she has also tried to negotiate common ground in the state’s complicated water politics. And back home, the California Legislature — after years of ignoring the problem — was working feverishly to hammer out a sweeping package of bills to relieve the crisis in the Delta. When Feinstein learned of the DeMint amendment, she denounced it as “a kind of Pearl Harbor on everything that we’re trying to do.”
The amendment failed. Several days later, before a press conference at the U.S. Department of the Interior, Feinstein approached Tom Birmingham, the man who runs Westlands, and pulled him aside. The senior senator from California managed a tight smile, and then shook her fist at Birmingham, who has contributed to her campaigns. “Tom, I’m angry,” she said. “I’m so angry that I want to punch you.”
Chastened, Birmingham later made a rare admission that Westlands had gone too far. “We just made a terrible, terrible mistake,” he said in early November. “We made a mistake, and we need to acknowledge that.” … “
Read the whole story at High Country News by clicking here.
Bacher/Carter vs. Wade on Westlands agriculture – who’s statistics are right?
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on January 11, 2010 at 8:03 amYesterday, Mark Wade of the California Farm Water Coalition responded to Dan Bacher’s recent commentary about the economic value of Westlands agriculture. What’s at issue here is how these statistics have been interpreted. Jeff, Director of the Business Forecasting Center and Associate Professor, Eberhardt School of Business, University of the Pacific posts this response, taking a look at the numbers of both of the commentaries:
“A few weeks ago, environmental advocates Dan Bacher and Lloyd Carter, published some data and rough calculations about Westlands Water Districts economic contributions.
They make one good point, that Westlands is about 0.25% of U.S. agricultural production, so risks to Westlands production is hardly a national food security crisis. In fact, I think this number actually overstates their national importance, because there are numerous substitution opportunities.
In the next part of their essay, they overreach with some very rough calculations intended to argue that Westlands makes no net contribution to the economy. … “
Continue reading this post at the Valley Economy blog by clicking here.
Dan Bacher sort-of responds to Mark Wade’s commentary here at IndyBay.org – you can find both Bacher’s and Wade’s commentary in this post.
Aguanomics chats with Tom Birmingham of Westlands Water District
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on December 10, 2009 at 8:17 amFrom the Aguanomics blog:
“Last Sunday, I spent five hours talking to Tom Birmingham, General Manager and Chief Council of Westlands Water District, “the biggest irrigation district in the world.”
Among other things, we discussed crop choices, water efficiency, governance, Feinstein, his work for LADWP on Mono Lake, the water bills, the Peripheral Canal, family farms, water markets, exports and other malign influences on the Delta (and Smelt), unemployment in the area, and so on…
In particular, Tom was anxious to clear up two conflusions:
1. Westlands does not have “junior water rights.” As a contractor to BurRec, it has service contracts for delivery. Its contracts are “junior” in the sense that they get cut back the earliest, and most, compared to municipal, environmental and exchange contracts.
2. Westlands does not have poor soil. It has excellent soil, but that soil suffers two problems: It contains selenium, which can accumulate in irrigation water (and harm the environment). Poor drainage can lead to water logged and salted roots, which destroys production. … “
Find out more and listen to the audio of the interview by clicking here.
Westlands Water District is a powerhouse for Valley farmers
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 8, 2009 at 7:09 amFrom the Fresno Bee:
“The most powerful voices in the state’s $11 billion water talks last week might have been two water districts — one speaking for half the state’s population and the other for just 600 San Joaquin Valley farmers.
The negotiations led to legislation with the promise of epic change, restoring dying fisheries, building dams and easing gridlock that has dogged water system improvement for decades.
It made sense that Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which serves 19 million people, would wield big political clout in those talks.
But who are those 600 farmers?
They are customers in Westlands Water District, the country’s largest federal irrigation district. With crops worth $1 billion a year, this one district produces more than some whole states. …”
Read more from the Fresno Bee by clicking here.
Monday’s top of the scroll: Uncertainty looms for west-side farmers
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on October 5, 2009 at 7:35 amFrom the Fresno Bee:
“This time of year, farmers on the Valley’s west side usually have a fairly good idea what they will be planting next season, and if they will be getting a loan to pay for it. But this is not a normal year.
Uncertainty looms for west-side farmers who were forced to fallow thousands of acres in the wake of a third dry year and a dismal water allocation. The situation has put some growers in a holding pattern.
Lenders are worried about farmers being able to pay back loans. And without an adequate water supply, more acres may be fallowed and the problems of high unemployment may get worse.
“I am just kind of waiting to see what my bank has to say,” said Todd Allen, a third-generation farmer in the Firebaugh area. “I really can’t move forward without it.” …”
Read more from the Fresno Bee by clicking here.
Thursday afternoon update: Westlands Water District rebuts CSPA’s claims of “water hording”
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 3, 2009 at 1:55 pmFrom Westlands Water District, this rebuttal to the California Sportfishing Protection Alliances claims that Westlands was ‘hording’ water:
“There has been some confusion created by an irresponsible and misleading claim by the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance that it has “discovered” that Westlands Water District has been “hording [sic] surplus water it can’t use.”
At the end of the 2008 water year, Westlands had approximately 300,000 acre-feet of water which CalSPA claims was hoarded. The reality is that this is water that Westlands carried over in storage in anticipation of a low allocation from the Bureau of Reclamation. Had Westlands not planned for this contingency, its farmers would have started the 2009 water year with zero surface water for the irrigation of crops because Reclamation gave Westlands and other south-of-Delta Central Valley Project irrigation service contractors a zero percent allocation. Ultimately, Westlands received a ten percent of its allocation of contract water supplies from the Central Valley Project, the most severe cutback in the project’s history. Many of our family farmers have only managed to survive this year by pumping groundwater at rates that cannot be sustained.
But even so, more than 260,000 acres of productive farmland had to be fallowed, leading to the loss of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars for the economy of the Westside. As we look ahead to 2010, Westlands estimates that it will be carrying over an estimated 270,000 acre feet of water that has been rescheduled for delivery from the federal project in the coming year. There is nothing secretive about this fact. Westlands publishes notices of the condition of our water supplies every month on our website, and that includes rescheduled water as well as all of our other water resources. The website also provides charts, schedules and other graphic materials that trace the use and availability of these supplies month by month. Information on rescheduled water has also been included in periodic public meetings attended by growers and the media, and public concerns about the protection of those supplies were the subject of widespread news coverage last March. Reclamation separately maintains and publishes comprehensive records of rescheduled water supplies which are included in that agency’s various reports and statistical studies.
Where is this water? It is not being held in storage. It is in fact only a promise of future delivery. If these extreme water shortages continue or the demands of other water rights holders take precedence, that water may not be available when a farmer needs it. But this promise of delivery is nonetheless an asset that farmers can take to the bank as proof that they have a reasonable expectation of having water available to grow their crops next year. And that is critically important for staying in business. The process of securing financing for next year’s planting is beginning now, as this year’s reduced harvest is just being brought in. Without this rescheduled water, many farmers would be unable to secure the funds they need to plant a crop for next year. And thus, the catastrophe that the Westside has suffered this year would get even worse.
Why didn’t the farmers use all of this water up in 2009? There are lots of reasons. The allocated water did not become available until most cropping decisions had already been made, and even then, there was some uncertainty about its delivery. Also, faced with severe shortages, many farmers elected to apply groundwater for the crops that could survive on it, while protecting higher quality surface supplies for other produce.
This is the way every responsible water agency manages its supplies in times of shortage. We all report how much water we have to use and what we are holding in reserve. We conserve wherever we can. If we had nothing in reserve, our consumers would begin next year with no water at all. That would be irresponsible. But no one suggests that the water in Shasta Lake is being hoarded or that the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is doing the wrong thing when it orders a cutback in deliveries to 20 million people even though it has water in its reservoirs.
Westlands is no different.
Westlands hordes surplus water while fish die and unemployed farm workers beg for food and work; CSPA calls for investigation into surplus water by Westlands and others Delta standards continue to be violated
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 19, 2009 at 8:18 amFrom the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance:
“As broadcast and print media report heart-rendering stories about Westlands Water District having to fallow fields thus putting people out of work and placing farms in jeopardy because of a lack of water, the District has been squirreling away surplus water it can’t use. The California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA) has discovered a Westlands’ information bulletin dated 23 July 2009 revealing that the giant irrigation district has been hiding considerable carryover storage from last year and is adding even more this year. CSPA is calling for an investigation into Westlands’ surplus water and possible surplus water hidden away by other water districts.
At the end of 2008, Westlands had some 233,998 acre-feet (AF) of water stored in other facilities that it didn’t need. Some 93,700 AF of that stored water was used through June 2009. However, the export pumping restrictions caused by the Delta Smelt Biological Opinion ended 30 June and the State and Federal Projects have ramped up pumping. Westlands has made firm commitments to acquire 141,522 AF of supplemental water and is requesting additional supplies. Consequently, Westlands staff projects that the District will end the water year with approximately 275,000 AF of water it is unable to use.
CSPA Executive Director Bill Jennings said, “The idea that Westlands Water District has been hording surplus water it can’t use while farm workers have been paid to hold vocal protests around the Central Valley accusing Congressman George Miller and federal agencies of starving farmers in order to protect Delta smelt is outrageous.” “Perhaps Congressmen Devin Nunes and Dennis Cardoza can use their influence to persuade Westlands to share some of their stored water wealth to benefit those less fortunate,” he said, adding “clearly an investigation is needed to see who else might be hording surplus water.” …”
Guest commentary: Who are the Westlands farmers? The truth about the West Side farmers
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 19, 2009 at 8:17 amAquafornia is pleased to run this guest reader commentary by K. Lynn Humphreys, a Westland’s family farmer:
Lately there has been a lot of purposeful use of the words “conglomerates”, “profiteers”, “big ag”, “corporate ag”, and “land barons”, when referring to farming families within The Westlands Water District. The relentless flow of these distracting terms is an obvious attempt to depersonalize farmers, and to demonize them as giant industry hogs that are grabbing resources at the expense of the environment. After all, it is easier to justify opposing someone if you don’t think of them as being like you. I would like to tell you about the real people farming in the Westlands District.
My husband is a fourth-generation farmer. He, along with his siblings, has grown up working on tomato harvesters, hoeing weeds, and laboring side by side with farm workers just as his father and siblings did on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. Over decades, the lifetime investment of multiple generations of a single family contributed to the development of the knowledge and experience necessary to manage their fields. They learned not only from their parents, grandparents and college educations, but also from being hands-on farmers and sharing information with their farming neighbors.
Their farming neighbors are the same families that were there when my husband was growing up, and when his father was growing up. The only difference now is their families, like yours, have grown. The children that wanted to become farmers purchased land alongside their parents’ farms. And then their children did the same. Land was also passed down as grandparents faded away. Ironically, “big ag”, the frightening term in the eyes of some, is actually the “family farm” those same people seek to promote.
Letter on Westlands drainage legislation
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 30, 2009 at 7:10 amFrom Lloyd Carter’s Chronicles of the Hydraulic Brotherhood blog:
“Feinstein wants to give Westlands Water District 1.193 million acre feet of water in perpetuity plus several other taxpayer paid major benefits in return for its simple statement that it will handle its contaminated irrigation drainage problem. Historically, Westlands has received only about 700 thousand acre feet annually. Its lands essentially will be a Superfund Site by mid-century because of its contaminated soil.
A federal judge (Wanger) has given the feds 90 days – until October 23 – either to accept an unfeasible solution from an Environmental Impact Statement and Record of Decision developed by the Bureau of Reclamation or have it give to the Congress legislation Feinstein had the Bureau develop that is totally Westlands oriented. Or, the Bureau and David Hayes could provide another solution. USGS is attempting to get language in the legislation that would condition any water delivery upon some rational milestone achievements by Westlands on drainage. The Bureau and David Hayes, should include this language since Feinstein also requested its inclusion, but that was AFTER original legislation had been drafted for her.”
Read more from the Chronicles of the Hydraulic Brotherhood blog, which includes a link to the letter, by clicking here.
California Water Districts sue to force Federal fish agencies to obey environmental laws
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 16, 2009 at 8:17 amFrom Westlands Water District, this press release:
“Environmental laws apply equally to all,” said Tom Birmingham, General Manager of the Westlands Water District, in announcing a lawsuit aimed at the federal government’s latest plan for cutting back even further on California’s water supplies.
Westlands is joining with 29 other public water agencies who argue that the National Marine Fisheries Service should have prepared an environmental impact statement before adopting a salmon recovery plan that will divert hundreds of thousands of acre feet of California’s freshwater supplies into the ocean.
“Denying this much water to California is going to do obvious, serious and enduring damage to habitat, to wetlands, and to other endangered species. It will reduce water quality and drive up the costs of water treatment for millions of people. It will reduce the opportunities for recycling, conjunctive use, and water transfers, which are all vitally important to the state’s efforts to conserve water and improve efficiency. And it will put tens of thousands of people out of work, which affects public health and safety in myriad ways,” Birmingham said.
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California recently granted a preliminary injunction in connection with a similar lawsuit that pointed to the failure of another federal agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service, to prepare an environmental assessment before imposing a set of restrictions on behalf of the Delta Smelt that cut California’s water supply by nearly one third. Hearings on the merits of those challenges will be conducted later this year.
“The Obama Administration’s salmon plan mimics the smelt proposal and it suffers from the same defects,” Birmingham pointed out. In both the smelt and salmon proceedings, Westlands filed its lawsuit jointly with the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority.
The smelt cutbacks have cost California more than 660,000 acre feet of water last year and they have reduced water supplies by another 480,000 acre feet so far this year. The federal plan for salmon would continue all of those reductions and could take as much as another 500,000 acre feet of water out of the water system, according to the California Department of Water Resources. Those combined losses add up to enough water to serve nine million people for a year.
“The federal agencies pushing this plan have refused to estimate what the total loss of water will be. And they won’t say what it is going to cost taxpayers either,” Birmingham said. “But the Department of Water Resources reports that the smelt and salmon restrictions will add $500 million a year to the cost for public agencies to continue delivering water. And that doesn’t include the much larger capital costs for the changes that these federal agencies are demanding in existing dams and other water facilities.”
In announcing the salmon plan, the regional commissioner for the federal Bureau of Reclamation acknowledged that its implementation would mean that there will no longer be reliable water supplies for California agriculture and that there will not be any additional water available for cities that are growing.
“It is simply outrageous that federal authorities would seek to force these restrictions on California without conducting a single public hearing, without any public review or comment, and without any consideration of the harm they are doing,” Birmingham said.
Dan Bacher commentary: Westlands sues Feds over salmon biological opinion
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 16, 2009 at 8:15 amFrom Dan Bacher, this commentary:
Westlands Water District, the Darth Vader of California water politics, and 29 other water agencies today announced a lawsuit against the federal government’s court-ordered plan to prevent the extinction of Sacramento River spring run and winter run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, southern green sturgeon and the southern resident population of killer whales (orcas). The whales depend upon Central Valley salmon as a food source.
“It is simply outrageous that federal authorities would seek to force these restrictions on California without conducting a single public hearing, without any public review or comment, and without any consideration of the harm they are doing,” claimed Tom Birmingham, general manager of the Westlands Water District.
Westlands and corporate agribusiness are doing everything they can to prevent the recovery of imperiled Central Valley salmon and steelhead, green sturgeon and orcas, as required under the Endangered Species Act and numerous other federal and state laws. This is in spite of the fact that Westlands expects to use 86% of its average water supply this year, according to Department of Water Resources (DWR) data (http://yubanet.com/california/Op-Ed-Dan-Bacher-The-Big-Lie-Unravels.php).
“Central Valley Project deliveries to Westlands Water District, for example, were forecast to be zero as recently as March,” said Spreck Rosecrans of Environmental Defense. “Westlands now projects they expect to use 86% of average annual supplies this year. Their total supply is a combination of deliveries from the Delta, water banked last year, groundwater pumping and purchases.”
On the same day that Westlands announced its lawsuit, KFSN in Fresno reported “a convoy of protesting farmers on interstate five this morning caused a serious crash.”
Officials angle for west-side water
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 14, 2009 at 10:50 amFrom the Fresno Bee:
Federal officials are running the massive pumps of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta at low levels to protect the endangered delta smelt, but the move could keep west-side agriculture from getting its promised annual water allocation.
Tom Birmingham, general manager of the Westlands Water District, said the pumping reductions are unnecessary, but environmentalists say the actions are necessary to protect the smelt. “A substantial portion [of delta smelt] — in excess of 90% — are outside the influence of the pumps,” Birmingham said. “From our perspective, the restrictions are unnecessary to avoid jeopardy to the species.”
Despite the concern, west-side water officials are confident they can get their promised federal water allotment through increased pumping in July.
Read more from the Fresno Bee by clicking here.
Dan Bacher: The big lie unravels: Westlands will receive 86% of average water supply
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 10, 2009 at 12:37 pmFrom Dan Bacher at IndyBay.org, this commentary:
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Central Valley agribusiness interests have since January issued a constant stream of press releases and staged frequent photo opportunities claiming that “drought,” compounded by pumping restrictions to protect Delta smelt and other fish species, will “devastate” San Joaquin Valley growers and farmworkers this year.
“This march is about opening our eyes to the reality of California’s water crisis – and the reality is that farmers do not have a reliable water supply they can count on, farm workers fear losing their jobs because crops are not being planted, and in towns across the Central Valley, unemployment is skyrocketing,” claimed Governor Schwarzenegger when he addressed the “March for Water” at San Luis Reservoir, organized by San Joaquin Valley agribusiness in April. “I am determined to getting a comprehensive solution done once and for all that will update our water infrastructure, increase our water storage and restore our Delta.”
Schwarzenegger, Westlands Water District and other San Joaquin Valley water contractors are cynically using the false claims of “drought” and the “devastating” impact of Delta pumping restrictions to campaign for a peripheral canal and more dams, an enormously expensive project that would only worsen the collapse of Central Valley salmon, Delta smelt and other fish populations.
Many reporters in the corporate media have constanly repeated these big lies, based on false and misleading hydrological and economic data, with little or no contrary data to combat their purveyors. However, Spreck Rosekrans, an Economic Analyst at Environmental Defense, has effectively exposed these lies in a short article posted on his blog on June 8, http://blogs.edf.org/waterfront/2009/06/08/water-supply-improvements-in-the-san-joaquin-valley/.
The “doom and gloom” and “fish versus jobs” scenario that has deluged the media over the past several months constrasts dramatically with the actual hydrological and economic data. In fact, information compiled by the California Department of Water Resources reveals that in 2009 water supply in most parts of the valley will be in excess of 80% of average, according to Rosecrans.
Read more of this commentary by clicking here.
Westlands statement on NMFS biological opinion on salmon
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 5, 2009 at 6:48 amFrom Westlands Water District, this press release:
Federal regulators today have imposed an additional, new regime of restrictions, cutbacks and prohibitions on California’s water supplies without performing any environmental analysis of its potentially devastating effects. They have rushed this Biological Opinion into place without bothering to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement, without public hearings or the kind of independent public review that the law requires.
This is a violation of the National Environmental Policy Act and of federal endangered species law.
The Westlands Water District intends to join with other public water agencies in bringing a lawsuit to have this Biological Opinion set aside and to compel the National Marine Fisheries Service to go back and perform the careful analysis it should have done to assess the potential harm this plan could do to public health and safety, communities and the environment.
A partial list of the impacts that the National Environmental Policy Act requires the National Marine Fisheries Service to assess can be found below.
If it were allowed to stand, this Biological Opinion would be a death sentence for large parts of California’s economy. Communities in the San Joaquin Valley are already experiencing 40 percent unemployment rates. This new order is so extreme and far-reaching that its adverse impacts will extend to businesses throughout the state. It will further reduce supplies for homeowners and increase uncertainty for almost everyone who expects to have water when they turn on the tap.
It is certainly not in the best interest of the United States or the Obama Administration to do this kind of damage to California. The implementation of these restrictions will prolong the recession, delay economic recovery, impact the supply of fresh fruits and vegetables as well as other goods and services, and adversely affect consumers throughout the country.
Finally, some good news for Westlands Water District
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 23, 2009 at 7:23 amFrom the Hanford Sentinel:
Westlands Water District growers found out Tuesday they’ll be getting 10 percent of their water delivered instead of 0 percent. The announcement came from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The Bureau runs the Central Valley Project, the massive federal system that brings water from Northern California and sends it to farmers and urban residents in the southern half of the state via massive pumps in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. March storms allowed for the increase, a Bureau press release stated.
But the announcement means little in terms of planting decisions that were made months ago. Most growers decided to let the majority of their ground lie fallow after hearing in January that Westlands would get no water.
The amount of unplanted ground in western Kings and Fresno counties is a sign of the times, with drought and endangered species cutbacks curtailing the delta pumps and drying up the huge stretch of Westlands acreage that drivers zoom past on Interstate 5 in the San Joaquin Valley.
Read more from the Hanford Sentinel by clicking here.
Officials worried that Fresno water district may want to shift Shasta County water rights south
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 3, 2009 at 7:33 amFrom Redding’s Record Searchlight:
Some Shasta County officials are worried that a Fresno-area water district may ask to annex almost 3,000 acres it owns along the McCloud River — a possible move to shift the water rights hundreds of miles south. The issue will be discussed this morning at the Shasta Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) meeting.
So far, no annexation proposal has been filed by the Westlands Water District, Shasta LAFCO Executive Officer Amy Mickelson said. Westlands, the largest water district in the nation, includes farmland in western Fresno County and Kings County.
But both she and LAFCO Commissioner Irwin Fust said they and others wonder if annexation would enable Westlands to claim area-of-origin water rights for its farmers hundreds of miles away. “That is what some folks around here have put forth as a possible scenario,” Fust said. “Why else would you spend $35 million for 3,000 acres of land if you didn’t want to get something substantial in return?”
Read more from the Record Searchlight by clicking here.
Fresno Westlands growers get some bad news: District likely won’t receive federal water deliveries this season
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on January 29, 2009 at 7:48 amFrom the Fresno Bee:
West Fresno County farmer Bob Diedrich hoped for good news during a standing-room-only meeting of Westlands Water District growers Wednesday. But Diedrich, a farmer for 45 years, didn’t like what he heard. Westlands officials said growers in the district will likely receive no federal water deliveries this season.
At least 200 people, mainly Westlands Water District farmers, packed themselves into available folding chairs, crowded to peer through open doorways and lined themselves against the wall during the Westlands workshop.
“Our projections are that our allocations will be zero, absent a significant change in hydrology,” said Tom Birmingham, general manager of the Westlands Water District in Fresno.
Farmers are heading into their third consecutive dry year.
Diedrich was one of about 100 crammed into a shop building at the district’s west side office eager to hear details from district officials and Ron Milligan, operations manager for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. “What am I supposed to do, if I have no water?” Diedrich asked. “I have five guys that I employ year-round, and now I may have to tell them they don’t have jobs.”
Birmingham said they were looking all over the state for water, but nothing was guaranteed. Members of the board are experiencing the difficulties:
Farmer and Westlands board President Jean Sagouspe sympathized with growers, saying he, too, is having to make tough decisions.
But Sagouspe also said the problem is not just the lack of rain and snow. He said environmental policies, including court-ordered pumping restrictions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to protect endangered fish, have helped create this current crisis.
“People don’t have a clue about what is going on,” Sagouspe said. “The governor doesn’t even care. He will only care when L.A. runs out of water.”
Read more from the Fresno Bee by clicking here.
Time seeping out for drainage debacle? State regulators give 90 days to act on half-century old environmental problem
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 10, 2008 at 6:10 amFrom the California Progress Report:
Fifty years after the Westlands Water District began irrigating drainage-impaired lands in the San Joaquin Valley, causing massive accumulation of toxic selenium and other salts in the soils and drainage water, the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board (Board) has taken action to address the ongoing pollution problem. In a letter last week, the Board gave the water district 90 days to file for a waste discharge permit and present a plan for cleaning up the soils that have been building up salts and toxins for decades.
While federal officials knew that providing water to Westlands from the Delta and Northern California would aggravate the naturally occurring salt-loading problems on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, the Federal Bureau of Reclamation pushed forward with the irrigation project. As a result, the Westlands area is one of the largest, most heavily subsidized, and profitable agribusiness regions in the world as well as one of California’s worst environmental legacies.
Read more from the California Progress Report by clicking here.
The district that went from drought to excess in just one summer – California big ag has water to store after earlier calling for a state of emergency?
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 22, 2008 at 5:37 amFrom the California Progress Report:
Earlier this month, Westlands Water District (WWD), the largest single recipient of water from the Central Valley Project south of the Delta, filed an application to store 50,000 acre feet of water from this year’s water supply for the District to use in future years.
While water storage is not unusual, this particular action is perplexing given that the same water district reported severe water shortages, resulting in lost crops and lost jobs earlier this year. In fact, the district’s shortages were the primary motivation for the Governor’s declaration of a state of emergency for several California counties. In response to the emergency declaration, water quality standards were relaxed for the Bay Delta as well as the California Aqueduct. In both cases, water quality for the environment and urban users was degraded in an effort to help the district get through the growing season.
Read more from the California Progress Report by clicking here.
Westlands Water District discusses nuclear plants to power desalination facility
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 20, 2008 at 5:49 amFrom the Fresno Bee:
Fresno Nuclear Energy Group LLC on Tuesday signed a letter of intent with the Westlands Water District to discuss the possibility of building two 1,600-megawatt nuclear power plants on 500 acres in the district.
John Hutson, the company’s president, said the district would choose the site.
Hutson said that, under the proposal, a desalinization facility, powered by the plants, would be built “to supply clean, reliable water to the farmers on the west side.”
Ground water in the district is plagued by salts that include selenium and boron.
State law bans any new nuclear power plants until the federal government approves a process for the permanent disposal of their spent fuel. A nuclear plant also would have to clear several federal legal hurdles, most notably from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
It would be at best ten years before anything was built, says Sarah Woolf of the Westlands Water District. More from the Fresno Bee by clicking here.
Westlands water rationing finished
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 15, 2008 at 7:47 amFrom the Fresno Bee:
Rationing within the Westlands Water District has ended early because of declining demand that resulted when crops were abandoned and fall planting declined.
The water rationing program, which has been under way since late May, ended Aug. 1 and deliveries have returned to normal, based on a 40% allocation, for water users in the district.
Sarah Woolf, a spokeswoman for the district, said the reduced demand convinced U.S. Bureau of Reclamation officials that it was acceptable to stop the rationing and allow growers to use their remaining water supply for the year.
Read more from the Fresno Bee by clicking here.
Metropolitan’s & Westland’s purchase of Yolo bypass lands has some worried
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 3, 2008 at 12:24 pmFrom the Sacramento Bee:
Southern California’s biggest water agencies are putting down roots in the Yolo Bypass. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and Westlands Water District are buying land and jointly planning restoration projects in the bypass to protect their access to water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, officials told The Bee.
The agencies are the two largest diverters of Delta water, contributing to the decline of threatened Delta smelt and other fish. A related disruption of the Delta’s food chain has prompted fears that an ecosystem collapse is under way, which could affect water quality for millions. The water agencies hope to protect their diversions by creating more habitat for fish to thrive.
This new interest has local residents worried. They fear the water titans have other motives, such as draining groundwater from the area or somehow seizing Sacramento River water rights. “The purchase of land by out-of-county water districts makes us nervous,” said Yolo County Supervisor Mike McGowan. “Until we see some real legitimate response from these entities being willing to work with us, we’ll continue to be paranoid about it.”
Read the full text of this article from the Sacramento Bee by clicking here.
Dry country: Water rationing forces Westlands growers to abandon crops and lay off workers
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 15, 2008 at 7:03 amFrom the Fresno Bee:
In 47 years of farming, 65-year-old Jim Diedrich has battled it all — hail that savaged his tomatoes, insects that ate his cotton, sagging prices and searing heat. But now he faces something new. He and his son, Todd, must abandon more than a full square mile of tomatoes in the Firebaugh area — their blooms yellow, leaves still green, drooping a little from the lack of water but otherwise standing firm and stretching in endless rows. “Being a farmer, it’s tough to let this go,” Todd Diedrich says.
The Diedrichs are letting 725 acres of tomatoes die so they can keep 550 acres of almond trees alive. “If we lose the trees, a 35-year investment is gone,” Diedrich says.
Unprecedented water rationing, resulting from a drought and court-ordered environmental restrictions on pumping, have forced the move, which will mean millions of dollars in lost revenue this year. Thursday’s emergency declaration by the governor won’t help, Diedrich says.
Many growers in the massive Westlands Water District face the same Sophie’s choice — which crops to save and which to abandon.
The Westlands Water District will receive only 40% of its water allocation for the year, and the resulting decrease in production means many farm workers have been laid off.
Particularly frustrating to the Diedrichs is that they thought they had prepared for drought conditions. In recent years, they spent more than $1 million to put in underground drip irrigation to save water. They added solar sensing equipment to detect moisture levels.
And they purchased water outside the district, water they won’t be able to obtain in the three-month period because of the restricted pumping and the rationing program aimed at making sure the San Luis Reservoir is not drawn so low that deliveries will come to a halt.
The Diedrichs say they don’t expect to be able to collect on crop insurance, though they’re seeking to do so.
“Crop insurance is for a crop failure,” Jim Diedrich says. “No insurance man is going to pay you because you didn’t water your tomatoes.”
Avtar Gill, a partner in Gill Insurance Agency in Caruthers, says Diedrich is right. “It’s not a covered loss,” he says.
Read more from the Fresno Bee by clicking here.
USGS critiques plans to clean up Westlands tainted irrigation water:
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 12, 2008 at 8:25 amFrom 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.
Read the full text of the article from the Fresno Bee by clicking here.
Westlands water rescue plan debated; Environmentalists fight growers’ plan to pump ground water into aqueduct
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 12, 2008 at 7:55 amFrom the Fresno Bee:
Environmentalists say they will fight a proposal by Valley farmers to pump salty ground water into the canal that delivers drinking water to millions of south state residents.
Growers in the west Valley are pitching the plan as a way to boost dwindling water supplies. If it were pumped into the California Aqueduct, water could be moved to farmers who don’t have access to wells. Something needs to be done quickly, the drought-stricken farmers say, or they will have to lay off more workers and abandon more crops.
In an emergency declaration last week, the Fresno County Board of Supervisors urged Gov. Schwarzenegger to temporarily “relax the water quality standards” to enable piping of ground water into the aqueduct. The 444-mile concrete canal sends delta water to Southern California cities and Valley farms, but has rarely been used to transfer farm water within the west Valley. The administration says all that’s needed is a finding that the blended ground-delta water meets quality objectives specified in state water contracts. State officials are trying to work out an agreement with water customers. But environmentalists say growers would have to go one step further — apply for a federal permit under the Clean Water Act that could take months to approve.
Bill Jennings, executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, said his group would immediately sue if water were pumped without a permit. “It’s not something the governor can wave his wand and make it happen,” said Jennings, a longtime water-quality advocate.
Read more on this story from the Fresno Bee by clicking here.
Water deliveries cut for Westlands
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 7, 2008 at 10:48 amFrom the Capital Ag Press:
Things want from bad to worse almost overnight. Already facing rationing of surface water, Westlands Water District growers learned this week that the Bureau of Reclamation would further reduce water deliveries this season, leaving growers to decide which of their crops they will save.
At a meeting June 2 at the Los Banos fairgrounds, about 400 anxious farmers listened to Bureau officials outline the federal water delivery outlook for the next six months, a time when multiple high-dollar crops are already in the ground. They said water allocations from the San Joaquin Delta would be cut to 40 percent, down from the 45 percent announced earlier. With water supplies drying up, crops that have been staples for westside growers – including cotton and lettuce – may be abandoned this year to conserve scarce water for permanent crops such as almonds.
There was also a call for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to declare a state of emergency. The governor did declare a drought on June 4, but stopped short of an emergency declaration.
“Half the people in this room are gong to go broke,” predicted Westlands general manager Tom Birmingham at the meeting. Westlands, the state’s largest water district at 600,000 acres, announced last week that water would be rationed throughout the summer for the first time in the history of the district.
Westlands Water District analysis shows the area needs 350,000 acre-feet of water, but can only expect 240,000 acre-feet from the Central Valley Project, and some of that won’t be delivered until September.
Fresno County Supervisor Phil Larson, who is also a grape grower, said he received a call about the Westlands rationing decision May 30 when he was having a cup of coffee with other farmers at the local welding shop. “There was silence,” he said, when they heard the news. Westlands, which provides about $1 billion worth of the crops in the state, won’t be the only district affected, Larson predicted. “If the water leaves here, it’s going to go away on the east side, too, and up north. We’re all in this together,” he said.
John Davis, assistant district director for the bureau said the Central Valley Project has lost complete flexibility this year. The state needs to relax water quality standards in the delta and the bureau is also looking at water transfers to alleviate some of the shortages.
Ron Milligan, operations manager for the Central Valley Project, acknowledged the economic, social and environmental issues involved the water shortage. The water picture significantly changed in April, he said, when officials saw the low carryover numbers. The State Water Project reported its lowest carryover since 1977, Milligan said. The lower start-off points mean lower allocations. “We’re in circumstances that are very unusual. We’ve never seen this with all the regulations on top,” Milligan said.
Read the full text of the story from the Capital Ag Press by clicking here.
Westlands to ration water through summer; unprecedented move follows dry ‘rainy season’
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 31, 2008 at 6:48 amFrom the Fresno Bee:
After the driest spring in more than 80 years, Westlands Water District is rationing its already reduced irrigation supply through the hottest months of the year. The move could mean damaged crops, abandoned fields and lost jobs. Contributing to the unprecedented decision, which cut irrigation supplies by about one-third, is a court ruling setting aside water for threatened fish in Northern California.
Officials of the Westlands Water District, the nation’s largest at 600,000 acres, decided this week to continue rationing through Aug. 31, spokeswoman Sarah Woolf said.
Westlands, most of which is in Fresno County, produces about $1 billion in crops each year. That is more than 20% of the crop value for the No. 1 farming county in the nation.
The court decision, resulting in shut-downs at pumps, already has cost the district about 700,000 acre-feet of water, which would have been pumped into the San Luis Reservoir in western Merced County. Westlands farmers get their water from San Luis Reservoir. The 700,000 acre-feet represents more water than the district would have received all year from the federal government.
Westlands is not the only district affected. About 30 other districts on the Valley’s west side also are struggling with water supply. Westlands and the other districts are part of the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority, which represents districts covering more than 2 million acres of farmland.
Dan Nelson, authority executive director, said California never has had to deal with a drought when so many options available to farmers “have been denied by administrative, judicial and statutory restrictions.”
Mark Borba, a Riverdale grower in Westlands, said crops like almonds, tomatoes and cotton will suffer. “Yields will fall, quality will decline, fields will be abandoned, trees may die and unemployment will skyrocket,” he said.
Read the full text of this article from the Fresno Bee by clicking here.
A California water story of individual tenacity; column by Lloyd G. Carter
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 25, 2008 at 6:21 amFrom the Sacramento Bee:
You have to give 75-year-old Felix Smith of Carmichael credit for tenacity.
A quarter-century ago, Smith became the conscience of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service when he blew the whistle on the selenium poisoning of the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge in western Merced County.
In the spring of 1983, Smith and another biologist discovered deformed bird embryos in nests at Kesterson, where 100-acre holding ponds were evaporating agricultural drainage water from the Westlands Water District. The drainage water contained selenium, a naturally occurring element in the soils of Westlands that was highly toxic to bird reproduction. Adult birds were dying by the thousands and some species had a complete reproductive failure.
James Watt, then U.S. secretary of interior, ordered news of the discovery suppressed while an official press release was prepared. Several months later, with the press release still supposedly being formulated, a frustrated Smith leaked the story to Deborah Blum, when she was a reporter for the Fresno Bee.Within 18 months, the New York Times, the Washington Post and CBS’ “60 Minutes” all gave major coverage to the unfolding debacle, pitting a politically powerful federal irrigation district against environmentalists and adjacent Kesterson landowners, who had seen their cattle die.In February 1985, the State Water Resources Control Board, responding to a complaint from Kesterson neighbors Jim and Karen Claus, ordered Kesterson cleaned up or closed. The following month, the Interior Department, its options dwindled, ordered Kesterson closed, an action that left the Westlands Water District without drainage, a problem that exists to this day.
But the story’s not over yet. Click here to read the rest of this article by Lloyd G. Carter in the Sacramento Bee.
Conservation groups oppose San Luis Drainage Resolution Act
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 6, 2008 at 8:36 amFrom Dan Bacher at IndyBay.org:
Bill Jennings, chairman of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, and Carolee Krieger, President of the California Water Impact Network, on Friday sent a letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein blasting the Proposed San Luis Drainage Resolution Act and Settlement Process.
“We unconditionally object to the process and the proposed legislation,” their letter states. “The proposal will in no way be sustainable, cost effective, environmentally responsible or successful. It is guaranteed to fail and cost the taxpayers literally hundreds of millions of dollars. The proposal will also enrich a small number of landowners within the San Luis Unit by giving them a perpetual water contract that they can then market to urban areas at an incredible profit, once these untested drainage solutions inevitably fail.”
The letter then says that the solution to the drainage problem of lands on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley is “massive land retirement in the Western San Joaquin Valley.”
This proposal occurs at a time when Central Valley salmon populations and California Delta fish, including delta smelt, longfin smelt, juvenile striped bass, threadfin shad and other species, are in an unprecedented state of collapse.
Two of the key factors behind the fishery collapses are increases in water exports out of the Delta and declining water quality. The land on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, laced with selenium and other toxic salts, should have never been irrigated because of the massive drainage problem.
“This drainwater contains extraordinarily elevated concentrations of selenium, boron, chromium, molybdenum, and extremely high concentrations of various salts that disrupt the normal ionic balance of the aquatic system,” according to a 1997 report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Read more on this story from IndyBay.org, which includes a copy of the letter sent to Senator Feinstein, by clicking here.
New plan surfaces to address Westlands drainage issue
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 8, 2008 at 7:37 amFrom the Modesto Bee:
Farmers and federal officials are revising plans to fix the San Joaquin Valley’s irrigation drainage problem.
The latest plan, quietly floated on Capitol Hill this week, gives the sprawling Westlands Water District an indefinite contract for irrigation water. In exchange, Westlands would pay off some of the money it owes for irrigation facilities and assume the federal government’s responsibility for drainage on the valley’s west side.
Westlands includes more than 600,000 acres of farmland in western Fresno and Kings counties.
“I think it’s moving in a very positive direction,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
Nonetheless, the latest plan still faces numerous legal, budgetary and political hurdles, and officials stress they must boil it down to strict legislative language before they can evaluate it. The new plan is the latest bid to solve the costly irrigation drainage puzzle, a legacy of the Central Valley Project that helped valley farms bloom.
And what about the debt? Westland Irrigation District owes a substantial amount of money for constructing the water system that they benefit from:
An earlier plan would have forgiven Westlands’ multimillion-dollar debt to the federal government. The present value of this debt is $270 million. With accumulating interest, the total owed will be some $418 million. Critics called forgiving the debt an unwarranted giveaway. The new plan calls for Westlands to pay the federal government $170 million.
The earlier plan would have given Westlands 60-year irrigation contracts, more than twice as long as is typical. Farmers would have been exempt from the acreage-limitation rules designed to ensure only small farms get subsidized water. The new plan provides indefinite-length irrigation contracts, also exempt from acreage-limitation rules.
“It’s one step forward,” Westlands farmer Jean Sagouspe said after a Capitol Hill briefing. “We’re getting people to understand the concept.”
Read the full text of the story from the Modesto Bee by clicking here.
GAO Report shows that Westlands & other farmers still owe taxpayers over $450 million for water infrastructure – *more added*
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on January 18, 2008 at 8:25 amFrom the Associated Press via the San Diego Union-Tribune:
A federal watchdog agency said Thursday some of the San Joaquin Valley’s largest farms owe the government hundreds of millions of dollars for the cost of building California’s water infrastructure. The report issued Thursday by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office says four large irrigation contractors owe the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation nearly $450 million for building pumps and canals. The Westlands Water District, a coalition of giant agribusinesses in the San Joaquin Valley, owes an additional $48 million, according to the report.
The farmers are in the midst of negotiating a proposal with the bureau that would forgive some of the cost of building the Central Valley Project, a vast irrigation system that serves the state’s most fertile farmland. The report makes public for the first time the official size of that debt.
“Taxpayers paid for these water projects decades ago,” said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., one of three legislators who requested the review. “This independent audit confirms that taxpayers are still owed an awful lot of money by some of the largest private users of water in the state.”
To read the full text of this article from the San Diego Union-Tribune, click here.
From Dan Bacher at IndyBay.org:
The Central Valley Project (CVP) is the largest federal irrigation system in the nation, and the beneficiaries of the CVP’s San Luis Unit include some of the most productive and lucrative farms in the world. The irrigation districts that were the subject of the report were assessed $523 million by the Bureau of Reclamation for the construction of the San Luis Unit, which was first authorized in 1960.
But due to the heavily subsidized and forgiving nature of antiquated federal western water policy, the water districts had repaid to the federal treasury only $74 million of that $523 million as of September 30, 2005, according to today’s GAO report.
The approximately 600 agribusinesses that make up the Westlands Water District – the San Luis Unit district that is often cited as the largest irrigation district in the world – were assessed an additional $179 million for the construction of their internal water distribution system. Including the remaining balance on Westlands’ account, the San Luis Unit contractors still owe the federal treasury approximately $497 million.
For the full text of this story from IndyBay.org, click here.
From Mike Taugher and the San Jose Mercury News:
Miller said the GAO report showed that the exchange, the details of which are still in flux, probably would be a bad deal for taxpayers. “They want more forgiveness from taxpayers,” Miller said. “It’s a flat-out abuse of the taxpayer.”
A layer of clay that underlies most of the Westlands district inhibits drainage and causes polluted water to build up, potentially into the root zones of crops. Before the district’s drain was plugged in the 1980s, the polluted water emptied into the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge, causing widespread deformities and deaths in birds. Without a place to dispose of its drainage, Westlands sued the federal government and in 2000 won a court order that requires the government to fix the problem.
Last spring, the government signed off on a plan to treat the tainted water and resolve the lawsuit. But by summer, farmers had offered up several alternate plans in which they proposed debt forgiveness in exchange for taking on the vexing drainage problem, which has left thousands of acres of farmland too salty to grow crops.
The reclamation bureau has estimated the cost of draining the land at $2.7 billion, which is why Westlands has said the exchange would be a good deal for taxpayers: the government would not have to build the expensive project.
But if the government does have to deal with the drainage problem, Westlands would have to repay that $2.7 billion, or at least a substantial portion of it, although it might be under terms highly favorable to the water district.
Mike Taugher’s experience with this issue really shines in this story – excellent reporting and writing. He explains the situation much better than the AP story. To read the full text of this story from Mike and the San Jose Mercury News, click here.
From the Fresno Bee:
The Bureau of Reclamation estimates one drainage option would cost the government $2.7 billion, for a combination of land retirements, evaporation ponds and soil treatments. A second option would transfer responsibility to the water districts. They would fund the drainage solutions in exchange for having their construction debt forgiven. Water district officials and state and federal representatives have been meeting to discuss irrigation drainage options, but no solution appears to be imminent. Westlands representatives could not be reached to comment Thursday.
All told, the new audit notes, the federal government spent about $3.4 billion on the Redding-to-Bakersfield system of dams and canals known as the Central Valley Project. The CVP’s San Luis Unit serves the Westlands, Pacheco, Panoche and San Luis water districts, which stretch as far north as Merced County.
A separate proposal has been made to restore water flows and salmon population to the San Joaquin River below Friant Dam. The dam, which is not part of the San Luis Unit, is blamed for drying up the once-teeming river.
Though the irrigation drainage problems primarily affect the Valley’s west side and the river restoration primarily affects the east side, taken together they illustrate the scope of the water problems facing the region.
To read the full text of the article from the Fresno Bee, click here.
You can read the Governmental Accountability Office report by clicking here.
Picture of Central Valley irrigation canal by flickr photographer Ben Werdmuller. Picture of staggered fields by flickr photographer Topherous. Click on the pictures to visit the flickr website, which is very cool and worth the click through.
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