CALIFORNIA IN BRIEF : SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY : NRC Panel Urges New Drain Study

A panel of experts for the National Research Council said the option of a master drain to the ocean to carry away selenium-laced agricultural drainage water in the western San Joaquin Valley should be reconsidered. The master drain concept, which would have funneled the farm waste waters through San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean, was shelved in the wake of the bird mutations at Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge in the mid-1980s. The council’s Jan Van Schilfgaarde said he personally supported the concept of a master drain but stressed that his group’s report was only asking a state-federal study team to revive consideration. In 1985, a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation official estimated the cost of completing a drainage canal to the ocean at from $1 billion to $13 billion.