Battle of the Water Behemoths

There’s nothing quite like water to turn things green, especially pocketbooks. As environmental attorney Tom Graff says, “Water runs uphill to money.”

A wicked water war has been raging for months in California and the front line now has shifted to the Capitol. Hardly anybody who’s not a combatant is noticing. But a mercenary army of lobbyists has been assembled by each side. And seeing them bivouacked, you just know something huge is coming down. Something about reservoirs of money.

On one side is the giant Metropolitan Water District, a wholesaler to 27 agencies for 16 million Southern Californians. On the other side is the MWD’s biggest member-customer, the San Diego County Water Authority. Allied with it is the Imperial Irrigation District, the nation’s largest.

Put simply, Imperial Valley farmers claim they can save water if somebody wants to buy it. San Diego does and is asking MWD to deliver the water through its aqueduct system. MWD is quoting a delivery price that San Diego calls outrageous. They can’t agree so the Legislature is intervening.

Under the proposed deal, farmers become water ranchers and make more money. San Diego pumps $300 million into the Imperial Valley economy over the next decade. In return, San Diego gets a reliable stream of water for urban development, something the MWD cannot guarantee.

Much more is involved, however. There are long-range implications for the entire state. Without water marketing--farmers selling to city folks--California cannot grow. This deal can set the pattern.

There’s also a political reality. Sen. David Kelley (R-Idyllwild), lead legislator for the San Diego side, is right on the money when he points out:

“We’ve been hollering for all these years that we need more water in Southern California. Now that the world knows we have all this water in the Imperial Valley, Northern Californians are going to be saying, ‘You take care of yourself before coming up here again looking for more of our water.’ ”

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The Imperial Irrigation District sucks up more Colorado River water than any entity anywhere, even more than Arizona. Its annual usage has increased by roughly 500,000 acre-feet in the past five years, rising to more than 3.1 million acre-feet. Farmers buy the water cheap from the district for $12.50 an acre-foot.

Under the proposed deal, San Diego would buy “saved” water starting at $200 an acre-foot and rising to $306 in 10 years. Ultimately, it would buy at least 200,000 acre-feet annually.

Farmers won’t reap fat profits, insists the district. Most of the money will be spent on conservation projects, such as canal lining and sophisticated irrigation. No land will be fallowed “permanently.”

But a layman--an ordinary lawn-watering Californian--might well ask, why are these farmers wasting water in the first place? If they can save, why aren’t they forced to?

“That’s just very naive,” responds a lobbyist for Western Farms, owned by the Bass Brothers of Texas, holder of 40,000 acres in Imperial. “They’re entitled to the water. They have a legal right. This is not Nazi Germany.”

Yet, the IID itself is concerned enough about that point to have included this observation in a brochure aimed at selling the deal to valley residents: “Our rights will be threatened if we do not aggressively increase conservation.”

And the neighboring Coachella Valley Water District considers Imperial a water hog. “If they weren’t wasting water, there would be more for us and the [MWD],” Coachella General Manager Tom Levy said recently. Water saved by Imperial should flow to Coachella, Levy asserts.

But Tom Graff, veteran attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund, strongly supports the deal. “We gave up on idealism a long time ago,” he says. “Farmers will do just as much conservation as makes sense to them economically--and no more. The way to go is with marketing, not coercion.”

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An incentive for conservation is the growing pressure on California to live within its 4.4 million acre-feet entitlement to Colorado River water. It has been siphoning 5.2. MWD has rights to 550,000, but has been double-dipping.

MWD is being depicted as the bad guy, trying to protect a “monopoly.” The water behemoth contends it merely wants to cover its costs. The dispute is over which costs San Diego should help cover.

A Kelley bill pending on the Senate floor prods negotiators. It requires state water director David Kennedy to mediate the dispute and perhaps recommend a solution.

“We’re looking like snot-nosed kids who can’t solve a problem,” says one lobbyist. “We’re all looking bad.”

Right. Water’s scarce. Let’s get on with using it wisely--for the public as well as the pocketbook.