Laws: October, 2003 - Number #17

The Imperial Irrigation District agreed on a 3-2 vote in October 2003 to sell some of the Colorado river water to which it is entitled and requiring farmers to leave a portion of their fields dry; the water instead will go to San Diego under a 75-year agreement. Some 25,000 acres will be fallowed under the deal to free up 277,000 acre feet of water a year, enough for the needs of two million people. An acre-foot is the amount of water (43,560 cubic feet) that would cover one acre to a depth of one foot. Some Imperial farmers are threatening to sue the IID for selling "their" water without their approval. They may be joined by the United Farm Workers union, which says there is no plan in place to compensate farm workers who may be jobless when land is fallowed so water can be sold. Under a local Farm Bureau proposal, farmers would submit bids to sell water; the low bidder would receive payment, and his land would be fallowed or farmed with less water. However, if San Diego pays $250 an acre-foot, and farmers offer to give up water for $50 an acre-foot, the question of who gets the remaining $200 an acre-foot is unresolved. Compensating farm workers and other third parties affected by water sales remains unresolved. The federal Trade Adjustment Assistance programs provides cash payments of about $200 a week and training for up to two years to workers who lost their jobs because of increased imports; the $400 million a year program has primarily benefited laid-off manufacturing workers. In 2002, TAA was expanded to include new categories of workers (but not service workers, so that workers who lose their jobs to outsourcing in India are not covered), lengthen the period of cash benefits, and give tax credits to help buy health insurance, which may boost its cost to $1.2 billion a year. A model for compensating communities may be the oil, gas. minerals and timber severance taxes paid to counties when resources are extracted. In 1976, California enacted a timber yield tax based on the value of the harvested timber; the rate in 2003 is 2.9 percent. (www.timbertax.org/) Westlands. The 570,000-acre Westlands Water District plans to buy and retire 200,000 acres to deal with salty ground water and declining water supplies. The land to be retired is low-lying, ground water less than five feet below the surface. In 1905, the Kings County Development Company assembled 90,000 acres of land on the western side of the San Joaquin Valley, much of it given to railroads for laying track. Kings County intended to sell the land to settlers, but the land had to be leveled to be irrigated, and many buyers depended on rain-fed grain farming. The Westlands Water District was formed in 1952 to bring water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta, 150 miles north, and Congress approved the San Luis Reservoir west of Los Banos in 1960, with canals and a drainage system for the Westlands. The fresh water changed the cropping system, from one crop of salt-tolerant barley to double cropping cotton and grains, as well as melons and other high-value crops. However, the Reclamation Act of 1902 limited farmers receiving federally subsidized water to 160 acres, and gave them 10 years to get rid of excess land. Westlands growers got the land limit raised to 960 acres for each family member, and the family's land could be farmed jointly: crop sales rose ten-fold in the 1970s to $444 million by 1980. Excess Westlands irrigation water was to be drained into the ocean by the 188-mile San Luis Drain, which ended temporarily in the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge. After 1985, federal water was stopped for 42,000 acres draining into Kesterson because the selenium carried by drainage water led to deformities in the birds in Kesterson. Westlands, as the newest user of federal water, lost more when water was reserved for fish and wildlife, and Westlands farmers, with a court decision holding the federal government responsible for not completing the drain, decided to use some poor land to collect drain water within the district. The Cal-Fed program, which aims to spend $8 billion in a state-federal effort to balance water supplies statewide for cities, industries, farms and nature, focusing on the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and the San Francisco Bay, may have to consider agricultural land and water as environmental resources as a result of a farmer suit that was initially dismissed. Farmers feared that some farm land would be bought and its water dedicated to fish. The state Department of Water Resources released a new long-term water plan in October 2003 that called for more conservation. California's population is projected to reach 50 million before 2030, and the new state plan argues that farmers can conserve water, getting "more crop per drop" and thus freeing water for cities. Florida receives far more rain than California, but one item is similar--80 percent of the water is in the northern part of the state and 80 percent of the population is in the southern part of the state. There are plans to move water from northern to southern Florida.