[env-trinity] Fresno Bee Opinion- It's time to mop up west side's water debacle

[Tom Stokely]

http://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/v-printerfriendly/story/6375439p-7319866c.html

It's time to mop up west side's water debacle

Years of irrigation have taken a toll, and now political, environmental and economic forces may soon put an end to the vision. 


(Updated Monday, March 17, 2003, 5:33 AM)

           
            Toxic foam bubbles out of a pipe where the San Luis Drain empties into Mud Slough, which in turn empties into the San Joaquin River. The drain contains tail water contaminated with selenium and other toxic minerals that drain from ag land on the west side. 
            (Mark Crosse / The Fresno Bee) 
           

           
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Large-scale farming on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley grew out of a grand vision: make a parched desert bloom and fill its barren acres with small family farms. That vision was driven - and greatly altered over the years - by political and economic forces. It was America's public policy to move people westward, and it was America's pride that we could rearrange nature to bring the water where we wanted it. Later, during the Great Depression, it was a national policy to employ as many people as possible on great public works projects. 

Out of those forces came the Central Valley Project. It supplies water to the Westlands Water District, which distributes it to member-growers. That has made the desert fertile, and created vast wealth. 

            _____ Related item _____

            . The history of the Westlands Water District.  

     
     

Now a harsh reality intrudes: We are likely to see the end of west-side farming in the next 25 to 50 years, at least on its present grand scale. That would mean the end of $1 billion in annual production of cotton, fruits, vegetables and feed, and the loss of some 25,000 jobs, or at least most of them. A whole string of west-side communities could become the 21st-century equivalent of Gold Rush ghost towns. 

If nature has a sense of humor, it's probably laughing at us now. This was the deal: Farmers on the east side of the Valley would get the San Joaquin River water that once flowed all the way to the sea. West-side growers would get other water from up north, by way of the CVP, at a subsidized rate. 

But water applied to the topsoil on the west side carries salts and metals with it down through the ground until it hits a nearly impermeable layer of clay. There it backs up, and builds up toward the surface again. When it gets too close to the crops' roots, they die, and the soil is poisoned. 

The used water must be drained somehow. The scientists and engineers knew that all along. They started to build the San Luis Drain to carry contaminated water to San Francisco Bay, and got as far as the Kesterson Reservoir in western Merced County. Then a combination of increasing costs and rising environmental concerns put a halt to the drain. The water just sat there at Kesterson. 

In the mid-1980s came a shock: Thousands of birds began dying at Kesterson, deformed by selenium the irrigation water carried. 

It is galling to many growers that a solution - the drain - is known to exist but hasn't been built. And it's not likely to be built, either. The fiscal, political and environmental concerns that halted the San Luis Drain in the early 1980s are even larger now. 

Another alternative, drilling through the Coast Range to carry the contaminated water to the Pacific Ocean, is even less appealing to taxpayers and environmentalists. A third alternative, evaporation ponds, is freighted with awful images of Kesterson's dead and deformed birds. 

Some count on technology to provide an answer. That's possible, but it isn't on the horizon. And right now is when we have the problem. 

Some growers sued the federal government for its failure to complete the promised drain. They won a lavish settlement, but it may be a pyrrhic victory. Under the settlement, some 33,000 acres that have become too contaminated to farm will be taken out of production. That may presage the future for the entire Westlands district, or much of it. 

Today Westlands is not crowded with family farms, as in the early vision, but instead has about 600 growers on 600,000 acres. The costly water subsidies that keep it alive make less and less sense in a changing global economy. 

Taking most of the district's land out of production, as in the recent settlement, is the best course. The current water contract with the federal government expires in 2007. That may be too soon to craft a workable retirement solution, but the next contract, if there is one, should be for only about 10 years. 

Landowners should be fairly compensated for their land, but they shouldn't be handed the sort of bonanza some of them got in the recent settlement. The greater concern should be for the people in the small communities of the west side, whose lives and livelihoods could be devastated by land retirement. Their voices are seldom heard in these discussions. That must change. 

Nor should Westlands end up owning the retired land, as in the settlement. Above all, when the land is retired, the water should go back to the federal government for other uses. Westlands shouldn't be permitted, as many suspect it intends, to turn itself into a water broker, marketing water instead of crops. 

Humans have made a costly mess of the west side. Give it back to nature to redeem. 

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