[env-trinity] Study shows federal subsidies go to largest farms

[Tom Stokely]

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/10420390.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp 
 Posted on Wed, Dec. 15, 2004 

Study shows federal subsidies go to largest farms 

JULIANA BARBASSA 
Associated Press 

FRESNO, Calif. - A handful of farms get most of the water, and the subsidy dollars, delivered by the country's largest 
federal water supply project, according to a new study by a national environmental organization. 

The Central Valley Project, authorized in 1936 to support family farms, now funnels up to $416 million of subsidized 
water to agricultural giants in California's Central Valley, with the top 10 percent of agricultural water users getting 67 
percent of the water, the Environmental Working Group study released Wednesday found. 

This is a perversion of the project's initial intent - and very expensive to taxpayers, said Bill Walker, the organization's 
vice president for the West Coast. 

"The system is broken," Walker said. 

And fixing it is more important than ever, Walker said, since the Central Valley's water districts are currently going 
through contract negotiations that could lock in millions of acre feet of water deliveries for decades to come - a time when 
the state's booming population is expected to increase demand on the limited resource. 

But representatives of Westlands Water District, the biggest beneficiary of the federal water project, called the report's 
conclusions "irresponsible." 

The rate charged for water from the CVP is determined by law, they said, and the only break farmers get is on repayment 
of the $3.6 billion in public money used to build the project, an amount that is being returned over decades with no 
accruing interest, water contractors said. 

By 2002, water users had only paid back 11 percent of the initial building cost, in part because they've been locked into 
decades-long contracts that set their water rates lower than what was necessary to pay back the construction costs, the 
report said. 

Farmers argue they pay that debt back to the public by generating jobs and revenue in a region plagued by double-digit 
unemployment, and producing the fresh fruits and vegetables that feed the nation. 

Water "is a resource that should be available to a variety of users - and there isn't any question the public benefit 
outweighs the cost in this situation," said Thomas Birmingham, the general manger for Westlands Water District 

Westlands Irrigation District, a political heavyweight that encompasses about 550,000 acres in Fresno and Kings 
counties, gets more than a quarter of the water delivered by the CVP. In 2002, it paid $13.4 million for its 721,258 acre 
feet of water - a deal bolstered by a subsidy of at least $23.9 million, according to the environmental group's calculations. 

Westlands is home to some of the largest enterprises served by the Central Valley projects - farming conglomerates like 
the 25,000 acres of nuts, tomatoes and other vegetables owned by the Woolf family. 

Back when the federal water project was built, a farm was "what a man and team of mules could work," Stuart Woolf said. 

"We've moved beyond that," he said, adding that the main beneficiaries of the solid agricultural economy that rests on the 
back of operations like his family's and the federal water project are "those who eat and wear clothes," he said. 

But many experts who have worked to reform the 60-year-old federal water project, like Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, 
warned that contract negotiations under way could "provide these same handouts to these same special interests for 
decades to come." 

ON THE NET: Environmental Working Group: http://www.ewg.org/ 
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