[env-trinity] New York Times March 3 - Westlands Contract

Thu Mar 2 23:55:26 PST 2006

For Thirsty Farmers, Old Friends at Interior Dept. 

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By TIMOTHY EGAN
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/e/timothy_egan/i
ndex.html?inline=nyt-per> 

Published: March 3, 2006

FRESNO, Calif. - For more than 10 years, Jason Peltier was a paid advocate
for the irrigation-dependent farmers here in the Central Valley of
California
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/national/usstatesterritoriesandpossessio
ns/california/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> , several hundred landowners who
each year consume more water than the city of Los Angeles does. 

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Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Some Central Valley farmers supplied by the Delta-Mendota Canal may be able
to make money reselling the water. More
<javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2006/03/02/national
/20060303_WATER_SLIDESHOW_index.html',%20'20060303_WATER_SLIDESHOW',%20'widt
h=750,height=600,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')>  Photos > 

Multimedia

<javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2006/03/02/national
/20060303_WATER_SLIDESHOW_index.html',%20'20060303_WATER_SLIDESHOW',%20'widt
h=750,height=600,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')> Slideshow
<javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2006/03/02/national
/20060303_WATER_SLIDESHOW_index.html',%20'750_630',%20'width=750,height=630,
location=no,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')> Central Valley
Project Irrigation

<javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2006/03/02/national
/20060303_WATER_SLIDESHOW_index.html',%20'750_630',%20'width=750,height=630,
location=no,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')> Central Valley
Project Irrigation 

The New York Times

The Westlands Water District is seeking a government contract. More
<javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2006/03/02/national
/20060303_WATER_SLIDESHOW_index.html',%20'20060303_WATER_SLIDESHOW',%20'widt
h=750,height=600,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')>  Photos > 

Now Mr. Peltier works for the Bush administration, and he helps oversee the
awarding of new water contracts for the people he used to represent as head
of the Central Valley Project Water Users Association. The federal
contracts, tying up water for a quarter-century or more from the world's
largest irrigation project, have the potential to bring the farmers a huge
windfall if they turn around and sell the water on the open market.

At the same time Mr. Peltier - as the deputy assistant secretary for water
and science at the Interior Department - is involved with reviewing a
request by the water association to stop paying up to $11.5 million a year
into an environmental restoration fund, as required by a 1992 law. 

Mr. Peltier's role influencing decisions that could have a direct financial
impact on his former employer is part of a pattern at the Interior
Department over the last five years, critics say, with a revolving door
between managers on the government side, and the people who buy or lease
federal water, land or forests on the other side. 

At the Interior Department, at least six high political positions have been
occupied by people associated with businesses or trade associations tied to
public lands or resources. One of those appointees, J. Steven Griles, a
deputy secretary, continued to receive $284,000 a year from his old lobbying
firm while working for the government. Mr. Griles stepped down last year,
saying he had not done anything to violate ethics rules at the department. 

Mr. Peltier, in an interview, said that when he first came to the Bush
administration in 2001, he recused himself from some decisions involving the
landowners he used to represent, but he said he was granted an exemption
because of his expertise in California water issues. 

"I was given dispensation early on because of my knowledge of these issues,"
he said.

He added, "I have not had the strict bar of separation on certain issues,
but I've been very mindful of the appearance of a conflict and operated
accordingly."

Interior Department officials said Mr. Peltier, who is the chief policy
adviser on California water issues, had cleared his activities with the
ethics office.

Mark Limbaugh, the assistant secretary for water and science and Mr.
Peltier's immediate supervisor, said in a telephone interview that Mr.
Peltier's role was only advisory on water issues that involve his former
employer.

"He provides background, insight and advice," Mr. Limbaugh said. "He is not
in a position to make the ultimate decisions."

But others say the arrangement is inappropriate, and they point to contract
terms that could give farmers in the Central Valley, including the ones Mr.
Peltier once represented, far more federally subsidized water under their
new contracts than they could ever use. And because the water will be
provided at a fraction of the price it would cost on the open market, the
farmers could act as brokers to resell unneeded water at a huge markup,
making them some of the most powerful players in Western water politics for
well into the middle part of this century.

Some of the farmers will pay about $40 per acre foot of water (roughly
326,000 gallons) under the new contracts for water that could fetch up to
$200 an acre foot on the open market in dry years, according to groups that
monitor the Central Valley Project.

"They're basically locking up the last available water in California for 50
years, which they could then sell at big profit made on the back of
taxpayers," said Tom Stokely, a water policy and planning official with
Trinity County, in Northern California, which has been at odds with water
users in the Central Valley for decades. 

The biggest pool of water at stake under Mr. Peltier's watch involves the
Westlands Water District, a group of San Joaquin Valley landowners and the
largest and most prominent member of the trade association that Mr. Peltier
used to represent.

Published: March 3, 2006

(Page 2 of 2) 

The new contract for Westlands, stuffed with arcane and obscure language,
would give the landowners water from the government-financed Central Valley
Project for 25 years, with an option for another 25 years. 

<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/03/national/03water.html?pagewanted=2&ei=507
0&en=77116258fdca2774&ex=1142053200&emc=eta1#secondParagraph#secondParagraph
> Skip to next paragraph Multimedia

<javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2006/03/02/national
/20060303_WATER_SLIDESHOW_index.html',%20'20060303_WATER_SLIDESHOW',%20'widt
h=750,height=600,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')> Slideshow
<javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2006/03/02/national
/20060303_WATER_SLIDESHOW_index.html',%20'750_630',%20'width=750,height=630,
location=no,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')> Central Valley
Project Irrigation

<javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2006/03/02/national
/20060303_WATER_SLIDESHOW_index.html',%20'750_630',%20'width=750,height=630,
location=no,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')> Central Valley
Project Irrigation 

Asked about his role in the Westlands contract negotiations, Mr. Peltier
said, "I've tried to steer away from the nuts and bolts" of the contract
because of his prior job. 

He also said, "There are a lot of layers of management beneath me - plenty
of horsepower in there" to represent the government side.

But critics in Congress like Representative George Miller, a Democrat from
California who has long advocated loosening agriculture's grip on federal
water supplies, said Mr. Peltier should have nothing to do with the
contract. Mr. Miller also said far too much water was being offered to the
Westlands farmers, violating the spirit of the 1992 environmental
restoration law that tried to give competing interests in California equal
access to water. 

"This is a clear conflict of interest and has been since his appointment,"
Mr. Miller said.

Bush administration officials, including Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/n/gale_norton/in
dex.html?inline=nyt-per> , have said that top political positions in the
Interior Department have always been filled by people who are more
responsive to the party in power. They note that President Bill Clinton
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/bill_clinton/i
ndex.html?inline=nyt-per>  filled his Interior Department with former
leaders of environmental groups that have long lobbied the government. 

But the difference, critics say, is that some of the current appointees came
from groups that stand to benefit financially from the decisions made at the
Interior Department about how much businesses will have to pay for public
water, grazing land, timber and minerals.

The appointees, both former and current, include William G. Myers III, who
was the department's solicitor from 2001 through 2003 after working as a
lawyer for ranching interests which rely on public grazing land; Bennett W.
Raley, who was assistant secretary for water and science from 2001 to 2004
after working at a law firm whose clients had clashed with the federal
government over the use of public water; Rebecca W. Watson, assistant
secretary for land and minerals management, who is a lawyer who represented
mining, logging, oil and gas interests; and Kit Kimball, director of
external and intragovernmental affairs, who was a lobbyist on behalf of
mining, oil and gas companies doing business on public lands.

"It is one thing to have someone with a certain ideological bent fill a
political position, but it's another to have somebody who is so identified
with a special interest that they cannot be expected to make fair
decisions," said Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for
Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group that monitors how money and politics
intersect.

Interior Department officials say the Westlands and other contracts do not
show favor to one group or the other and do not noticeably depart from the
approach taken by the Clinton administration in dividing the water supplies.

John Leshy, the department's solicitor general under Mr. Clinton, disputed
that, saying the Clinton administration had tried harder to balance water
deliveries between environmental needs and agriculture, as required by the
1992 law.

In the case of the Westlands contract, the Bush administration officials
said they had recently started to negotiate provisions so that excess water
will not be hoarded to be sold by the farmers. 

The terms under consideration would let Westlands receive up to 1.15 million
acre-feet of water a year, about the same as it has been entitled to in the
past - equivalent to the amount needed to supply roughly 2.5 million urban
families for a year. But because at least 90,000 acres and maybe as much as
200,000 acres of the 580,000 acres of farmland used by Westlands may no
longer be suited to growing because of its heavy mineral content, critics
question why the district should continue to get such a large amount of
water. 

A Westlands official, Thaddeus Bettner, the deputy general manager, said the
district had no intention of selling any of the water at a markup. "Everyone
talks about this reselling, but it's not even discussed by us," Mr. Bettner
said. "We have a real need for the water."

He said Mr. Peltier had not helped Westlands beyond his steering the
contract to an orderly conclusion. He said he expected the new contract to
be signed in the spring. The old one expires next year. 

Separately, the water users' association wrote a letter in December to the
Interior Department requesting that the financial burdens on them from the
1992 environmental restoration law be revisited. It is first time the
federal government has considered a review of the payments, and
environmentalists say there is no evidence that significant improvements
have been made to justify reducing payments.

Mr. Peltier said, "I would not anticipate that we're going to end up
reducing the amount, but we're willing to talk about it." 

At the time the law passed, Mr. Peltier, then serving as a manager of the
trade association, indicated that the irrigators might resist complying.

"We'll do anything and everything to keep from being harmed," he told The
San Francisco Chronicle then. "If that means obstructing implementation, so
be it."

Mr. Peltier says his views have changed now that he is on the other side,
representing government.

"I was younger and brasher then," he said. 

Byron Leydecker

Chair, Friends of Trinity River

Advisor, California Trout, Inc

PO Box 2327

Mill Valley, CA 94942-2327

415 383 4810 ph

415 383 9562 fx

bwl3 at comcast.net

bleydecker at stanfordalumni.org

http://www.fotr.org

http:www.caltrout.org 

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