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<P> Posted on Wed, Dec. 15, 2004
<P><B>Study shows federal subsidies go to largest farms</B>
<P>JULIANA BARBASSA <BR>Associated Press
<P>FRESNO, Calif. - A handful of farms get most of the water, and the subsidy
dollars, delivered by the country's largest <BR>federal water supply project,
according to a new study by a national environmental organization.
<P>The Central Valley Project, authorized in 1936 to support family farms, now
funnels up to $416 million of subsidized <BR>water to agricultural giants in
California's Central Valley, with the top 10 percent of agricultural water users
getting 67 <BR>percent of the water, the Environmental Working Group study
released Wednesday found.
<P>This is a perversion of the project's initial intent - and very expensive to
taxpayers, said Bill Walker, the organization's <BR>vice president for the West
Coast.
<P>"The system is broken," Walker said.
<P>And fixing it is more important than ever, Walker said, since the Central
Valley's water districts are currently going <BR>through contract negotiations
that could lock in millions of acre feet of water deliveries for decades to come
- a time when <BR>the state's booming population is expected to increase demand
on the limited resource.
<P>But representatives of Westlands Water District, the biggest beneficiary of
the federal water project, called the report's <BR>conclusions "irresponsible."
<P>The rate charged for water from the CVP is determined by law, they said, and
the only break farmers get is on repayment <BR>of the $3.6 billion in public
money used to build the project, an amount that is being returned over decades
with no <BR>accruing interest, water contractors said.
<P>By 2002, water users had only paid back 11 percent of the initial building
cost, in part because they've been locked into <BR>decades-long contracts that
set their water rates lower than what was necessary to pay back the construction
costs, the <BR>report said.
<P>Farmers argue they pay that debt back to the public by generating jobs and
revenue in a region plagued by double-digit <BR>unemployment, and producing the
fresh fruits and vegetables that feed the nation.
<P>Water "is a resource that should be available to a variety of users - and
there isn't any question the public benefit <BR>outweighs the cost in this
situation," said Thomas Birmingham, the general manger for Westlands Water
District
<P>Westlands Irrigation District, a political heavyweight that encompasses about
550,000 acres in Fresno and Kings <BR>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
<BR>feet of water - a deal bolstered by a subsidy of at least $23.9 million,
according to the environmental group's calculations.
<P>Westlands is home to some of the largest enterprises served by the Central
Valley projects - farming conglomerates like <BR>the 25,000 acres of nuts,
tomatoes and other vegetables owned by the Woolf family.
<P>Back when the federal water project was built, a farm was "what a man and
team of mules could work," Stuart Woolf said.
<P>"We've moved beyond that," he said, adding that the main beneficiaries of the
solid agricultural economy that rests on the <BR>back of operations like his
family's and the federal water project are "those who eat and wear clothes," he
said.
<P>But many experts who have worked to reform the 60-year-old federal water
project, like Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, <BR>warned that contract
negotiations under way could "provide these same handouts to these same special
interests for <BR>decades to come."
<P>ON THE NET: Environmental Working Group: <A
href="http://www.ewg.org/">http://www.ewg.org/</A>
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