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<P><B>Strife over new Central Valley water allocation</B> <BR><B>Farmers,
fisheries, environmentalists all feel shorted</B>
<P>- Glen Martin, Chronicle Environment Writer <BR>Saturday, January 22, 2005
<P>The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has released preliminary 2005 federal water
allocation <BR>projections for California, and the figures have made many of the
stakeholders unhappy.
<P>Environmentalists and fisheries advocates claim the agency is ignoring key
provisions <BR>mandated by federal legislation directing greater flows down the
Sacramento River to restore <BR>depleted salmon runs.
<P>Farmers say the federal Central Valley Project -- which supplies 7 million
acre-feet of water to <BR>farmers, wildlife refuges, fisheries and cities from
the upper Sacramento Valley to Los Angeles <BR>-- was built specifically for
agriculture, but ongoing diversions to cities and environmental <BR>restoration
are coming unfairly at the farmers' expense.
<P>The disagreements highlight two decades of political and legal conflict
directed at the Central <BR>Valley Project as agribusiness and environmental
groups skirmish over disposition of water.
<P>The latest conflict arose Friday when the bureau released two projections on
water supplies for <BR>the coming year. Although the projections were based on
two criteria, "above normal" and <BR>"dry year," it said the probability of an
above average year was higher because of the amount <BR>of precipitation and
snowpack to date.
<P>If that turns out to be the case, water users north of the Sacramento
River/San Joaquin River <BR>Delta -- agriculture, municipalities, wildlife
refuges and farmers and other users who held <BR>water rights before the
construction of the Central Valley Project in the 1930s and 1940s -- <BR>would
receive 100 percent of their quotas.
<P>South of the delta, agriculture would receive 60 percent of their quotas;
municipalities, 85 <BR>percent; and refuges and historic water rights holders,
100 percent.
<P>If the year ends up being a dry one, the allocations would remain the same
except that <BR>agriculture north of the delta would receive 60 percent of
contractual quotas and cities north <BR>of the delta would receive 85 percent.
<P>Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fisheries,
said the bureau is <BR>ignoring basic tenets of the Central Valley Project
Improvement Act of 1992.
<P>That legislation directed the agency to release 800 thousand acre-feet of
water down the <BR>Sacramento River for salmon, to operate the Central Valley
Project with fisheries and wildlife <BR>restoration as a goal, and to devise a
plan that will double salmon and steelhead runs on the <BR>Sacramento River
system.
<P>"They've basically ignored it all, with the exception of some extra water
releases down the <BR>river," Grader said. "And even then, they're not letting
the water run all the way down the <BR>system and out the Golden Gate, where
it's needed to restore the health of the delta and San <BR>Francisco Bay."
<P>Instead, said Grader, the agency is capturing most of the flows at huge pumps
in the delta <BR>near Tracy, and shipping the water south to farms and cities.
<P>Jeff McCracken, a spokesman for the bureau, acknowledged that some of the
fisheries flows <BR>mandated by the 1992 project improvement act are recaptured
at the delta and pumped <BR>southward.
<P>But McCracken noted that fisheries flows for both the Sacramento and Trinity
rivers are <BR>given top priority by the agency, and all other allocations are
secondary.
<P>"If we pumped everything we could, we wouldn't be giving farmers 60 percent
of their <BR>(contractual) water," McCracken said. "We are following all the
mandates of the CVPIA, we <BR>are meeting our requirements under the (U.S.)
Endangered Species Act, and we are <BR>upholding water quality in the delta."
<P>Farmers aren't satisfied with the projected allocations, either. Michael
Wade, the executive <BR>director of the California Farm Water Coalition, said
cities and environmentalists consider <BR>farmers the default water supplier for
the entire state.
<P>"When these (CVP) deliveries were first negotiated 60 years ago, people
expected to get the <BR>amount of water that was agreed on," said Wade.
<P>"Now farmers are getting only 60 to 65 percent of their water," Wade said.
"It's like <BR>encouraging a guy to go into the shoe business, and then giving
him only half the leather he <BR>needs for the shoes."
<P>E-mail Glen Martin at glenmartin@sfchronicle.com.
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