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<h3><span style='font-size:16.0pt'>Westside farmer sells water for $77 million<o:p></o:p></span></h3>
<p class=byline>By Seth Nidever<br>
<a href="mailto:snidever@HanfordSentinel.com">snidever@HanfordSentinel.com</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt'>Forget gold. In
Kings County, water gets most of the attention. More specifically, it’s
the prospect of losing local water rights to outside entities that gets
everybody’s dander up.<br>
<br>
That's why the Kings County Water Commission spent a good chunk of a Monday
night meeting talking about a Westside landowner who plans to sell 14,000
acre-feet of water a year to the Mojave Water Agency in San Bernardino County
for $5,500 per acre-foot.<br>
<br>
That’s $77 million of the wet stuff headed out of the county for likely
urban development (an acre-foot is enough water to supply a typical home for a
year, according to Wikipedia).<br>
<br>
The tradeoff is that the unnamed landowner — a member of a Bay Area
company called Sandridge Partners, based in Sunnyvale — plans to cut down
2,500 acres of his almond trees along Interstate 5 near Kettleman City.<br>
<br>
Normally, that probably wouldn’t rank high on the concerns of the water
commission — The land is far away from Hanford, it doesn’t affect
Kings River water users and it’s California Aqueduct water coming from
the Sacramento River, anyway.<br>
<br>
<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt'>But the concern is that
the pattern could become more common as scarce water becomes more valuable as a
commodity than as a way of growing crops.<br>
<br>
“Higher bidders are bidding for the water and are willing to pay
more,” said Don Mills, commission member.<br>
<br>
Mills said he’d like to stop Sandridge from selling the water, but that
Kings County “has no legal authority (to stop it).”<br>
<br>
Dudley Ridge Water District, where Sandridge’s land is located, has
adopted a policy divvying its water among member property owners. That gives
each the right to sell their share.<br>
<br>
No representatives from Sandridge Partners or Dudley Ridge Water District spoke
at Monday’s meeting.<br>
<br>
According to Mills, however, Sandridge plans to use part of the $77 million to
buy groundwater rights on adjacent land in Kings and Tulare counties in order
to keep at least some of its almond trees alive.<br>
<br>
The groundwater might be lower quality, but it is a more reliable water supply
than Aqueduct water, which has been reduced severely due to drought and
environmental issues in the Sacramento River delta.<br>
<br>
“It’s a matter of economics,” said Mark Gilkey, general
manager of the Tulare Lake Basin Water Storage District, in an interview.<br>
<br>
Property owners in his water district have done the same thing in the past,
Gilkey said.<br>
<br>
As with most water discussions in Kings County, Monday’s comments quickly
turned to the topic of new dams — a sore point in Sacramento as
Democratic legislators balk at new storage projects and Republican lawmakers,
along with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, say they won’t support anything
that doesn’t include new dams.<br>
<br>
“The answer’s got to be more [water] contracts,” said
commission member John Howe, adding that the reshuffling of the existing water
supply is “delaying the inevitable.”<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Byron
Leydecker, JcT</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Chair, Friends
of Trinity River</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>PO Box 2327</span></i><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Mill Valley, CA
94942-2327</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>415 383 4810
land</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>415 519 4810
cell</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'><a
href="mailto:bwl3@comcast.net"><span style='color:blue'>bwl3@comcast.net</span></a></span></i></b><b><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'><a
href="mailto:bleydecker@stanfordalumni.org"><span style='color:blue'>bleydecker@stanfordalumni.org</span></a>
</span></i></b><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>(secondary)</span></i><b><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'><a
href="http://fotr.org/"><span style='color:blue'>http://www.fotr.org</span></a>
</span></i></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
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