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<H1 id=story_headline><FONT size=3><A
href="http://www.fresnobee.com/local/v-print/story/1702944.html">http://www.fresnobee.com/local/v-print/story/1702944.html</A></FONT></H1>
<H1><FONT size=3>Westlands Water District is a powerhouse for Valley farmers
</FONT></H1>
<H2 id=story_subheadline><FONT size=3></FONT></H2>
<H4 class=date>Published online on Saturday, Nov. 07, 2009</H4>
<DIV id=story_bycredit><FONT size=3><SPAN class=byline>By Mark Grossi / The
Fresno Bee</SPAN> </FONT></DIV></DIV><!-- CLOSE: #story_header -->
<DIV id=story_body>
<P><FONT size=3>The most powerful voices in the state's $11 billion water talks
last week might have been two water districts -- one speaking for half the
state's population and the other for just 600 San Joaquin Valley
farmers.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>The negotiations led to legislation with the promise of epic
change, restoring dying fisheries, building dams and easing gridlock that has
dogged water system improvement for decades.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>It made sense that Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California, which serves 19 million people, would wield big political clout in
those talks. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>But who are those 600 farmers?</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>They are customers in Westlands Water District, the country's
largest federal irrigation district. With crops worth $1 billion a year, this
one district produces more than some whole states.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>The 600,000-acre Westlands -- with a footprint twice the size of
Los Angeles -- is no hayseed at any bargaining table.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>For decades, politicos from Sacramento to Washington, D.C., have
heard regularly from Westlands. The district's name appears on dozens of
lawsuits. Anytime there's an important statewide discussion of water supply,
Westlands is in the room.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>"This district is a very influential player," said Assembly
Member Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, a Northern California lawmaker who was at
the table last week.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>Westlands is protecting its farmers, who have been losing water
to environmental reform efforts since the 1990s and idling land because of soil
contamination since the 1980s. This farming giant is in a slow-motion
transition, struggling to turn the next page in a 57-year history.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>The district's past is filled with powerful families -- Giffen,
Diener, Harris and Boswell -- who carved success with sweat, guile and ground
water on the scrubby prairie in west Fresno and Kings counties.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>When they tapped into Northern California river water on the
federal Central Valley Project in the 1960s, they made enemies. Now those
north-state enemies blame Westlands for trashing the ecosystem and ruining the
salmon fishing industry. They say the district takes too much water from the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>They call Westlands a litigious maverick, a greedy agribusiness
and an abuser of federal subsidies. Some suggest Westlands should die off and
eliminate one of the many water consumers in California.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>"We should never have allowed farming out there," said Bill
Jennings, chairman of the California Sport Fishing Alliance, based in Stockton.
"I think we can solve a lot of California's water problems by buying Westlands
farmland and taking it out of production."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3><B>Which Westlands</B>?</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>Farmer Dan Errotabere, a Westlands board member whose family has
been on the west side since before the Great Depression, chuckles when he hears
critics call him a millionaire with big political muscles.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>"If that were true, why wouldn't we have more success at getting
the water we need?" he asked. "We got only 10% of our federal water this year.
Why would we be forced to fallow almost half the district if we had such
pull?"</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>But critics say Westlands more often than not gets its
way.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>Westlands quickly goes to federal court when confronted with a
roadblock, said Tom Stokely, a member of the nonprofit environmental group
California Water Impact Network. And lately, Westlands has been winning more
often than not.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>For instance, Westlands sued over a federal biological study
that resulted in a 25% loss of the district's federal supply this year, forcing
further consideration of the study.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>"They're a big bully with lots of money to sue people," said
Stokely, a former Trinity County planner who is based in Northern
California.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>Westlands' reputation for hiring the best lawyers and filing
many lawsuits comes partly from a time in the 1980s when its well-known
irrigation drainage problem worsened.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>A clay layer beneath the soil prevents irrigation water from
sinking far on thousands of Westlands' acres. Minerals build up and eventually
poison the land.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>As a solution in the late 1970s and 1980s, federal officials
piped drainage water from Westlands to Kesterson Reservoir in western Merced
County.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>Scientists later discovered the drainage was toxic after it
caused a disaster, killing or disfiguring shorebirds and other
animals.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>Federal officials stopped the flow of drainage to Kesterson in
1985. Then, waves of legal action began as officials sorted out how to deal with
the dirty water. The solution has eluded authorities, the dirty water remains
and drainage issues are still in court.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>At the time of the drainage flare-up, the district hired a
Sacramento law firm with a lawyer named Tom Birmingham, who had represented the
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in issues surrounding the Mono Lake
restoration.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>More than a dozen years later, he would become Westlands general
manager. Birmingham is known for precision and toughness in water
issues.</FONT></P>
<P><B><FONT size=3>Benefits for the public</FONT></B></P>
<P><FONT size=3>Only farmers have reaped the benefits from the investment of
public money in Westlands, one environmentalist contends.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>Fresno lawyer Lloyd Carter, a deputy state attorney general and
longtime Westlands critic, wrote in a legal journal this month that over several
decades taxpayers have invested more than $1 billion in everything from canal
construction to crop subsidies for this district.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>But residents of Fresno and Kings counties have little to show
for it, he concluded.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>"The wealth created has not trickled down to farmworkers or the
surrounding poverty-stricken communities," Carter wrote in the Golden Gate
University Environmental Law Journal. "The region is rife with social problems
ranging from high unemployment to gang and drug problems, high teen-pregnancy
rates [and] an appalling high school dropout rate."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>Westlands officials reply that farming has created thousands of
jobs on the west side and is the basis for many spinoff businesses, such as food
processing.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>Another prominent critic of Westlands is Rep. George Miller,
D-Martinez, who co-wrote a broad 1992 irrigation reform law that provided more
water for the state's ecosystem.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>Westlands and other federal farm contractors lost 35% to 50% of
their Northern California irrigation water in the process.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>Miller has said Westlands represents a privileged group of
farmers who bought cheap west side land and got rich by using federally
subsidized water to grow subsidized cotton.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, disagrees, saying much has changed in
the last 20 years. Westlands farmers are largely out of the cotton business and
now pay full price for federal water.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>He said Westlands' family farms are a critical part of Fresno
County agriculture, which leads the nation in farm production.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>Westlands farmers grow 60 kinds of crops, including almonds,
tomatoes, garlic, onions, grapes and cantaloupes. They grow twice as many acres
of almonds as cotton.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>The food is a higher quality coming from California farms
because of environmental regulation, Costa said. He does not think other
countries could match that quality, nor would he like to see them
try.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>"It would be a tragedy and a blow to national security if we did
not have Westlands," Costa said. "Where would the food products come from for
Americans' dinner tables?"</FONT></P>
<P><B><FONT size=3>On the farm</FONT></B></P>
<P><FONT size=3>With the passage of state reform legislation this week,
Westlands officials say there is a clear path to building the canals and
reservoirs that could bring more water to west side farms.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>But it will take years, and there are no assurances.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>Back on the farm, things look grim. The three-year drought,
irrigation water cutbacks to protect delta fish and drainage problems have
knocked out of production 260,000 acres -- more than 40% of Westlands
land.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>Growers aren't giving up. They've spent millions of dollars on
drip-irrigation systems.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>Water-intensive flood irrigation -- filling furrows with river
water -- has largely been abandoned, said farmer and board member
Errotabere.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>"Water is expensive, and we don't have enough of it," he said.
"It has always been that way around here."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>The district needs about 1.5 million acre-feet of irrigation
water each year, or enough to fill Millerton Lake three times. Nature can't
replenish more than about 200,000 acre-feet of water that Westlands farmers pump
from the ground each year.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>So in the 1960s, Westlands joined the federal Central Valley
Project with the idea of buying Northern California river water to spare the
west side's underground water supply from excessive pumping.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>The district's contract calls for 1.15 million acre-feet
annually, leaving growers short even if a full allotment is delivered. Westlands
has had full delivery just twice since 1992, officials said.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>Last summer, the allotment was 10% -- less than 120,000
acre-feet. Farmers bought water from other districts. Many used ground water.
But the wells often yield salty water, which eventually will stunt plant
growth.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>District spokeswoman Sarah Woolf, a member of a farming family
in the district, said the naturally occurring salts are applied directly to the
crop seed beds by drip irrigation.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>"Every year, that salt is building up," she said. "The water
from the delta is a higher quality."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>Out near Huron in southern Fresno County, farmer Ryan Ferguson,
26, says his family counts on water from Westlands.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>He grows pistachios, cantaloupes and other crops on about 1,700
acres, but this year his family is having trouble getting by because of
curtailed water supplies.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=3>"I'll stay in this business as long as I can," he said. "I have
a son, and it's my dream to have him farm here, too."
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