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<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>This
is lengthy, but valuable background in understanding Westlands Water District,
recipient of Trinity River water. It was composed largely of small
groundwater irrigated farms and otherwise was largely a desert wasteland before
Trinity water was provided. As Floyd Dominy, Commissioner of the Bureau
of Reclamation when the Westlands' water contract was signed has said in recent
years, the biggest mistake he made as Commissioner was allowing that contract
to be signed before the contaminated irrigation drainage problem was
solved. The article also provides interesting information on recent
legislative activities on California's developed water allocation issues. <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"'>Byron<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>Breakdown:
'The Cadillac of California irrigation districts' has more than a tiny fish to
blame for its troubles <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>High
Country News-1/11/10<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>By
Matt Jenkins <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>On
Sept. 17 of last year, the famously hypertensive right-wing Fox News
commentator Sean Hannity rolled into the West Side of the San Joaquin Valley,
satellite truck in tow. Months earlier, when it became clear that a 2-year-old
drought would grind on for another year, the federal government announced plans
to slash water deliveries to local farmers. Hannity smelled blood. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>He,
and many others, quickly blamed the whole crisis on a two-inch-long fish called
the Delta smelt, which is protected under the Endangered Species Act. The
bright yellow CONGRESS CREATED DUST BOWL signs that began popping up all over
the valley were prime-time stuff. And, at least in Hannity's telling, the
farmers' fight against the water cutoff was swathed in the populist bunting of
a peasant revolt against heavy-handed government.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>These
farms are muscular emblems of American-style production agriculture, and odds
are better than even that something inside your fridge right now was grown on
the West Side. One of Heinz's biggest suppliers grows and processes tomatoes
here, and the green-produce giant Tanimura & Antle sends armies of workers
into the fields to harvest lettuce. The relatives of one of the district's
founders raise the organic spinach that goes into Amy's-brand pizzas and
vegetable pot pies.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The
farmers are confederated as the Westlands Water District. The largest
irrigation district in the United States, it has a reputation for bare-knuckled
combativeness. But Westlands has fared badly in the face of the drought,
complicated by the Endangered Species Act, which has stringent protections for
the smelt and several other fish that are affected by pumping operations.
Because farmers received only 10 percent of the water they held federal
contracts for, they were forced to leave roughly 156,000 acres -- about a
quarter of the district -- unplanted this year.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>And
so Hannity arrived to check out the damage for himself. His retinue set up camp
on a fallowed field, clipped microphones to the area's congressional
delegation, and began beaming the farmers' plight to the world. As a boom cam
floated over the sign-toting, flag-waving throng, Hannity said, "The
government has put the interests of a two-inch minnow before all of the great
people that you see out here tonight." He brandished a blown-up photo of a
smelt and said: "This is what this comes down to: No water for farmers,
because of this fish."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The
crowd gave a hearty boo. Then the cameras turned to the darling of the hour:
Rep. Devin Nunes, the hot-headed 37-year-old Republican who represents the
neighboring congressional district. "The liberals and the radical
environmental groups have been working on this for decades: They've been trying
to turn this into a desert," Nunes fumed. "And what's important about
you being here tonight -- and the rest of your viewers need to understand -- is
this could happen to you. They're on their way. Nancy Pelosi's the speaker of
the house. George Miller's her lieutenant. They're on their way to the rest of
America."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>But
there was more to the story than the drama that Fox News beamed out of
Westlands that day. Congressman Nunes had been hard at work in Washington,
D.C., introducing a series of amendments that would force the federal
government to ignore the Endangered Species Act when it determined how much
water to deliver to farmers this year. His efforts were repeatedly turned back.
Then, five days after Hannity's broadcast, Jim DeMint, a conservative
Republican from South Carolina, introduced a similar amendment in the Senate,
with Westlands' endorsement. That's when the needle skipped off the record.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>California's
warhorse Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, has been a longtime champion of
Westlands, but she has also tried to negotiate common ground in the state's
complicated water politics. And back home, the California Legislature -- after
years of ignoring the problem -- was working feverishly to hammer out a
sweeping package of bills to relieve the crisis in the Delta. When Feinstein
learned of the DeMint amendment, she denounced it as "a kind of Pearl
Harbor on everything that we're trying to do."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The
amendment failed. Several days later, before a press conference at the U.S.
Department of the Interior, Feinstein approached Tom Birmingham, the man who
runs Westlands, and pulled him aside. The senior senator from California
managed a tight smile, and then shook her fist at Birmingham, who has
contributed to her campaigns. "Tom, I'm angry," she said. "I'm
so angry that I want to punch you."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Chastened,
Birmingham later made a rare admission that Westlands had gone too far.
"We just made a terrible, terrible mistake," he said in early
November. "We made a mistake, and we need to acknowledge that."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>With
scant naturally available water, the West Side was an unlikely place for an
agricultural empire to begin rising roughly a century ago. Yet the farmers in
Westlands have shown a rare knack for overcoming adversity and actually turning
a profit in sometimes seemingly hopeless circumstances. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Westlands
has never been afraid to aggressively seek advantage wherever it could, and the
district has played its cards well. But the foundation beneath the entire
enterprise has always been unstable. And if the drought is revealing anything,
it is not government regulation run amok but an empire that may have seriously
over-extended itself.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>In
the 1980s, veteran reporter Eric Brazil dubbed Westlands "the Cadillac of
American irrigation districts." Westlands has a defiant air of
invincibility, and its leaders have never blinked when trouble materialized --
including at the very start.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Farmers
first tried to make a go of it on the West Side in the late 1800s. They found
themselves blessed with deep, rich, Panoche sandy loams that had eroded out of
the nearby hills –– and cursed with scanty local water. That, in
turn, inspired a number of creative efforts to correct the problem. In 1924,
for instance, the city of Coalinga paid $8,000 to Charles Mallory Hatfield to
make it rain. He set fire to a secret recipe of chemicals, and induced the
heavens to pour forth.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>By
that time, though, most farmers were looking not to the skies but to the ground
beneath their feet for water. The invention of deep-well pumps allowed them to
reach the groundwater beneath the dry scrub, and farms began spreading across
the West Side. But by the 1940s, trouble was on the horizon. As the pumps
furiously sucked water from beneath the valley, the ground beneath them sank
like a collapsing soufflé, leaving some pumps stranded 10 feet in the air.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>This
time, the farmers turned to the government. In 1952, several prominent
landowners on the West Side organized the Westlands Water District and began
lobbying for water from the delta formed where the Sacramento and San Joaquin
rivers meet, a hundred-odd miles to the north, before flowing to the Pacific.
In 1960, Congress agreed to finance construction of San Luis Reservoir and a
canal to the water district, as part of the massive Central Valley Project. On
Aug. 18, 1962, President John F. Kennedy helicoptered into the valley to join
Gov. Pat Brown. "It is a pleasure for me to come out here and help blow up
this valley in the name of progress," Kennedy said, before setting off an
explosive blast that broke ground for the reservoir.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Today,
Westlands sprawls across 605,000 acres. Tomatoes and almonds are the two
most-widely grown crops, but farmers grow everything from alfalfa to garbanzos
to pomegranates –– more than a billion dollars' worth of crops in a
normal year. Westlands is famously secretive about how many farm operations
actually do business in the district. The official line is that Westlands is
home to "more than 600 family farmers," but many of those are, in
fact, parts of large family partnerships. Farms run from couple-hundred acre
operations to Woolf Farming's roughly 25,000-acre spread.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>When
Westlands lobbied for the construction of the San Luis Reservoir, the
district's farmers hitched their star to the fate of the Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta. For most Californians, the Delta is a world far from mind, but it is the
heart of California's complex water-supply system. Two enormous batteries of
pumps on the edge of the Delta feed the federal Central Valley Project and its
sister, the State Water Project. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Those
two projects, in turn, push water south to over 1.2 million acres of farmland
and more than 25 million people, primarily in Los Angeles and San Diego. It's a
complex system, but the Delta's ecosystem is even more complicated -- and
fragile. It is a critical link in California salmon's annual spawning runs, and
is home to more than 120 species of fish, including the smelt.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>By
the late 1980s, it was becoming clear that competing demands for the Delta's
water could unravel everything. Barry Nelson, a water policy analyst with the
Natural Resources Defense Council, has called the Central Valley Project
"the biggest single environmental disaster ever to strike
California."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The
meltdown that drew Sean Hannity to the West Side last summer had been brewing
since at least 1989. That year, the winter run of chinook salmon in the
Sacramento River fell so low that the federal government added the fish to the
endangered species list. Then, in 1993, the Delta smelt was classified as
threatened.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>For
a time, there was a promising shift. In 1992, after a long, hard fight,
Congress passed the Central Valley Project Improvement Act; then, in 1994,
water users, environmentalists and the federal government reached an agreement
called the Bay Delta Accords. Together, the two offered hope for a more
balanced approach to juggling the water demands of farms and cities with
protection for the Delta's fisheries. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>For
roughly the next decade, California went through a series of gyrations,
centered around a joint state-and-federal effort called CALFED, that marked a
new period of collaborative management.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Yet
the Delta fisheries only got worse, and the Delta smelt provided the clearest
signal that something was wrong. Bruce Herbold, an Environmental Protection
Agency scientist involved in an ongoing investigation into the collective fish
decline in the Delta, says that the smelt, unlike other fish, spends its entire
one-year life span in the Delta, "so it's a really good animal to tell you
what's happening."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>By
2004, smelt populations had fallen to record lows, even as pumping intensified.
Water "exports" to farms and Southern California's cities had topped
6 million acre-feet for the first time in 1989, and then tapered off to a low
of about half that during a drought in the early 1990s. Then, fast on the heels
of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act and the Bay-Delta Accord, exports
began climbing. In 1996, they hit 6 million acre-feet again. And by 2005 they
had reached a new record high.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>"We
have been steadily ramping up diversions from that system, year after year, for
a long time. And we've just hit limits. We haven't yet seen extinctions, but
we're on the razor's edge," says Nelson. "And right now, (the Delta
smelt protections are) the tool that has prevented the projects from driving
the system completely over the edge."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Those
protections are determined by a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service analysis called
a biological opinion, which is meant to ensure that the pumping plants do not
violate the Endangered Species Act. While the pumps themselves kill fish, they
have also dramatically reshaped the hydrology of the Delta: they have broken a
natural cycle in which salty water from San Francisco Bay would wash through
parts of the Delta each winter, and they have re-oriented flows from
east-to-west to north-to-south.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The
biological opinion, which was first issued in 2005, asserted that pumping could
be increased without harming the smelt. The Natural Resources Defense Council
sued to force the feds to redo the opinion, and in 2007, won a favorable ruling
from federal District Judge Oliver Wanger. To protect smelt and other species
during key stages in their life cycles, a court-ordered revised opinion limits
the times that pumps can be used -- and, by extension, the amount of water that
they can send south.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>With
the onset of the current drought in 2007, and with Judge Wanger's ruling, water
exports plummeted and have continued to fall. The fish -- and the communities
that depend on fish -- haven't done any better. Last year, salmon runs
collapsed so badly that federal regulators shut down the state's commercial
salmon fishery for the second year in a row, throwing fishermen from San
Francisco to the North Coast out of work.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Many
farmers echo Hannity in blaming the restrictions solely on the fish-protection
measures. But Lester Snow, California's top water regulator, and David Hayes,
the deputy secretary of the Interior, both point out that fish-related pumping
restrictions accounted for only a quarter of the reduced exports from the Delta
this year. (A recent report by the Public Policy Institute of California put
the number even lower, at 15-20 percent.) The real culprit behind the low
deliveries is the drought.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>In
the meantime, the collaborative-management efforts have been crumbling; CALFED
collapsed in 2006 in part due to a lack of funding. As a result, the Delta
crisis was, for the most part, being immediately addressed only in the courts.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Last
year, however, even as Feinstein was shaking her fist in Birmingham's face in
Washington, California state legislators were hammering out a package of bills
that promised to breathe new life into the ideal of balancing water extraction
and environmental protection. The package would require the state to establish standards
for how much water would be allowed to flow from the Delta out to the Pacific,
a critical element for protecting fish populations. It would also create an
oversight council and legal backstops to prevent an outright run on the Delta
for more water.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>More
controversially, however, the package lays the groundwork for what is most
often referred to as the Peripheral Canal, a 25-year-old idea that has
generated plenty of contention before. The canal would allow water users to
directly tap the Sacramento River -- the major contributor of water to the
Delta -- and route water straight to the pumps that push it to the southern
half of the state. That could protect the freshwater from a large earthquake-
or climate-driven sea level rise that would cause a massive infusion of salt
water into the Delta.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>A
canal might also help untangle the snarl formed by competing demands. It would
essentially separate the water in the Delta, shunting the water allocated to
farmers and cities around the estuary rather than through it, and allowing
environmental flows to be used to mimic the Delta's more natural, variable
self. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The
proposal has divided environmental groups. "There's this notion that the
best way to restore the Bay-Delta is to separate the fish from the water,"
says Jonas Minton, the water policy advisor for the Planning and Conservation
League. "That's as biologically unsound as it sounds. This is an attempt
by large agribusinesses and Southern California developers to take even more
water."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Other
groups, including the Environmental Defense Fund and Natural Resources Defense
Council, have endorsed the package. "Five or 10 years ago, NRDC would have
said no way, no how" to a Peripheral Canal, says Doug Obegi, a Natural
Resources Defense Council attorney. The realities of the collapsing Delta have
caused the group to shift its stance. But, he adds, "how it's operated --
whether it's good for the environment -- really does make or break the
project."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>On
Sept. 11 last year, the clock ran out on an intense round of negotiations over
the water package during the regular legislative session. Schwarzenegger,
threatening to veto hundreds of bills, forced lawmakers back for a special
session. Finally, on Nov. 4, the Legislature passed the package.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>All
told, the projects in the package could ring in at more than $40 billion. This
November, California voters will be asked to approve the publicly financed
portion of the plan, an $11 billion bond. It is not at all clear that
Californians will have the appetite for new debt when the state is already
teetering under a $21 billion budget deficit.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>And
even if voters approve the package, relief could still be far off for
Westlands. The canal wouldn't carry any water until 2018 at the earliest. And that
raises the question of how far water districts like Westlands will go to
protect themselves in the meantime.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>How
are we going to survive between now and the time that these long-term solutions
can be implemented?" says Westlands boss Tom Birmingham. "If we have
to live with the existing biological opinions until 2018, there are a lot of
farmers in Westlands Water District that simply will not survive."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>As
of November, Westlands' fighting spirit was still much in evidence. In a barren
field on the west side of the district, a yellow sign screamed, "CHANGE
the LAWS or we'll CHANGE CONGRESS!" A passing semi tooted its air horn in
approval.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Westlands
is, somewhat paradoxically, in the most vulnerable class of water users that
receive water from the Central Valley Project. During droughts, the project
delivers water first to wildlife refuges and to irrigation districts that were
formed before the first portions of the project were built in the 1930s. Cities
come next, and finally more recently created agricultural districts, such as
Westlands. In a wet year, Westlands receives 40 percent of all the water
delivered through the Central Valley Project. But in a dry year that percentage
can be much less -- in 2008, for example, Westlands' share was only 18 percent.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>That
vulnerability has shaped the district's dealings with the outside world.
"We've had to be more aggressive, politically and legally, than water
districts with a firmer supply of water," says Frank Coelho, a farmer who
has been on the district's board of directors since 1991. "It's just the
nature of trying to survive."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Tom
Birmingham is the man charged with defending the district's interests, and
pretty much everyone involved in the state's water politics keeps a close eye
on his every move. Water bosses like those at the Metropolitan Water District
of Southern California, which supplies water to 19 million people in Los
Angeles and San Diego, have gradually reached out to environmental groups. But
Birmingham is not the type to hold up an olive branch, even though Westlands
was careful to keep its name out of Hannity's environmentalist-bashing
broadcast.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>"Birmingham
is devout. He's a believer," says one Westlands farmer. "He's a
believer in the idea that farmers on the West Side should be allowed to farm.
And a lot of people on the other side of that proposition" -- a reference
to critics who say Westlands is a water-guzzling, fish-killing monster --
"would like to see the end of the district."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Birmingham
began working as an outside attorney for the district in 1986, after a short
stint with the pro-property-rights Pacific Legal Foundation. Fourteen years
later he became Westlands' general manager. Birmingham tends not to mince
words, and few people are as critical as he is of the effort to save the Delta.
"The pumping restrictions have done absolutely no good for the fish,"
he says. "We've dedicated millions of acre-feet of water per year to
protect those species, and they're still declining."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Even
though, overall, Delta pumping increased between 1990 and 2005, Westlands has
seen the reliability of its water supply erode, thanks to a complicated mix of
federal and state pumping and priorities. Before 1993, the pumps could run all
year long. Then the smelt was listed, and the window during which Westlands
could pump water grew smaller and smaller.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Because
that window now limits pumping to only the second half of each year, water
users can't take advantage of the extra water available in the Delta at other,
wetter times of the year like the winter. "What we want to do," says
Birmingham, "is restore the ability of those pumps to operate at capacity
year-round."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The
quest to re-open the pumping window lies at the heart of Westlands' survival
strategy. In search of relief, the district turned to Congressman Nunes and
Sen. DeMint for Endangered Species Act waivers last year. Last March, Westlands
-- through a broader group of local irrigation districts -- also sued the
federal government to overturn the smelt biological opinion. Birmingham is
particularly critical of the science behind the opinion, and says that a host
of other problems, including pesticide runoff, invasive fish and high levels of
ammonia from urban waste-treatment plants, are responsible for the Delta
fisheries collapse. That case is still working its way through court, but in
December, Westlands and the Water Authority asked Judge Wanger for an
injunction to prohibit the pumping restrictions this year -- a motion that the
judge will consider this month.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Yet
even as Westlands aggressively challenges the biological opinions, it is one of
the main participants in the quiet, ongoing series of negotiations to create a
Bay-Delta Conservation Plan. The plan, which emerged in the wake of CALFED's
collapse, seems likely to provide at least the raw DNA for the new governance
entity mandated by the water package the California Legislature passed in
November.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Some
environmental groups view that process skeptically. "The environmentalists
can sit in the back seat and offer suggestions," says the Planning and
Conservation League's Minton, "but they don't have the grip on the
steering wheel." <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>But
Ann Hayden, a senior water resource analyst with the Environmental Defense
Council, who represents environmental groups in the process, says that the
conservation plan has kept the water users' quest for better water reliability
yoked to a meaningful effort to protect the Delta. In "this world of
constant litigation, we've actually been able to make quite a bit of progress
in the BDCP," she says. "I think we have a promising foundation to
work from."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Still,
the DeMint amendment and the political wrangling over Endangered Species Act
waivers "has created a lot of tension in the BDCP process," she says.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The
state's environmental groups are watching to see what happens when Congress
returns this month. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Sen.
Feinstein has been working on several fronts to help Westlands and other water
users. Last fall, she requested a review of the smelt biological opinion by the
National Academy of Sciences; a preliminary report should be out this spring.
The Senate will also consider a bill she introduced that would streamline the
federal government's review and approval of water transfers.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Birmingham
says that Westlands has not ruled out asking Congress for help in getting a
waiver from the Endangered Species Act. "We will pursue every potential
remedy," he says. But "not," he is careful to add, "without
the express consent of Sen. Dianne Feinstein."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>There
is an uneasy sense of déjà vu in Westlands these days. Because its Delta water
supply is so unreliable, Westlands, unlike most of the rest of California, has
been fairly proactive in managing its groundwater, which is its farmers'
insurance policy for dry times. But over the past three years, farmers have
been drilling many new groundwater wells, and they have fired up many
previously idle ones, too. As its Delta supplies have plummeted, Westlands'
groundwater use has dramatically increased. The district estimates that its
farmers pumped half a million acre-feet this year.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>At
the edge of an almond orchard on his farm, 41-year-old Shawn Coburn shows off a
new well with a mixture of pride and chagrin. "This is a million-dollar
hole," Coburn says. It goes 1,800 feet down, and taps into a nasty realm.
"Say a prayer, because there is a hell. When this water comes out of the
ground, it's 97 degrees."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>It's
also heavily laden with salt and boron, so it has to be used sparingly and
mixed with scarce canal water. It is hell on pumps: Many are rotting out from
the inside because the chemical concentrations are so strong. And the
groundwater has an equally diabolical effect on crops. Farmers who had to rely
solely on well water to grow lettuce saw their crops yield stunted, disease-prone
heads fit only for shredded salad mix.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The
drought is already beginning to reshape the district. "A small farmer
can't afford to go out and punch a million-dollar hole in his dirt," says
Coburn. As smaller growers go bust, one of the district's largest landowners
says he is considering whether to buy their ground.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>District
insiders also say that the drought and water restrictions are taking a toll on
the finances of the water district itself. Last year, Westlands had to cover a
$93 million operating budget with shrinking revenues. Because irrigation
districts have to maintain their full pipeline system to deliver even
much-reduced supplies of water, they're ill-equipped to trim operating expenses
in dry times. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>"You
have a minimum operating budget divided by a smaller and smaller supply, so
prices have gone up considerably," says Dan Errotabere, who sits on
Westlands' board and whose family partnership farms about 5,500 acres. "We
have a little bit of reserve that we try to use to smooth prices out, but you
quickly burn that up."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Contrary
to popular perception, Westlands is relatively water efficient. The district's
entire distribution system is underground pipe, instead of open canals that
lose water through evaporation. And its farmers have gone in for drip
irrigation -- widely recognized as the most efficient form of irrigation -- in
a big way.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Frank
Coelho, the Westlands board member, is the grandson of a Portuguese immigrant
who came to the West Side from the Azore Islands in 1917. Coelho's family
partnership farms about 8,000 acres, primarily growing tomatoes. "Our
first drip went in in 2000, and we'll be 100 percent drip on our ranch (this)
year," Coelho says. "Nobody stretches a gallon of water in
agriculture like Westlands does."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Last
year, fully half of the district's farmed acreage was drip-irrigated. Yet the
adoption of this method has been driven less by a desire to save water than by
the fact that drip increases crop yields by as much as 50 percent. And while
farmers have made a major shift away from cotton, a fairly heavy water user,
the replacement crops don't necessarily use any less. Almonds, for instance,
which now cover more than 68,000 acres, use just as much water as cotton does.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Indeed,
in spite of the recent irrigation and crop shifts, Westlands' total water
demand has not gone down. Birmingham says that the district's annual demand for
water is 1.4 million acre-feet per year. That's 210,000 acre-feet more than
Westlands holds contracts for from the Central Valley Project. In a year with
full deliveries from the project, Westlands could almost make the math work.
The amount of water that can be pumped reliably over the long term without
depleting the aquifer is roughly 200,000 acre-feet, about what it would take to
cover the difference.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>But
in any year with a less than 100 percent supply from the Central Valley
Project, the district runs a deficit that it must cover by buying water in the
open market (at rates that, this year, were four times what Westlands paid for
its own water), or by pumping groundwater at unsustainable levels. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Over
the past 22 years, a period that extends back beyond the first restrictions in
the 1990s, Westlands -- even after buying water and relying on wells -- has
only once managed to pull together a full 1.4 million acre-feet. And even as
the district's water supply has become less reliable, many of Westlands'
farmers have made themselves more vulnerable to water shortages. Today, as much
as a third of the district's cultivated acreage is planted to permanent crops
like grapes and almonds -- crops that farmers can't fallow in a dry year.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Once
already, the district has been forced to confront the fact that it is
over-extended. In 2002, it settled a lawsuit filed by a group of Westlands farmers
because there wasn't enough water to ensure equal deliveries to everyone, by
permanently retiring about 90,000 acres. That reduced the farmed acreage in the
district by about 15 percent, and increased the amount of water available to
the remaining landowners.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>That
may be about to happen again. As the Coast Range eroded to form the Panoche
sandy loams that thrill the farmers here, its rocks infused those loams with
the toxic element selenium. In 1983, the selenium-poisoned runoff led to an
outbreak of gruesome deformities in birds at the Kesterson Wildlife Refuge,
which, despite its name, was little more than a sump for the
selenium-contaminated water that trickled out of Westlands. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>For
years, Westlands has been negotiating with the federal government to retire as
many as 200,000 acres that have selenium and drainage problems. That would
shrink the farmed area in Westlands to about half of its former size, in
exchange for a firmer, though somewhat smaller, supply of water. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Taken
together, Westlands' water and drainage problems suggest that, in the future,
the district will look quite different than it did in its heyday. And as the
entire state grapples with drier times, irrigation districts like Westlands are
assuming new importance as a potential source of water transfers for the
agencies, like the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California,
responsible for keeping cities supplied through good years and bad. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Birmingham,
and many Westlands landowners, remain adamant that the district won't sell its
water off to outsiders. "It hasn't happened, and it isn't going to
happen," says Birmingham.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Still,
the prospect of selling water does quietly figure into the farmers' calculus.
"It's gotten a lot of talk," says Errotabere. "It's the
realization that we've been squeezed so hard that now people are giving up
water supply to survive. If you're a financial steward of whatever operation
you've got, you have to consider whether it's better to park the ground and
sell the water next year."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Back
in November 2003, when Arnold Schwarzenegger was sworn in as governor of
California, his predecessor, Gray Davis, left him with a piece of parting
advice. "Pray for a good economy," he said, "and rain."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Six
years later, it appears that Schwarzenegger has not prayed hard enough on
either count. For the first time in a long time, however, the state seems ready
to confront the Delta crisis. Last year was just the first step in what is sure
to be an exhausting process that will go on for years. Over the next decade,
the state's water system and its water politics could be dramatically
transformed. But peril lurks at every turn. And every winter brings a new roll
of the dice that could either push things to the breaking point, or buy the
state a year's reprieve.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>John
Diener is the nephew of one of Westland's founding fathers. Although he seems
happiest dispensing folk wisdom from behind the wheel of his GMC pickup, he is
known as one of the most progressive farmers in Westlands.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>In
November, Diener wheeled the truck through his fields, checking on next
spring's crop of organic spinach. It had been an extremely frustrating year:
Diener had fallowed about 750 acres, and he hoped that this year would be
better. "Just having dirt for the joy of having dirt is great," Diener
said. "But our business is about growing things."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>When
I asked what needed to happen next, Diener thought for a moment before saying,
"We pray a lot!" He burst out laughing, and then thought some more.
"We would like to see some biological opinions reviewed. And, God willing,
it rains.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>"I
mean, honest to God," he said, "we do need it to rain."<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/fax (call first to fax)</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
mobile</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">bwl3@comcast.net</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">bleydecker@stanfordalumni.org</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/">http://www.fotr.org</a> </span></i></b><b><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
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