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<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.sacbee.com/2012/01/08/4168916/water-barons-will-corner-market.html">http://www.sacbee.com/2012/01/08/4168916/water-barons-will-corner-market.html</a><br>
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<p class="snav">This story is taken from <a
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<h1 id="story_headline">Viewpoints: Water barons will corner
market in new 'Chinatown'</h1>
<h3 id="story_creditline">Special to The Bee </h3>
<h4 class="date">Published Sunday, Jan. 08, 2012</h4>
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<p> There is more money in selling water in California than there
is in farming. </p>
<p>A one-sentence provision inserted in the 2012 budget bill by
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein will allow a handful of powerful San
Joaquin Valley water oligarchs to sell federally subsidized
agricultural water in a private market for as much as 150 times
more than what they pay for it. </p>
<p>This relaxation of publicly owned water supplies for private
gain strips out protections approved by Congress in 1992. </p>
<p> They call them "water transfers," and for the last 15 years
California has been quietly edging into a very lucrative
privatized water sales market that seeks to expedite the
movement of cheap agricultural water from Northern California to
thirsty Southern California and Bay Area cities. </p>
<p>The cast of characters in this new water wars drama reads like
a who's who of California corporate agriculture: </p>
<p>• Westlands Water District, west of Fresno, which is the
largest irrigation district in the United States and is
controlled by a handful of privately owned agribusiness
corporations. </p>
<p>• Beverly Hills billionaire Stewart Resnick, who runs the
privately controlled Kern Water Bank, a 19,900-acre underground
reservoir capable of holding more than a million acre-feet of
water. The reservoir was created by the state before being taken
private. Resnick, a longtime backer of Feinstein, owns Paramount
Farms and Roll International, key players in California's
billion-dollar private water market. </p>
<p>Like derivatives, subprime mortgages and deregulated
electricity, the privatization of federally owned water rights
is a puzzle palace of complexity. Here are some of the pieces: </p>
<p>Winter and spring runoff from Northern California rivers, which
flow through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, are crucial to
the ecological health of the Delta, San Francisco Bay and the
state's fishing industry. The Feinstein legislation allows high
water flows in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers to be
diverted to a private water market rather than replenishing the
Delta and the Bay. </p>
<p>The legislation makes it easier to move federally subsidized
$20-an-acre-foot water from growers with federal project water
contracts to private interests with water rights. Once in the
hands of these buyers, the water can be resold in the open
market to the highest bidder. </p>
<p>Westlands Water District and others who will benefit from the
legislation will not be required to fully compensate the U.S.
taxpayers for the public investments in the storage facilities,
conveyance systems, electricity to pump the water or the
operation and maintenance costs that make these private windfall
transactions possible. </p>
<p>In short, it socializes the costs and capitalizes the profits,
leaving U.S. taxpayers to foot the bill. Sound familiar? </p>
<p>The Kern Water Bank was originally owned by the state of
California and built to store water in high water years to
provide agriculture with water in drought years and to leave
more in the Delta. In 1994, Resnick persuaded the state to turn
over this invaluable public resource to the Kern County Water
Agency. Within a short time the water agency turned over control
of the water bank to a handful of local water districts. </p>
<p>When the dust settled, Resnick's Paramount Farming controlled
more than 50 percent. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation recently
admitted that Resnick's Kern Water Bank is on the list of
beneficiaries of Feinstein's deregulation measure. </p>
<p>In addition, Feinstein's budget rider streamlines environmental
review of these privatized water transfers by disguising the
environmental impacts of individual transfers. One only needs to
remember the "rape of the Owens Valley" and its reincarnation in
Roman Polanski's classic movie "Chinatown" to understand the
potential environmental impacts of moving water and water rights
from one geographical area to another. </p>
<p>In anticipation of this Christmas gift to Westlands, the
bond-rating agency FitchRating last year noted the benefit to
Westlands from deregulating the federal water to allow Westlands
to engage in more private water sales: </p>
<p>"The WWD (Westlands Water District) potentially has the ability
to sell and transfer water rights outside the district should
agriculture cease to be economic, as the demand for water in
Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area by users with
connectivity to the CVP (federal Central Valley Water Project)
is very high." </p>
<p>Climate change and global warming studies predict future water
shortages for California. Feinstein's deregulation of vital
public water paid for by taxpayers will enrich a handful of
powerful water oligarchs. The measure will make it possible for
a handful of these high rollers to dominate the California water
market and squeeze whatever profits they can out of thirsty
urban water users, leaving the fish and wildlife at the mercy of
so-called free market economics. </p>
<p>The Congress must take a closer look. A privatized water supply
paid for by U.S. taxpayers but controlled by one person or a
handful of people is just plain wrong. </p>
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<p> <i>Patricia Schifferle, a former legislative director and
consultant, is principal/director for Pacific Advocates.<br>
</i></p>
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