Study Sees $1.5 Billion in ‘Illegal’ Water Subsidies

“Hidden and illegal” federal water subsidies in California’s Central Valley will cost taxpayers $1.5 billion and may even result in “the poisoning of the well itself,” according to a study released Wednesday by environmentalists and California farm worker advocates.

The yearlong study, sponsored by the National Resources Defense Council and the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, apparently was the first to place such a high price tag on unauthorized subsidies by the federal Central Valley Project to growers in the state’s Westlands Water District and elsewhere.

It also was the first major study to link inexpensive subsidized water to toxic material in agricultural waste water, specifically at the Kesterson Wildlife Refuge in Merced County, where wildlife deaths caused by poisons in the soil have caused widespread concern.

In addition, the report marked a new, unusual alliance between a well-funded mainstream environmental organization and activists for the rural poor.

The Bureau of Reclamation, which administers the Central Valley Project, chose not to contest the study’s findings and instead welcomed the sponsoring groups into the campaign to make farmers pay a larger share of water costs. The project is a system of dams, pumps and canals used to transfer water from the Sierra watershed to San Joaquin Valley farms.

Meanwhile, spokesmen for the Westlands Water District, the project’s major beneficiary, charged that the report plowed old ground.

Among the examples of the $1.5 billion in “hidden and illegal” subsidies cited by the report is the price of water in the Westlands Water District, which received water worth $97 an acre-foot but paid only $9.45. This adds up to an average subsidy of $500,000 each year for each farm, the study charged.

The report also warned that the unrestrained availability of cheap water is “presenting a serious and potentially devastating threat” in places like Kesterson where irrigation waters drain and poisons accumulate in the soil.

In a prepared statement, the Bureau of Reclamation’s Sacramento office said that it already has adopted some of the report’s recommendations and added: “We are pleased that the National Resources Defense Council had joined in the discussion of reclamation law.”

However, the bureau disagreed with a major recommendation of the report: that all below-cost contracts with water users be immediately renegotiated. These contracts must be honored, the bureau said, but added that water prices are being increased when contracts are renewed.