Plan to Contain Tainted Farm Water Killed; High Cost Cited

Without choosing a substitute, Westlands Water District directors killed a plan Monday to build evaporation ponds designed to contain tainted farm drainage water now flowing to Kesterson Reservoir.

Manager Jerry Butchert told growers that the 3,700-acre project was “clearly not cost effective” with an estimated price tag of $90 million to $102 million.

Farmers immediately protested, charging that the board’s action once again left them with clouded titles because land without guaranteed drainage would be impossible to sell. The same complaints were raised last March when the Interior Department announced plans to close Kesterson.

Westlands is under federal orders to start cutting the flow of polluted water from poorly drained farms in western Fresno County to Kesterson by the end of September and to stop all shipments by next July.

Directors suggested growers conserve federal irrigation water and recycle more water to reduce the amount of drainage, but those tactics were downplayed earlier as an incomplete remedy.

Selenium drawn by irrigation water from farm soil is carried by canal up to 80 miles to Kesterson, where the mineral has been blamed for bird deaths and deformities at the wildlife refuge in western Merced County.

The pond project was suggested as an alternative to Kesterson disposal, but the district had no firm plans for avoiding the environmental consequences of Kesterson aside from what already has been tried there with limited success.

The district obtained permits from several agencies for the first phase of the evaporation pond project on 366 acres near Tranquillity and opened bids Aug. 8. But “all of the bids substantially exceeded the engineer’s estimate,” spokesman Don Upton said.

Butchert said he hopes the district can develop a new disposal plan by Jan. 1.