The Imperial Deal

Nothing, it seems, is simple these days. That is one reason the Imperial Irrigation District board has declined to go ahead at this point--after more than six months of negotiations--with a water exchange agreement with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

The Imperial district was prodded into an expanded conservation program in the first place because excess Imperial water was raising the level of the Salton Sea and flooding farmlands. But now there are fears that conservation will lower the level of the sea and endanger fish life.

So the district will do an environmental study before embarking on any exchange with Metropolitan. Imperial General Manager Charles Shreves is certain there would be no effect on the Salton Sea, which was created by accident 80 years ago.

Imperial farmers had other concerns: that the proposed 35-year agreement with MWD would tie up control of the Imperial water for too long and that MWD payments to Imperial for use of the water should be escalated over the years to compensate for inflation. Less specifically, there are fears that once the city folk of coastal Southern California get their hands on the farmers’ water, the water will be gone forever.

But for all of that, the basic concept of the proposed agreement is really simple. MWD would pay Imperial $10 million a year to be used for construction of conservation facilities such as reservoirs and the lining of canals. In return, Imperial would allow MWD, the six-county urban water district, to receive 100,000 acre-feet of Imperial’s annual Colorado River water totaling about 2.7 million acre-feet. This is water presumably saved from the installation of the conservation works. The loaned Imperial supplies would help MWD offset the loss of some of its own Colorado River water, which will be going to Arizona to supply the new Central Arizona Project.

Fortunately, the delay caused by the Imperial board’s 3-2 vote against the proposed MWD agreement last week is not fatal. Both parties believe a final pact can be reached within a year.

The concept may be as important as the amount of water involved. The proposed swap is viewed throughout the West as an important precedent in encouraging farm water conservation as a means of developing new urban water supplies. The experiment must not fail.