Water Rules Draw Wrath of Small Farmers

Small-farm advocates are charging that the federal government has “sold out to large growers in California” and is in “flat defiance of the law” after the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation issued new regulations detailing which farmers can receive federally subsidized water.

The new rules, issued this week, carry out the 1982 Reclamation Reform Act, passed to deter large corporate growers from getting subsidized water. But what the rules do not cover, as some say Congress intended them to, are “farm management arrangements” (FMAs). Under these arrangements, large growers split up their land on paper into 960-acre sections that enable them to continue receiving the subsidies.

Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), author of the new law and chairman of the House interior and insular affairs subcommittee on water and power resources, called the bureau’s rules “a fraud’656434017few large growers.

Reassessment Promised

“This is a double-cross. (The bureau has) gone back on what they’ve agreed to with me and the others in the room in 1982,” Miller said, predicting a backlash by smaller farmers. He promised a “major reassessment” of the rules in Congress.

The heart of the problem is a conflict between the actual wording of the law and what Miller and others say is the law’s intent. The language of the act specifically refers to farmland owned and leased, but not to farmers who set up the farm management arrangements to split up their land and avoid paying full cost for water.

The bureau conceded that the rules might encourage large growers to set up the arrangements but said that Congress never passed language specifically forbidding the practice.

“We’re given power (to) limit ownership and leasing--period,” bureau Commissioner Dale Duvall said. “The law says absolutely nothing about FMAs.”

Lobbying Promised

But Laura King, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, contended that the bureau’s regulations do not reflect congressional intent and said that her group will lobby to have the rules changed.

“It is clear that Congress intended for large operations like these FMAs to pay full cost for their water,” King said. “It’s in flat defiance of the law, which says large corporations must be charged full costs for the water.”

Before 1982, only farms with 160 acres or less could receive subsidized federal water, a rule that growers easily got around by leasing land in excess of 160 acres. The 1982 law was intended to close that leasing loophole.