Way Cleared for Renewal of Key Central Valley Farm Water Pacts

Federal irrigation contracts vital to eastern San Joaquin Valley farmers can be renewed for a second 40-year period without environmental review, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation concluded in a controversial decision made public Tuesday.

The opinion, signed Nov. 10 by Ralph Tarr, the Department of Interior’s top lawyer and former Fresno agribusiness attorney, said the contracts for subsidized water from Friant Dam on the upper San Joaquin River were signed by 28 local water districts before environmental laws were passed and can remain exempt from such laws after renewal because the basic terms remain unchanged.

Tarr’s decision, which rejects the official legal position of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, is particularly important because virtually all other water rights in California’s Central Valley--the source of two-thirds of the state’s fresh water--are being reviewed and reallocated under court order by the State Water Resources Control Board.

Environmentalists ripped the decision as “crazy” and a “mockery” of the Bureau of Reclamation’s recent pledge to drop its historic dam-building agenda and become an environmentally sensitive resource management agency.

“It is a sweeping decision . . . that says contracts signed in the 1940s and about to be renewed tie the hands of the department forever,” said Hal Candee of the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco. “His decision says those contracts preempt all other acts of Congress and forbid the department to obey the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and all other environmental laws. It’s a crazy decision.”

However, in a prepared statement, David Houston, the Bureau of Reclamation regional director in Sacramento, defended the decision as proper, “both as a matter of law and as a matter of equity.”

Last March, five area congressmen, including Rep. Tony Coelho (D-Merced), the powerful majority whip, urged Interior Secretary Donald Hodel in a letter to reject an environmental review of the contracts.

“Under federal and state law,” they wrote, “the bureau has no right to tinker with the amount of water provided to the Friant contractors under their present 40-year water service contract as long as that water is being put to beneficial use.”

“The issue is somewhat parallel to an urban area whose economy has been dependent on a water supply under contract for 40 years,” Houston said. “The farms are no different than factories in urban areas. They create the jobs, the tax base and the support for the local economy.”

‘No Flexibility’

Beyond that, he added, the opinion notes that Hodel has “no flexibility” and must renew the contracts because “the districts have abided by their contract terms; the water is being put to ‘beneficial use,’ ” as required.

Although Candee did not announce plans to sue, he said he doubted whether the decision would withstand a legal challenge based on the “beneficial use” theory. For one thing, he contended that farmers find it cheaper to waste Friant water, which sells for as little as 1% or 2% of what Southern California utilities pay, than to install water-saving devices.

“There is no documentation of whether the water is being put to beneficial use,” Candee said.

In addition, he asserted that the old contracts are not simply being renewed. He said “there has been a lot of renegotiating,” including such basic issues as price, allocation and minimum farm size.