Winking at the Law

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is acting as if this is just a routine little deal: the signing of new 40-year contracts that will commit 1.5 million acre-feet of irrigation water annually to farmers on the east side of the San Joaquin Valley until well into the 21st Century. That is more than twice as much water as all the citizens and businesses of Los Angeles use each year. The alternative use of so much water, if available for reallocation, could drastically affect California’s environment and urban growth patterns for decades to come.

Even so, the Bureau of Reclamation has declared that the contracting process is not an action of sufficient import to warrant the writing of an environmental-impact statement under which alternative uses might be considered and assessed. The bureau’s position is that since the farmers have abided by contract terms over the past 40 years and put the water to beneficial use, and since the new contracts are essentially unchanged, the bureau must renew them without question.

The decision is absurd, and it belies rules of the Department of the Interior regarding circumstances under which environmental-impact studies are required. It ignores 40 years of history, including the passage of the federal Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, dramatic changes in California water law, irrigation technology and crop patterns. The decision contradicts the opinion of both the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Environmental Protection Agency. And it implies that the bureau and its Central Valley Project can operate in their special world without regard to California’s intricate and interconnected water problems.

The decision applies only to 28 water districts in Madera, Fresno, Kings, Tulare and Kern counties that receive water via the Friant-Kern and Madera canals. But the process followed could set an important precedent for other Central Valley Project contracts that must be renegotiated in subsequent years.

No one is suggesting that the bureau arbitrarily take the water from the farmers who have used it for the past 40 years, but only that it study the effect of that action compared with alternative proposals, like the diversion of a portion of the supplies to maintain wetlands or restore fish and wildlife habitat. The environmental statement also should consider the issues of contaminated irrigation runoff and the quality of water in the lower San Joaquin River, the agency said.

The Environmental Protection Agency further proposed that the Bureau of Reclamation delay the signing of new 40-year contracts until the state Water Resources Control Board has completed its review of water exports from the Sacramento-San Joaquin rivers delta, expected in 1990. And the EPA expressed concern over the total effect of a variety of proposed state and federal water actions, including the signing of the new Central Valley Project contracts and the bureau’s marketing of an additional 1 million acre-feet of uncommitted water. The cumulative effects of such decisions should be studied, the EPA said. Indeed they should.

Several years ago the Bureau of Reclamation announced with considerable back-patting that it had evolved from the hell-bent dam-builder of the old days into a modern agency that focused on conservation and prudent management of scarce water resources. Sounded good. Fooled us.