Our Water Future Can’t Be Tied Up 40 Years in the Past

Forty years ago, Harry Truman was President, Frank Sinatra was a teen idol, and no one had ever heard of Watchman, Walkman, or “rock ‘n’ roll.”

And 40 years ago, the federal government began selling water from its dams and reservoirs, permitting crops and cities to flourish where once only desert existed.

Now, the departing Reaganites in the Department of the Interior, at the urging of subsidized farmers in California, want to return to that bygone era and to finance their fantasy with your tax dollars.

In the late ‘40s, Americans didn’t worry much about inflation, environmental quality or toxic pollution. Little thought was given to public-works subsidies or the ecological damage that such projects might cause. Nor were our current concerns about droughts as pronounced, since the federal project appeared to provide more water than Californians could even anticipate consuming.

In the decades since then, we discovered that we had been extremely shortsighted in much of our planning and forecasting. Congress and the states have enacted tough laws that require the thorough evaluation of the impact on environmental quality from public and private projects--the environmental impact statements. Government agencies, like private entities, have learned to comply with the strict requirements of this process.

But not the Bureau of Reclamation. Its recent history all too often reflects a disregard for the spirit of the law and a total indifference to the environment, which is the responsibility of its parent agency, the Department of the Interior.

Four decades ago, irrigators in the Friant Division of the federal Central Valley Project secured a 40-year contract for federal irrigation water, paying a fraction of the true costs of that water back to taxpayers. Friant’s inflation-free contract is about to expire, and the growers are demanding that the bureau renew it for another 40 years.

No one objects to continuing deliveries to Friant. But isn’t it prudent, at least once every 40 years, to reevaluate the volume of water that the government commits when antiquated contracts expire? Isn’t it appropriate, once every two generations, to ask some basic questions:

--Does Friant really need all the water it has been receiving, or could improved conservation and better management reduce the volume?

--Given the enormous changes in the California population and economy over the next four decades, should irrevocable commitments of public resources be made through the year 2029? Should water contracts instead be for 10-year periods, or 20, to permit periodic reevaluation and modification?

--What are the ecological consequences of the Friant deliveries? We have learned that irrigation in the Central Valley has produced an unanticipated ecological catastrophe at the Kesterson wildlife refuge; are there any negative impacts resulting from the Friant contract that, at least, ought to be identified and addressed as part of any contract renewal?

--And might others in California--more efficient irrigators, fish and wildlife, or urban users like those in Los Angeles--make better use of a portion of the Friant supply?

These, and other pertinent questions, could best be answered through completion of a thorough environmental review of the request for contract renewal. But in an extraordinary decision, the Department of Interior recently rejected the need for an environmental impact statement on the new Friant contract, arguing instead that the government must renew existing contracts--not just as Friant, but throughout California.

The decision, in effect, argues that in the case of Bureau of Reclamation water contracts, we who live in the late 1980s are bound by the decisions of those in the 1940s--no questions asked. Forget the efforts to slash the federal deficit and public subsidies; forget the drought and the need to demand efficiency in water use; forget the growth in California and the changes that have occurred in agriculture over the last 40 years.

The most outrageous aspect of the Interior Department’s decision is not that we cannot order changes when necessary, but that public officials cannot even ask the prudent questions that should govern the commitment of public resources. How will the residents of Los Angeles, or Fresno, or Northern California respond when told that there is no more water for them, despite the expenditure of billions in tax dollars on developing additional supplies, because all the water was committed 40 years ago?

Neither we in government, nor taxpayers, nor those who will invariably (and rightfully) sue to overturn the department’s preposterous position should have to even raise these questions. It should go without saying that when a public agency has the opportunity to reevaluate a major policy decision 40 years after it was initiated, it should carefully review that decision in light of contemporary concerns. If the Interior Department’s legal experts don’t think so--they should think again.