The Good and the Bad of It

Under orders from Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan Jr., the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation at last has cooled its zeal for selling off the last big batch of unallocated water in California. The bureau’s Central Valley Project has been trying to market an estimated 1 million to 1.5 million acre-feet of water annually, which is more than Southern California currently receives from the CVP’s California counterpart, the state Water Project.

Lujan and the bureau finally yielded to criticism that federal officials had not adequately assessed the environmental impact of the marketing plan. This is good. But they still hope to revise their environmental impact statements and proceed with the sale by year’s end. This is not so good.

In fact, the sale should be postponed at least until the state Water Resources Control Board adopts revised water quality standards for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and, in effect, establishes new criteria for both the state and federal projects to pump water from the delta for use in the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California. That process will take another two or three years.

The delay will not cause the Bureau of Reclamation or its customers any harm. In cases where the bureau has been selling the water on a year-to-year basis, it could continue to do so. But it should not act now to commit such a massive amount of water in contracts running for decades, such as it did when it began renewing 40-year water contracts with farmers on the east side of the San Joaquin Valley without conducting a formal environmental review.

The bureau cannot correct the environmental damage of 40 years with 1 million acre-feet of water, but it should not compound matters by selling off these valuable supplies before California has completed its assessment of water supplies and demands, including flows needed to protect the environment. The Bush Administration has talked a lot about the primacy of state water rights, and even made a campaign issue of it. Here is a chance to back up the talk with commitment.