State Water Lease Renewal Delayed Over ‘Fine Print’

Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr. is temporarily pulling back a tentative decision to renew long-term water leases in Central California after White House officials raised environmental concerns, Administration sources said early today.

The Interior Department had planned to announce the controversial lease renewals on Tuesday in an attempt to resolve one of the West’s thorniest water squabbles.

The issue over the California water contracts has emerged as a major environmental test for the Bush Administration, with critics of the 40-year leases arguing that they should not be renewed because of changing environmental concerns over diverting large amounts of water for agricultural use.

According to Administration sources, Lujan decided earlier this week to renew the leases but also to require an environmental assessment to be initiated.

Lujan’s proposal ran into trouble on Monday, however, when Michael Deland, chairman of the President’s Council on Environmental Quality, objected to the “fine print” of the proposed environmental review, said the sources, who declined to be identified.

Deland said the environmental review would not have included such key areas as allowing a change in the length of a contract and the quantity of water being diverted, according to one source. Deland raised the objections with White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu, arguing that the flaws made the environmental assessment meaningless, the source said.

Interior Department spokesman Steve Goldstein denied that Lujan’s proposal had been blocked by the White House. But Goldstein acknowledged that disagreements within the Administration over the wording of the proposal prompted a delay in the announcement.