Farms and Water

Your article “Are Farms Wasting Water” (Oct. 16) contains some misleading information about the price farmers pay to receive Federal Central Valley Project (CVP) water.

The Bureau of Reclamation delivers CVP water to water districts and other water-user organization. The directors in turn deliver water to their customers who are farmers and urban users stretching from Redding in Northern California to Bakersfield in the south. The districts and water agencies pay the $2.50 to $19.31 per acre-foot for water you cite in your article.

We recently renegotiated one water service contract, originally signed in 1949, and raised the cost of water from $3.50 per acre-foot to $16.50 per acre-foot. Individual farmers in that district will be paying from $60 to $90 per acre-foot depending on pumping requirements.

Now, if those farmers lived in Los Angeles and we had to convey that same water an additional 200 miles and pump it 2,000 feet up over the mountains, the cost would certainly approach the $233 price you say Metropolitan pays the state for an acre-foot of Northern California water.

To move one acre-foot of water from the San Joaquin Valley to Los Angeles would cost well over $100 in electrical charges alone. If you took that $100 and added the $90 per acre-foot of water the farmer pays, it would cost $190 to transport this water to Los Angeles.

The cost of water is a very complex issue involving construction, operation and maintenance of facilities and pumping.

LAWRENCE F. HANCOCK, Regional Director, Bureau of Reclamation, Sacramento