Short-Term Fix, Long-Term Sense : An exchange of cash for water to escape future shortages

Sacramento analysts are working on a dramatic way to cope with California’s fifth year of a drought that could well lead to a permanent change in how the state allocates its precious water supplies.

Not every detail is in place, but it is the sort of conceptual breakthrough that Gov. Pete Wilson can use to steer California into its future as a basically urban state in which agriculture is no longer the biggest single industry.

The most severe drought in California history means that Wilson must begin--as former Gov. Bruce Babbit did in Arizona years ago--to relax agriculture’s grip on 80% of California’s water and divert more to urban areas, where the technology and commerce so crucial to the state’s future are centered.

THE PLAN: What the Department of Water Resources will propose is to pay farmers not to plant water-intensive crops such as rice, alfalfa and cotton.

The plan would apply only to the State Water Project because California cannot reallocate the supplies of the federal Central Valley Project. But when fully implemented, and even without involvement of the larger federal project, it could free up nearly half as much water for cities or parched farms as the state sends to Southern California in a normal year.

As one example of the way the department plan would work, farmers would be paid $250 to $350 an acre not to use the land to grow rice, a most thirsty crop. The department estimates that for between $50 million and $70 million, it could accumulate 500,000 acre-feet of water a year, enough to supply 1 million average urban households. That is more than twice the amount of new water that would be added to the state project’s supplies with the planned construction of a new reservoir to store water during the rainy season.

The department is getting mixed reactions in talks with farmers. Some simply want to know where they go to sign up for the plan. Others start bargaining for more money.

But the idea is attractive in many ways. It is market-oriented, not driven by regulation or endless wrangling in court over the fine print in water law. Farmers would be free to choose how to use--or not use--their land. The cost would run to tens of millions of dollars a year, but the state would get much of that back when it sold the water to urban users.

THE PAYOFF: For Wilson, it may also offer the least painful way to start the potentially explosive task of increasing supplies of water to cities--increases that can occur only by decreasing supplies to farms.

In a severe drought year like this, the exchange of cash for water would be the best some farmers could do. Along the western edge of the San Joaquin Valley, farms that are accustomed to sharing 1.2 million acre-feet of water will get none at all this year. Farms to the east will be better off. They are likely to get about 25% of the water supplies they normally get from the federal Central Valley Project. To augment that, they will pump twice the safe amount from wells; the risk in this is draining aquifers so dry they collapse, like honeycombs under a boot, never to revive.

Perhaps the best feature of the water resources buyout plan is the speed with which it could be put in place. The alternatives are all years, or decades, away from easing the water shortage.

Drip irrigation, microsprinklers and other techniques pioneered by Israeli farmers can reduce agricultural water needs by 25% to 30%. But few farmers have turned to new technology and in a drought there is little or no capital with which to buy it.

New or enlarged dams are all but out of the question--besides, there is no money to build them.

Much about water law and custom needs amending for a secure water future over decades. But the swap of cash for water needs no such time-consuming change. It is a plan that belongs on the fast track.