Lujan Says Lack of Water Imposes Need to Consider Limit on Growth : Shortages: Interior secretary is also investigating whether he can prohibit federal deliveries to state farmers.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan Jr., in California to inspect the federal water delivery system, said Tuesday that the state should consider limiting its growth in the face of continued water shortages.

“I really believe that California is growing too fast and too big and that at some point will come a time of reckoning,” Lujan said in a speech to business and community leaders at the Commonwealth Club.

Lujan also revealed that he has asked the Interior Department’s lawyers to determine whether he has the authority to halt federal water deliveries to California farmers who stand to receive more than 2 million acre-feet of water in the fifth year of the drought.

Lujan’s statement appears to soften his rejection last week of a request by Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) that he cut deliveries to farmers. Lujan had said initially that he did not have the flexibility to make such a decision.

Miller, informed of Lujan’s comments, attributed Lujan’s apparent change of view to the secretary’s inspection of California’s reservoirs, which remain less than half full despite the series of storms in recent weeks.

“He now starts to appreciate what a sixth year of a drought will mean,” Miller said, adding that if Lujan fails to act and California has another dry year, “politically, it will be devastating.”

“He has the authority,” Miller said. “Failure to exercise it in a crisis is misfeasance or malfeasance. He’d better come to grips with it.”

Lujan said he doubts that he has the power to stop delivering water to farmers who have longstanding rights to it. But he said that if he finds otherwise, he would “certainly look at making it more equitable.”

“If I had that option,” Lujan said, “I would probably say there is no way somebody is going to get 75% (of their allotted water) and somebody is going to get 25%. When we look at reducing, we look at reducing for everybody. We would not have a privileged class.”

As it stands, the federal Bureau of Reclamation plans to provide farmers with 75% of their allotted water, or 2.2 million acre-feet, if they had access to California’s rivers when the federal water system was built in the 1930s.

Other users of water from the federal Central Valley Project will get 25% of their allocation, or about 1 million acre-feet. An acre-foot provides for the needs of about five people for 18 months.

Lujan, who spent six hours flying over the system of dams, reservoirs and aqueducts Monday, said the Bureau of Reclamation, the division of the Interior Department that operates federal dams in California, should begin to plan for longer droughts and keep more water in storage.

“It is foolhardy to use up all water,” Lujan said. “We’re trying to balance that out and not use it all up.”

He said the federal government traditionally has planned for droughts of a four- or five-year duration. He noted that “conditions change as to the amount of water that is used by Californians.”