California IN BRIEF : MONTEREY : Official Warns of ‘Water Ranching’

The state water bank helped shift the precious resource from fields to drought-stricken areas, but participants in a conference warned against creating “water ranchers”--farmers who no longer plant crops but merely sell their water. Dick Marshall, head of the Clarksburg Reclamation District in Yolo County, helped 52 growers in three counties sell water to the bank for $125 an acre-foot. The state resold the water at $175 an acre-foot under the emergency program created by Gov. Pete Wilson in February. Nevertheless, Marshall told the annual spring conference of the Assn. of California Water Agencies, “there was a lot of apprehension about doing anything to hurt the future water rights in the area.”