Curbing a Thirst for Power and Water

Surprisingly, Sen. John Seymour (R-Calif.) has signed onto a campaign to make California more drought-proof by allowing San Joaquin Valley farmers to sell surplus water to cities anywhere in the state.

The bill he introduced in Washington last week, however, would preserve too much of the power of California’s rural water Establishment. But it would do one good thing: relax the grip of agriculture on some of the 7 million acre-feet of water distributed by the federal Central Valley Project. An acre-foot meets the average needs of five people for a year.

In effect, Seymour’s bill is the rural water Establishment’s own version of changes it thinks it can live with. But it is not close enough to what California truly requires. A far better approach comes from Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.), whose rival bill would give California far more freedom to use its water as it thinks best.

But Seymour has at least dragged the state’s water elite and agribusiness across the Rubicon. That line marks the end of old water policies and the beginning of new concepts in an era of tight budgets and environmental concern. No longer can both farms and cities count on building new dams across wild rivers to meet the growing thirst of a growing population with new supplies of water.

The only foreseeable new “supplies” will come from ending wasteful use of water--and the most visible waste occurs in agriculture, which now uses 80% of the state’s water.

Bradley, most economists and others argue that the most efficient way to allocate water is through a free market, so that farmers could sell water at a higher price than the profit they could get by using it to irrigate low-value crops or farmland that’s too polluted to produce average crop yields.

But federal law prohibits sale of Central Valley Project water outside that region. Bradley proposed to change that but, until last week, got no help at all from Seymour.

Now with the need for water marketing settled--at least in principle--rural, urban and environmental interests can start earnest bargaining on details. Even Southern California’s Metropolitan Water District, which supports the Seymour bill, agrees that the measure needs more work. As it is presently drafted, rural water agencies probably could veto a farmer’s plan to sell water. There is a clause that would permit farmers to sign decades-long contracts for subsidized water in return for putting very little water on the market. The measure would allot perhaps only half the water actually needed to protect fish and wildlife.

But the Seymour bill’s failings can be corrected. For the future of California water policy, the bill represents irreversible change. The water barons have budged--and in the politics of water that’s progress.