Bush to Boost Water Flow to State’s Farmers

President Bush today will direct the Interior Department to immediately make available 1 million acre-feet of water to drought-starved farmers in the Central Valley, The Times has learned.

Bush today will also sign emergency drought relief legislation allowing California communities to use federal projects to transfer and store new sources of water, knowledgeable Administration sources said.

The presidential order, to be unveiled in Sacramento, will furnish water to 7,000 Central Valley farmers who last month were told their federal water deliveries would be eliminated following six years of drought. It also will provide 100,000 acre-feet of water to assist federal efforts to save a threatened winter run of chinook salmon in the Sacramento River.

“The Central Valley farmers made this request and the President heard what they were saying,” said Steve Goldstein, spokesman for Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan. “We believe this can provide a little more security for their livelihood.”

The announcement will be an opportunity for Bush to boost his political standing in California. It will come as Bush, who has been unable to shake the challenge of conservative television commentator Patrick J. Buchanan in five Republican primaries, seeks to lift his sagging popularity in California.

“The 54 electoral votes here are critical,” said Ken Khachigian, a former speech writer for Presidents Nixon and Reagan and Gov. George Deukmejian. “The President is paying the proper amount of attention to California, which means trying to do whatever he can to create a politically congenial environment.”

California farmers, devastated by last month’s cutbacks, cheered the prospects of Bush’s intervention.

“That is incredible,” said Stephen Hall, executive director of the California Farm Water Coalition, when informed of Bush’s directive. “The political motivations may be why the President is involved, but the very practical reason to announce it now is these farmers need their financing. They’ve got to make their crop decisions today or they won’t get crops into the ground.”

Traditionally, the federal Bureau of Reclamation waits until the middle of each month between February and May to release its water deliveries based on available storage. But, after gaining 1 million acre-feet of deliverable water after above-normal rainfall last month, Bush decided to act now, Goldstein said.

Bush is expected to make the announcement while traveling on campaign stops in Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee and Oklahoma. Before releasing the details, he plans to call California Gov. Pete Wilson, sources said.

The drought relief bill that the President will sign relaxes an 80-year-old ban that prohibited the transfer of water through federal facilities intended primarily for irrigation. It allows the federal government to participate in water banks and serve as a broker by buying and selling water from willing participants such as farmers and cities.

The Central Valley Project is the largest supplier of water in California and provides one-fourth of the state’s water for agriculture. The project’s complex network of dams, reservoirs and aqueducts collects water in Northern California and funnels it south into the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys.

Before the drought, the project delivered about 7 million acre-feet of water to all users. (An acre-foot is enough to supply a Los Angeles family of five for 18 months.)

Last month, the Bureau of Reclamation reported that the drought would cause the agency to release only 2 million acre-feet this year without any additional heavy rainfall. The announcement meant that the federal government had cut off water supply to 7,000 farmers for the first time in the 40-year history of the project--threatening the production of tomatoes, lettuce, almonds, rice, cotton, broccoli and other crops.

An additional 18,000 farmers were scheduled to receive between 50% and 75% of normal water deliveries, according to last month’s cutbacks.

Jean P. Sagouspe, a Los Banos farmer in the Western San Joaquin Valley, said he was forced to abandon 600 acres of cottonfields and 300 acres of alfalfa when the water supply was cut off. He is concentrating his efforts on securing enough water to maintain his permanent crops--plums and almonds.

“We’re going out of business if we don’t get some water,” Sagouspe said.

Bush’s order today is expected to restore 15% of the water supply for farmers who were cut off last month and an additional 25% to other agricultural users. The few cities served by the bureau will continue to receive half of their normal supply.

“It could make a difference to farmers who have no alternative supply, but it is a pathetically small amount to farmers out there trying to grow stuff on all of their land,” said Jerry Butcher, general manager of the Westlands Water District in Fresno, the Central Valley Project’s largest customer. “I really can’t blame anybody for that except Mother Nature, and it doesn’t do any good to blame her.”

The turnaround led some observers to question whether the Bureau of Reclamation overreacted last month in announcing the severe cutbacks.

“We were always a little bit suspicious whether the initial cutbacks were required,” said Thomas Graff, a California-based attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund. “This is confirmation, whether because of rains or a change in operating strategy, that some of the frenzy they whipped up among the contractors may well have been unnecessary.”

Nonetheless, Graff embraced the plan to release the additional 100,000 acre-feet of water for fish and wildlife refuges. Last month, the reclamation bureau took steps to reduce the effects of its numerous diversion canals, dams and other structures on the chinook salmon, which numbered only 191 last year after counts of more than 100,000 in the 1960s.

As with other Californians interviewed Wednesday, Graff welcomed the President’s participation.

“I think it is good that the President is paying attention and his political people think it is important that he begin playing a role,” he said. “Because one of the problems we’ve long had is the federal establishment runs that project like a private preserve for subsidized agriculture.