Water Allocation Draws Mixed Responses : Drought: Farmers praise release of 1 million acre-feet. Critics want the supplies for urban and environmental uses and say the President’s motives are political.

President Bush’s decision Thursday to release 1 million acre-feet of federal water to drought-stricken California farmers was applauded by the agriculture industry and blasted by those who want the water for urban and environmental uses.

Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), chairman of the House Interior Committee, said the President’s actions are irresponsible and politically motivated.

In a harshly worded statement, Miller said the President should have set aside increased water supplies from the Central Valley Project for millions of urban Californians rather than squander the state’s dwindling supplies on subsidized crops.

“The economic and public health security of millions of Californians ought not be traded off for short-term political gain,” Miller said. “The President’s problems with Pat Buchanan should not determine the allocation of scarce water resources in a drought-starved state.”

While also chastising Bush for capitalizing on the state’s water woes for political benefit during an election year, some of Miller’s fellow congressional Democrats praised the President for providing water to struggling farms.

“I agree it is politically motivated, but I’m still glad he did it,” said Rep. Richard H. Lehman (D-Sanger), who represents portions of the Central Valley. “We had to get water to the farmers fast for financing and planting their crops, and it’ll help.”

Interior Department spokesman Steve Goldstein said: “Chairman Miller perhaps doesn’t understand how severe the Central Valley farmers have been impacted and the threat that exists to their livelihood. The Bush Administration is not going to put good policy on hold just because this is an election year.”

During a campaign stop Thursday at the governor’s mansion in Columbia, S.C., Bush also signed an emergency drought bill that will allow California communities to transfer and store new sources of water through federal facilities. He also directed Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr. to deliver available water to Central Valley farmers.

“It is in the American tradition that neighbor helps neighbor in times of burden,” Bush said. “We will not stand by and see either our local economies and jobs literally dried up by drought or our valuable refuges and wetlands parched by lack of water.”

Heading into a sixth year of drought in California, the federal Bureau of Reclamation last month announced that it would cut off federal water to 7,000 farmers in the Central Valley and reduce deliveries for an additional 18,000 agricultural users. The cutbacks forced thousands of farmers to consider abandoning their crops.

But plentiful rainfall in the last month helped boost the storage of deliverable water in the Central Valley Project from 3.3 million acre-feet to 4.4 million. As a result, the Bureau of Reclamation decided to release 1 million acre-feet to farmers and 100,000 acre-feet for fish and wildlife. (An acre-foot is enough to supply a Los Angeles family of five for 18 months.)

The announcement means an increase from zero to 15% of usual water deliveries for farmers in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys and a restoration of the minimum 75% contract level for Sacramento River water users.

“More water is always good news,” said Bob L. Vice, president of the California Farm Bureau Federation. “While this helps, it does not eliminate the problems facing farmers. . . . If no additional water results during March or April, then some farmers may have to decide whether to remain in business this year.”

Environmental leaders said the 50% of historical supplies allocated for wildlife refuges was far short of the water necessary to save endangered Central Valley wildlife and the threatened winter run of chinook salmon in the Sacramento River.

“It’s a minuscule amount of water,” said Patricia Schifferle, spokeswoman for Share the Water Coalition in Northern California. “Once again we find it is politics as usual. The large corporate agriculture users are making sure their money brings home the bacon. They get their water supply first and the rest of California be damned.”

Similar criticisms were delivered by Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.), who has introduced legislation seeking to resolve California’s water problems. “The President’s decision is representative of the problems Californians face,” Bradley said. “When there is water available in the state, our focus should be on conservation, not immediate use by the agriculture sector.”

Bradley also questioned the motive and timing of Gov. Pete Wilson in calling last week for the state to take over the Central Valley Project. On numerous occasions, Bradley said, Wilson and his representatives have indicated that the state was not interested in taking over the project.

But weeks before a Senate bill on Central Valley Project reform is to be considered, Wilson made his surprise announcement even though he presented “no plan for reform of CVP, no detailed plan for running the project and no proposal on how he will pay for it,” Bradley said.

Paul Jacobs in Sacramento contributed to this story.