Farmers Win Vote on State Water Supplies

In a victory for California’s agricultural interests but a defeat for environmentalists, a Senate committee Thursday approved an omnibus water bill that allows California farmers to continue negotiating long-term water contracts but guarantees no set amount of water for fish and wildlife.

“I hope the signal that went out today to the environmental community is that we want to take care of fish and wildlife but not at the expense of human beings and their jobs,” said Sen. John Seymour (R-Calif.), who had championed the provisions sought by farmers.

But Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.), who opposes the version of the bill approved by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said the measure “abandons fishermen for farmers, the environment for subsidized crops. It protects one group of water users at the expense of the rest of the state.”

A version of the bill favored by Bradley and Energy and Natural Resources Chairman J. Bennett Johnston (D-La.) would have diverted billions of gallons of water in the federally controlled Central Valley Project from agricultural to environmental uses.

Specifically, Johnston and Bradley had hoped to guarantee 1.5 million acre-feet--of the 6 million to 7 million acre-feet available each year from the massive Central Valley Project--for fish and wildlife.

Under that proposal, California growers could have sold surplus irrigation water from the project to cities. The Seymour plan does not allow water transfers and lets the Central Valley Project continue writing 40-year contracts to sell low-cost water to farmers.

The Senate had been weighing alternatives as part of a larger bill that includes hundreds of millions of dollars for western water projects. Johnston said that passage of the bill containing Seymour’s provisions does not necessarily mean that the committee supports those provisions, only that it wanted to move the stalemated legislation out of the committee and onto the Senate floor.