Water Bill a Hollow Victory, Officials Say : Agriculture: Compromise measure favors farmers, but leaves room for compromise on reallocation and environmental issues.

The passage of an omnibus water bill by a U.S. Senate committee was a setback for environmentalists seeking to reshape the way federal water is distributed in California, but only a hollow victory for farmers, state and local water officials said Friday.

The officials, who negotiated for months on proposals to overhaul the operation of the Central Valley Project, said the bill approved Thursday represents a compromise that keeps reform efforts alive and leaves room for later concessions to environmental needs.

For many California interests, the key portion of the bill would remove legal obstacles that prevent the transfer of federal water to cities.

“There was a lot of talk that reform was going to die this year because it was so threatening to agricultural interests,” said Timothy Quinn, a negotiator for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. “We are happy just to see it moving ahead in Congress. Our position is we think the system has got to be reformed and reformed now.”

The reaction to Thursday’s action in the Senate Energy Committee came as Central Valley Project managers announced that they were releasing more water to about 7,000 farms in the western Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys. Federal officials, who announced six weeks ago that water shortages had forced them to stop all deliveries to those farmers, said they will get 25% of their normal allotment.

While the spotlight in the Washington negotiations was turned on a battle between farmers, 85% of whose water is distributed by the federal project, and environmentalists, who want more water allocated for fish and wildlife, urban interests also took a major interest in the legislation.

As cities struggle to provide water to millions of residents in the sixth year of a drought, urban interests see the water that is going to farmers as a potential source. Where federal water is concerned, the major stumbling block has been legal provisions that prevent Central Valley Project water from being transferred out of its service area.

Quinn said the bill voted upon Thursday, which incorporated legislation authored by Sen. John Seymour (R-Calif.), allows farmers served by the Central Valley Project to sell surplus irrigation water to cities--a major breakthrough for urban interests.

He acknowledged that the measure fell far short of the overhaul that environmentalists and some urban interests had hoped to achieve under bills by Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) Sen. J. Bennett Johnston (D-La.). Their sweeping legislation would have required that some of the water being distributed to Central Valley farms be diverted to environmental uses in California.

But Quinn said agricultural interests were not savoring victory because, although they preferred Seymour’s more modest legislation, their real strategy was to create an impasse that would block any reform bill.

In its current form, the bill does not guarantee any water for environmental needs. The Johnston bill had required that 1.5 million acre-feet of water be diverted from agricultural uses to the environment.

While agreeing that passage of the measure at least kept some reform effort alive in the Senate, environmentalists labeled the legislation a “bad bill” that should be killed if it is not changed significantly.

“The one silver lining in what is otherwise a dismissal picture is that we are moving the process along,” said Tom Graff, senior attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund. “The growers wanted to continue their long-term (water) contracts at subsidized rates forever. The longer they could hold back any legislation the better off they were.”

Graff said that in its present form the bill made few provisions for the environment and failed to overhaul the current practice of long-term contracts.

Douglas Wheeler, the Resources secretary for Gov. Pete Wilson, said that he hopes the whole issue becomes moot as the state tries to persuade the federal government to transfer the Central Valley Project to state control. If a transfer is made, he said, the operation of the project would be governed by state law and federal legislation being discussed would not apply.

The bill must be approved by the Senate and go to a conference committee for negotiations with the House, which passed a measure similar to Bradley’s proposal.