Double Dipping : Farmers Drain Federal Water, Then Sell It Back to U. S. for Credit

The cheap imported water that is a farmer’s manna here has slowed to a trickle. But in the vast fields of Fresno County’s west side--in defiance of the stubborn drought--the green cotton bolls are swelling right on time for a September burst of popcorn white.

How this dry land could still blossom is a story of crafty farmers eluding nature’s grip. Here along a small federal reservoir called the Mendota Pool, farmers have come up with a clever new twist to the old rite of punching deeper holes in the salty earth to draw ground water.

At the edge of the pool, far from their crops, farmers have installed dozens of pumps that whirl and whine 24 hours a day, 300 days a year. They draw not only ground water, which is free for the taking, but slurp water from the federal pool itself, which is not.

The farmers have no way of conveying the illicit water to distant crops. Instead, they dump it back into the pool and get “credits” from the U. S. Bureau of Reclamation. The credits allow the farmers to draw from the federal pool a second time--this time legitimately--and it is this water that is shipped via canals to their cotton, alfalfa, tomato and melon fields.

The whole thing resembles a money-laundering scheme, except instead of cleaning illicit dollars, the farmers are washing ill-gotten water. And the Bureau of Reclamation is a party to the scheme.

“I’m not going to tell you that my pumps aren’t drawing from the Mendota Pool,” said one cotton grower, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I’d be lying. But we’re desperate, you understand?

“We’re hanging by a thread and if the Bureau of Reclamation is going to let us get away with this, we’re going to do it.”

No one knows the full extent of the water grab, but one thing is clear: A staggering amount of water--ground water and siphoned pool water--is being pumped out of this small area to cash in on the federal credit program. So much water, in fact, that a saline plume has flushed beneath Mendota, contaminating the wells that supply the town’s drinking water.

But state and federal officials claim no jurisdiction. Mendota city officials are unwilling to challenge the pumping, fearful of angering the farmers whose jobs keep this town afloat.

“Things are happening out there that no one is controlling,” said Lou Beck, district chief for the state Department of Water Resources. “There are lots of questions and no one is taking responsibility for the answers.”

In geographic terms, this area is the trough of the Central Valley. It was alkali desert in dry years and marsh in flood years before the San Joaquin River was dammed in 1944 to provide water for agriculture.

Now, the river runs dry near Mendota and farmers from here to Gustine, 70 miles north, are compensated with federal water shipped in from the Sacramento River. The Mendota Pool, a three-mile-long and quarter-mile-wide stretch of the old river, brims with this imported water.

In times of plenty, the seven irrigation districts that share claim to the pool water with the state Department of Fish and Game get along. In times of drought, with federal water deliveries cut as much as 75%, they bicker.

The powerful Westlands Water District is not often on the short end of any disputes. Lured by the federal credit program, it is Westlands farmers who have come like camels in the desert to drink from the best watering hole around--the Mendota Pool.

From this small area, they pump out a huge amount of water--an estimated 60,000 to 70,000 acre-feet this year--and dump it back into the pool for credits. This is half the amount of water used by Metropolitan Fresno in a year.

“The credit I get from my five wells lets me farm 1,600 acres of onions, garlic and tomatoes,” said Westlands farmer Anthony Coelho.

But the credit system is not pain-free, water experts say. The water Coelho and other farmers dump back in the pool is more saline than the pool’s Sacramento River water. Farmers in rival districts charge that their share of the purer imported water is now tainted with salts.

Also, the federal credit program has induced so much pumping from the area around the pool that well water depths in Mendota plunged 50 feet in a month. The overdraft has allowed salty water to invade the town’s marginal drinking water, doubling the salt content so that it no longer meets state standards.

Many of the 9,000 residents in this third-poorest city in the state must buy bottled water. Water in the town system is so corrosive that it erodes valves in fire hydrants. New galvanized plumbing must be replaced with copper lines after only two years. People shower and smell like the ocean.

City Councilwoman Irene Buckmaster said she tried to get her colleagues to stop the ground-water pumping. At a public hearing, one of the Westlands farmers, Bobby Johnston, packed the tiny City Hall with dozens of his workers. Johnston argued that the link between his ground-water pumping and Mendota’s drinking water problems was tenuous.

“He said: ‘No water for my crops, no jobs,’ ” recalled a frustrated Buckmaster. “Well, the council backed down. They ended up naming him the grand marshal for the 50th anniversary parade. And he don’t even live here.”

State water regulators throw up their hands too. “There’s no law in California that restricts ground-water pumping,” said Arvey Swanson of the state Department of Water Resources. “There have been various attempts to set up ground-water management programs but they’ve all been killed because of powerful farmers.”

The Westlands Water District will receive 290,000 acre-feet of federal water this year. Critics say that by giving Westlands farmers extra credit for depositing water into the Mendota Pool--water that is in part recycled--the Bureau of Reclamation is allowing the powerful water district to double dip, which means less for others.

No one can say how much of the 60,000 to 70,000 acre-feet pumped out of the Mendota Pool is ground water and how much of it originates from the pool and percolates down or is sucked down by the pumping action.

Hoping to answer the question, reclamation bureau geologists wrote a memo to superiors in 1989 recommending a detailed study of the Mendota Pool pumping. The study was never authorized.

Using federal data, the state Department of Water Resources concluded that the wells that necklace the Mendota Pool were tapping ground water and pool water.

“The Mendota Pool water is being recycled, no doubt,” said Swanson, who studied the pumping for the state. “The amount, though, is anyone’s guess.”

Kenneth Schmidt, a ground-water geologist who has studied the pumping for the city of Mendota, said his research indicates that half of the credited well water is siphoned pool water.

“You can’t have wells that close to each other . . . pumping that much water without drawing heavily from the reservoir,” he said.

Some farmers deny that their well water comes from the pool. They argue that a thick clay layer sits beneath much of the pool and prevents the surface water from percolating to the aquifer. What they are pumping must be original ground water, they say, because it has a slight saline quality not found in the pool’s more pure Sacramento River water.

But a few concede that a good portion of the water they pump originates in the pool, and takes on some of the saline qualities of the ground water as their pumps draw it down. Once the water settles into the ground, they say, it is free for the taking.

“There’s a natural percolation that seeps through, I’ll admit,” said Coelho, who runs five of the most shallow pumps at the reservoir’s edge. “But there’s going to be recharge whether I’m pumping or not. That’s nature. I can’t stop it.”

But Schmidt said the pumping is so intense that a cone of depression exists beneath the pool and is greatly accelerating the seepage. “Unfortunately, nature has little to do with it,” he said.

The Bureau of Reclamation denies that a single drop of water is lost to seepage or siphoning. Yet bureau officials cannot explain why 160,000 acre-feet of Mendota Pool water vanished last year--20% of the total water. There are no figures yet for this year.

“We have no idea where that water is going,” said supervisor Jon Anderson.

Rival farmers and critics contend that bureau officials know where the vanished water has gone, but do not want to risk the political heat that would come from accusing powerful Westlands farmers of stealing water.

Critics note that the bureau’s record-keeping for the credits is handled by a man hired by the Westlands farmers. The bureau only spot-checks his work. These same Westlands growers receive federal subsidies for water and crops.

“This is about pure greed,” said Dave Woolley, manager of Columbia Canal Co., a rival district opposed to the Westlands pumping. “Some of the farmers aren’t using the pool credits to water their crops. They’re selling them to other farmers for cash.”

But Stephen Ottemoeller, chief of operations for Westlands, says that because of the water credit program, district farmers are able to grow on 18,000 acres that would otherwise be fallow. “That’s $28 million of gross crop value,” he said. “That’s 225 jobs.”

John Coelho, a third-generation cotton grower whose family farms 4,000 acres, says the water credits from the Mendota Pool can be the difference between making it and not.

“We haven’t built this with subsidies and gifts,” he said. “My grandfather came from Portugal and started milking cows. My father and uncles took over and built a little more and now we’re trying to add to it.

“We don’t want anyone to get on their knees and kiss our rings cause we’re farmers. . . . But we would like a little appreciation.”