CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS : NEWS ANALYSIS : Seymour’s Complaints May Not Hold Water

Pointing to a nearly empty irrigation canal, Sen. John Seymour declared Saturday that “that ditch would be dry” and California’s farming heartland would be racked by a $4.5-billion economic disaster if legislation on its way to President Bush were now law.

At virtually every campaign appearance, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate charges that the proposed federal water project reform legislation would have apocalyptic results for farming, even though such water cutoffs would occur only in drought years.

Seymour cited a state analysis to support his contention that the legislation to reform operations of the U.S. Central Valley Project would cost “tens of thousands of jobs and provide a $4.5-billion hit on the economy of the Central Valley.”

But the same analysis also concludes that the impact could “vary widely, from no effect, given adequate water carry-over, to a severe effect” during droughts. Another study suggests that the legislation would save jobs for California, something Seymour has made a priority of his campaign.

In all but dry years, there will be enough water in the reservoirs of the federal water project to meet farm and urban needs and to satisfy the environmental criteria in the legislation that Seymour condemns so vehemently, water experts say.

An official of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the project, said: “In a normal year, there is more than enough for everybody.”

During the past two drought years, however, the official said valley farmers who do not have water rights that predate the Central Valley Project would have gotten no federal water. Most received 25% of their entitlement this year and made up for the cuts by pumping ground water.

The bill’s supporters say Seymour’s statements ignore key provisions of the legislation to protect public health and safety, to ensure cities long-term water supplies needed to sustain California’s urban economy, and to cut back environmental water as well as farmers’ irrigation water in dry years.

“The senator is simply wrong,” said John F. Lawrence, chief aide to Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), the leading House sponsor of the bill and chairman of the House Interior Committee. “He simply has not read the piece of legislation.”

An analysis by Richard C. Carlson of Spectrum Economics Inc. of Palo Alto says the legislation would “prevent the flight of California industry” and provide “a substantial gain in California industrial employment at little or no cost to California agriculture.”

Under the bill, Central Valley Project farmers would be allowed, for the first time, to sell water to urban water districts outside the traditional project service area. Seymour won Senate passage of a similar bill that allowed for water trading and about 200,000 acre-feet of water for environmental protection. His measure was rejected in a House-Senate conference committee.

Seymour stood atop a barren hill overlooking the canal Saturday to repeat his condemnation of the Miller legislation, which is supported by other western senators because it contains long-delayed reclamation projects for their states.

Seymour and his chief political benefactor, Gov. Pete Wilson, and California agribusiness, one of his campaign’s major financial benefactors, are urging Bush to veto the bill. The President is expected to act on the bill within two weeks.

Bush shares his opposition to the California provisions, Seymour said, but is under strong election-year pressure from other western senators to sign the bill.

Seymour insisted again Saturday that the bill would take 1 million acre-feet of water “off the top” of farmers’ existing 4.5 million acre-feet of water allocations and divert it to environmental restoration.

He lashed his Democratic opponent, former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein, for supporting the bill.

“She hides her position under the guise of ‘Oh, we have to move water to urban areas,’ ” Seymour told a campaign rally of a dozen area farmers at the base of the Sierra foothills near Clovis, 14 miles northeast of Fresno.

Seymour has argued that the environmental commitments in the legislation, designed to mitigate damage the massive water diversions and pumping have caused over 40 years of project operations, are so strict that there would not be enough water left for the farmers or urban interests.

“The priorities that are set forth in that bill are upside down,” Seymour said. “The priorities say that plants and animals come first and people and jobs come second.”

But annual Central Valley Project water deliveries total more than 7 million acre-feet in a normal year, not the 4.5 million Seymour claims.

In the wettest years, the project has produced as much as 12 million acre-feet, a figure Seymour denied. One acre-foot is nearly 326,000 gallons, about what two average households use a year and about a third of what it takes to grow an acre of cotton.

Most of the federal irrigation water has been sold to valley farmers at highly subsidized rates under 40-year contracts that were to be automatically renewed by Department of the Interior officials until Miller and others challenged that process.

The major environmental allocation is not 1 million acre-feet, but 800,000. It would not come “off the top” and out of farmers’ supplies, but would be cut back as much as 25% in the same proportion as irrigation water. Beyond the 25%, the environmental diversions would continue while flows to water contractors could stop.

Lawrence said that even if the bill is vetoed, there is a chance that farmers will lose that much water--or more--to environmental use because of expected water quality rulings by the State Water Resources Control Board and possibly the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or federal courts.

The 800,000 acre-feet would serve as the source for any water required to meet higher water quality standards almost certain to be set for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay. The 800,000 also would be used to satisfy any water required by the Endangered Species Act.

The bill also would require the Bureau of Reclamation to increase its allocation of water for the Trinity River salmon run by as much as 200,000 acre-feet in some years. Additional water would go to San Joaquin Valley wildlife refuges, but there is no way to get the water to the refuges now.

The legislation also directs the secretary of the Interior to expand the Central Valley Project water supply to replace the water diverted to the environment.