Manager of Imperial Water District Is Fired

The general manager of the mammoth Imperial Irrigation District has been fired, another sign that the historic agreement under which San Diego would buy water from the Imperial Valley--seen as the linchpin of the state’s water future--is far from a done deal.

“This thing is far from over, not by a longshot,” said UC San Diego political science professor Steven Erie, an expert on California’s water wars.

Michael Clinton’s tenure at the Imperial Irrigation District, the largest water user in Southern California, became shaky after the November election of two new board members who expressed doubts about key parts of the San Diego deal.

An attempt in August to fire Clinton, who formerly worked for a water engineering firm in Glendale, failed by a single vote. He was terminated Tuesday when the board met for its first session of the new year.

Many farmers continue to worry that the district is trying to sell too much water to the thirsty and growing San Diego area and that farmers will be stuck with the costs of water conservation and cleaning up the Salton Sea, which serves as an agricultural sump.

There is also the fear that some farmers will let their fields go fallow in order to conserve water for sale, which could undercut Imperial County’s billion-dollar agricultural economy.

Water issues continue to roil the political landscape of the Imperial Valley, where 500,000 acres of farmland are dependent on irrigation. Clinton, 55, a civil engineer, became the personification of the continuing controversy.

“I think his departure will be a good thing,” said Carson Kalin, whose family farm has 2,500 acres under cultivation. “He did what he was hired to do--put a deal together--but many of his open-ended statements, like the idea we can conserve 500,000 acre-feet of water, hurt us.”

Through persistence, and some degree of stealth, Clinton helped shape a deal to sell the San Diego County Water Authority as much as 300,000 acre-feet of water a year--less than a 10th of the Imperial Valley’s allocation from the Colorado River.

The deal was reached in August after the Legislature allocated $235 million to line canals and build underground storage facilities, overcoming two major obstacles to the agreement.

Some expect the new irrigation district board to attempt to reopen negotiations over the agreement, which could prove a lengthy and legally tricky effort because it would involve not just the San Diego County Water Authority but also other parties, including the Legislature.

There are other issues that could delay or block the deal: a dispute between the irrigation district and the Coachella Valley Water District, and complex negotiations among several states over the storage of water in Nevada’s Lake Mead, the giant reservoir along the Colorado River.

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has called the water deal essential to the state’s effort to live within its rightful water allocation from the Colorado. He has threatened to curtail the practice of allowing California to receive surplus water from the river.

Clinton, highly knowledgeable but somewhat aloof, is the second of the state’s major water bosses to leave in recent months, as the industry struggles in the throes of fundamental change. John Wodraska, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, resigned in September to join a Houston-based water business.

Clinton angered members of the Imperial County Board of Supervisors, the local grand jury, the editorial page of the Imperial Valley Press and a faction of the farming community.

Among other things, Clinton was criticized for not having publicly disclosed that his Glendale firm once did work for the Bass brothers, the Texas billionaires who in the 1990s began buying Imperial Valley land and trying to influence local water policy with an eye toward profiting by letting the land go fallow and selling the water.

In a statement released late Tuesday after he was fired, Clinton said that when he was hired in 1995, Southern California “was in denial” and believed that it could continue using more than its share of Colorado River water. He said the district faced two choices: Arrange a sales agreement or let urban areas take the Imperial Valley’s water by political muscle.

“The [Imperial Irrigation District] board chose to manage its own destiny,” Clinton said. “Consistently, the IID board has made policy based upon facts rather than the whims of public opinion.”

Under his contract, Clinton will receive a year’s salary of $165,000. The termination was effective immediately.