Agency Says It May Cut Water Supply to Navy Base

Reacting to federal policies that it says are depriving key Central Valley farmland of sufficient water, a giant water district is threatening to counterattack by cutting supplies to a U.S. military base.

For years, farmers in the San Joaquin Valley’s western swath, along with the fast-growing cities of the Silicon Valley, have battled government agencies over the availability of water.

But the proposal by the Westlands Water District--one of the nation’s largest agricultural suppliers--to slash delivery to the Lemoore Naval Air Station amounts to an escalation of an undeclared war.

It shows increasing frustration as environmental laws dedicate more water to endangered fish in the nation’s leading agricultural state.

Officials at Westlands, which irrigates more than half a million acres that yield $1 billion worth of crops each year in the Fresno area, say they are not trying to take on the armed forces as they study whether to cut water supplies to 13,000 acres of Navy land.

They contend that they are merely reacting to warnings from federal officials of long-term cutbacks due to increasing restrictions on how much water can be diverted from the ecologically sensitive Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

“This certainly isn’t a quid pro quo,” Westlands General Manager David L. Orth said. “We’re simply recognizing we do not have adequate water supplies to serve all of the lands in our district.”

This year’s preliminary water delivery plan for the Central Valley Project, a complex network that moves Sierra-fed waters south, appears to offer little relief.

Federal water authorities announced that farmers south of the delta can expect to receive 40% to 45% of the supplies they anticipated this year. Silicon Valley cities served by the Santa Clara Valley Water District can expect 75%.

Due to the new requirements, the amounts that farmers and cities had grown accustomed to are history, said Jeff McCracken, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the Central Valley Project.

But state and federal water officials pledged at a Sacramento hearing Tuesday to develop a more efficient way of managing the delta.

Outraged farmers and their urban counterparts say the skimpy water estimates are proof the federal government’s system for enhancing the delta is out of whack.

“This is devastating to the rural communities,” said Dan Nelson, executive director of the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority, a group of 32 water districts south of the delta that rely on Central Valley Project water. “We don’t anticipate us going back to the days of 100% supply other than in very wet and flooding conditions.”

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials counter that they are merely trying to restore balance in a delta ecosystem that for decades served the interests of irrigators and urban users in the Central Valley at the expense of fish and wildlife populations.

“We are not choosing fish over people,” said Roger Guinee, a fishery biologist with the service.

Barry Nelson, senior policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the water districts are exaggerating the potential for shortages, adding that the Central Valley Project’s preliminary plan is based on December’s dry weather and that its early estimates are traditionally conservative. Federal officials say the estimates will be revised Feb. 15.

Water users aren’t waiting to find out, however. Wells that had lain dormant since the drought of the late 1980s and early 1990s are being readied for use as they seek additional water supplies, and new wells are being sunk along the west side of the San Joaquin Valley.

The federal government, meanwhile, is shopping around for surplus supplies. It has also asked state officials to help by pumping extra water into San Luis Reservoir, which stores water for state and federal users south of the delta.

Westlands officials see a partial solution to long-term cutbacks in shrinking the size of their district.

They have asked the Fresno County Local Agency Formation Commission to initiate the lengthy process of detaching the air station, which would continue to receive water for use by base residents, from their district.

Navy officials have vowed to fight the detachment. Leasing the land to local farmers keeps tumbleweeds off airplane runways and brings in $1.8 million in annual fees that are deposited into an environmental rehabilitation fund.

“The irony,” said Lt. Cmdr. Jonathan Davis of the base, “is that we’re the only farmers in the Westlands Water District that take our profits and roll them 100% back into the environment.”