Farm Water Supply
As chairman of the Friant Water Users Authority, I appreciated your Sept. 5 article and Sept. 4 editorial on the Westlands Water District’s attempt to solve its water-supply problems by taking San Joaquin River water away from eastern San Joaquin Valley farmers served by the Central Valley Project’s Friant Division.
The editorial contained an error, correction of which focuses even more light on the public-policy injustice that Westlands is attempting to impose on Friant. The 650,000-acre Westland Water District serves not 6,000 farmers, as you stated, but about 600. By comparison, one of the 28 Friant contractors, the 28,000-acre Orange Cove Irrigation District, also serves 600 farmers. The Friant Division as a whole has 15,000 growers.
It is simply morally wrong for a few hundred big corporate farmers to attempt to suck water away from thousands of small family farmers who have beneficially used that water for a half-century through a project built for the purpose.
KOLE M. UPTON
Chowchilla, Calif.
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