22 California Members of House Demand Federal Action on Water

With a federal cutback in California’s water supply just days away, 22 members of Congress from the state sent a blunt letter Thursday demanding that the Bush administration do more to solve the problem at the heart of the crisis: the failing health of the Salton Sea.

The letter, to Interior Secretary Gale Norton, accused her department of failing to fulfill a federal mandate: to develop a plan to prevent further damage to the ailing sea from a proposed sale of water from Imperial Valley to San Diego.

Instead, the federal government’s contribution to saving the water deal “has been limited mainly to the issuance of threats and provocations that have impeded, rather than encouraged, agreements among Southern California water agencies.”

The letter was signed by Republicans and Democrats, including some considered polar opposites, such as Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon) and Rep. Bob Filner (D-Chula Vista). Hunter represented the Imperial Valley for two decades, but the area is now in Filner’s district.

“We’re disappointed in the letter,” said Assistant Interior Secretary Bennett Raley.

He said the same group sent a letter in May acknowledging that the federal government has no choice except to enforce an agreement between California and six other states to reduce Southern California’s share of the Colorado River unless an agreement to transfer water from the Imperial Valley to San Diego is signed by Dec. 31.

Straddling Imperial and Riverside counties, the Salton Sea, a fetid body of salty water that nevertheless supports millions of fish and migratory birds, has proved the major stumbling block to the proposed mega-water deal between the Imperial Irrigation District and the San Diego County Water Authority.

And unless that deal is signed by Dec. 31, Norton has vowed to reduce the supply of surplus Colorado River water sent to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California for distribution to local agencies serving 17 million people in six counties.

Directors of the Imperial Irrigation District, the nation’s largest agricultural irrigation district, have refused to sign the deal until they are assured that the agency will not be billed later for hundreds of millions of dollars for projects to restore the Salton Sea.

Norton has said the district cannot receive such assurance.

State Sen. Mike Machado (D-Linden), soon to be chairman of the Senate Agriculture and Water Committee, said the Imperial district is caught in “a classic Catch-22”: asked to fallow land to save water but also to keep the Salton Sea, which is dependent on agricultural runoff, at its current level.

If the sea’s level declines, it will become smaller and saltier, endangering millions of fish and birds, as well as increasing air pollution.

Estimates of how much it will cost to slow down the sea’s inexorable deterioration into hyper-salinity have ranged up to $1 billion.

“We don’t have $1 billion in discretionary funding in the department budget,” Raley said.