U.S. Raises Stakes in Water Battle

In a move that escalates pressure on the Imperial Irrigation District to sign a long-term water deal with coastal Southern California, the Bush administration announced Friday that it will immediately cut water allocations to farmers in the Imperial Valley if a deal is not signed by New Year’s Eve.

The move marks the first attempt by the federal government to enforce a key part of a U.S. Supreme Court decision meant to stop California from using more than its share of water from the Colorado River. The Department of the Interior announced the impending action as part of its annual plan for divvying up the Colorado River among seven Western states.

Assistant Interior Secretary Bennett Raley said that the Imperial district’s mammoth allocation from the Colorado River will be cut about 7%, unless it agrees to sell water to the San Diego County Water Authority. California as a whole would lose as much as 15% of its share of the Colorado -- a heavier sanction because it has overused the river even more than the farming county.

The cuts of Imperial Valley’s water are based on its alleged violations of a 1979 decree that supplemented the historic 1964 Supreme Court decision backing Arizona in its water fight with California, Raley said.

The decree set limits on how much water farmers could use per acre. The Imperial district, Raley said, is roughly 5% over those per-acre limits. He added that further cuts may be ordered.

But the Imperial district’s top lawyer, John Carter, immediately branded the move illegal and hinted that the agency might sue. Carter said that Raley’s boss, Interior Secretary Gale Norton, would be “in violation of our water rights and existing agreements” if she carries through on the threatened reduction.

In the Imperial Valley, where lavish use of cheap water from the Colorado River turned a desert into a $1-billion-a-year agricultural economy, no issue is more incendiary than a perceived threat to the valley’s water rights. A previous tentative agreement also called on farmers in the valley to take some of their land out of cultivation -- another hot-button issue.

Other states that depend on the Colorado River have been pressuring the federal government for years to enforce the Supreme Court decision and end the practice of sending so-called surplus water to California. Those demands have grown louder as drought has beset much of the nation.

Raley denied that he was attempting to pressure Imperial. Instead, he said, he was merely pointing out how allocations from the Colorado River will differ depending on whether the water transfer is approved.

“Our intent is not to provide motivation” for Imperial to sign the agreement, Raley said. “We simply wanted the parties to understand the two paths and what they mean for 2003.”

Under the complicated “water order” plan announced by Raley, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California would be denied shipments of surplus water from the Colorado River if it, San Diego, the Imperial district and the Coachella Valley Water District cannot reach an agreement on the proposed 75-year sale of water from Imperial to San Diego.

But the Metropolitan Water District would be partly compensated because it would receive most of the water that would be denied to the Imperial district. The net effect would be to replace about 30% of the water lost to the Metropolitan Water District because the surplus shipments are being ended.

Even before Raley’s announcement, officials at the Metropolitan district, which serves 17 million people in six Southern California counties, had said that the mega-district could compensate for the loss of surplus water for two to three years with water being stored in reservoirs and aquifers.

“We concluded we could manage [if surplus water were ended],” said Ronald Gastelum, the Metropolitan district’s president and chief executive officer. “If [the Raley plan] is the way things come down in 2003, it will only enhance our ability to manage.”

The Imperial district board is scheduled to meet Monday in El Centro to discuss the Interior Department’s decision and status of negotiations between the four agencies to reach an agreement before Tuesday’s midnight deadline. In an agreement with other Colorado River states two years ago, California was promised 15 years of surplus water if the San Diego-Imperial deal was finalized by the end of this year. The pact would be the largest transfer of water from farms to cities in the nation and a major step toward reducing California’s overreliance on the Colorado. After seven years of on-again, off-again negotiations, the Imperial board defiantly rejected a proposed 75-year deal on Dec. 9, despite the looming deadline and threats of retaliation from the state and federal governments.

The major obstacle is the future of the Salton Sea, the stinky, discolored body of water that straddles Imperial and Riverside counties and survives on agricultural runoff. If the Imperial district sells water to San Diego, it will decrease the amount of runoff, which will make the Salton Sea smaller, even more foul-smelling and more lethal to birds and fish.

Imperial directors are worried that the district could be ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for environmental restoration projects for the sea.

Although its problems of salinity and toxicity have been well-known for decades, the sea was not considered a major impediment in the San Diego-Imperial deal until recently. “It just wasn’t on anybody’s radar screen,” said Joseph Sax, a Northern California lawyer and water expert who served as counsel to former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.

Only recently has the environmental movement focused on the Salton Sea, leading to a lawsuit against the federal government. A report from the Bureau of Reclamation on possible solutions to the sea’s problems is overdue, although even when the report is issued, it will not provide any money.

At the recent meeting of the Colorado River Water Users Assn. in Las Vegas, Norton said the Imperial district is asking for a kind of protection from the federal Endangered Species Act that no agency in the country enjoys.

Although a bill sponsored by state Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) and signed by Gov. Gray Davis provides some protection for the Imperial district from state environmental laws, much of that protection is set to phase out on New Year’s Day, if the San Diego-Imperial deal is not signed.

“The Salton Sea issue is very big,” said Brent Haddad, who teaches environmental studies at UC Santa Cruz. “It calls into question agricultural practices, water rights, public health, ecological protection, property rights -- nearly everything.”

Under various laws governing how the river is allocated, California is assured of 4.4 million acre-feet a year, 75% of which belongs to three agricultural irrigation districts. The Imperial Irrigation District, which provides water for 140,000 residents and 500,000 acres of farmland, is the biggest of the three.

The Metropolitan district has been receiving 600,000 acre-feet to 800,000 acre-feet of surplus water from the Colorado River, in addition to its assured allocation of 550,000 acre-feet.

Overall, California has been receiving about 5.2 million acre-feet. Raley’s plan would reduce that to 4.4 million acre-feet.

Under the water order plan announced by Raley, the Metropolitan district would receive a total of 713,000 acre-feet if the Imperial-San Diego deal is not signed and 1.1 million acre-feet if it is.

No state draws as much as California from the Colorado River. In fact, no state draws as much as the Imperial Irrigation District. The district entitlement to the lion’s share of the river comes from the fact that pioneers staked their claim more than 100 years ago.