Farmers Oppose Call to Idle Land

When U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) lectured the farmers of the Imperial Valley that they should let some of their fields go dry so their water can be sold to arid San Diego County, it was bound to be a controversial notion.

But when she warned bluntly that the federal government might just take their water without paying if farmers refuse to fallow, Imperial Irrigation District board member Bruce Kuhn could not restrain himself.

“I would expect nothing less from Feinstein, being the bureaucratic gasbag, pig-eyed sack of crap that she is,” Kuhn was quoted as saying last month in a front-page story in the Imperial Valley Press. “They will not take the water without a long, protracted legal battle. She has got her head stuck in the sand.”

In the days that followed his outburst, Kuhn was rebuked by farmers and other board members of the Imperial Irrigation District. He and the board apologized to Feinstein. But the sentiments that charged Kuhn have not gone away.

In this forbidding desert, where pioneers a century ago laid claim to Colorado River water that has created a billion-dollar-a-year agricultural empire, there is no deeper fear than that politically powerful outsiders will someday take away that water and order the farmers to let their fields wither and die.

And now Feinstein and others say that is exactly what Imperial Valley farmers must do, on a limited scale, to rescue urban and suburban Southern California from a crippling reduction in their allocation from the Colorado River.

Unless the Imperial Valley farmers fallow a portion of their land so that their water can be used elsewhere, those officials say, the state faces a mandatory cutback from the Colorado River that could devastate the entire state’s lifestyle and economy.

Water officials in San Diego, Los Angeles and Sacramento insist that a plan can take some fields out of cultivation without damaging the agricultural economy of the Imperial Valley. The farmers, whose livelihoods and heritage are at risk, are dubious.

Under an agreement with six other states and the federal government, California has until the end of the year to find a strategy to use less water from the Colorado River. That would keep Arizona, Nevada and other Western states from pressuring the federal government to make good on its oft-repeated threat to cut California’s allocation if it cannot find a way to curb its voracious thirst for water.

For years, cities in Southern California have been using water that rightfully belongs to other states, according to federal law. Now those states, facing rapid population growth, want their water back. And California is scrambling to reallocate water from farms to cities.

Kuhn’s outburst was fueled by the realization in many farm communities that their once-vaunted political clout is slipping, according to a UC Santa Cruz professor who teaches a course on California’s water wars.

“As their political power declines, so does their hold on their water,” said Brent Haddad, associate professor of environmental studies and author of “Rivers of Gold,” a treatise on fallowing and water sales. “The Imperial Irrigation District was once the most powerful water district in the country. The pioneer families have always expected a frontal assault on their water rights. And now it’s here.”

The Imperial Irrigation District, which provides water and power for 140,000 residents and 500,000 acres of farmland, is at center stage in this latest California water fight for one simple reason: It began drawing water from the Colorado River decades before Los Angeles and other coastal cities and therefore is entitled to 70% of the state’s share of the river.

The Colorado River is Southern California’s largest source of imported water, providing at least half of the water distributed by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to 17 million people in six counties.

When the Clinton administration began pressuring California to reduce its dependence on the river, the preferred method was for water-rich but cash-poor agricultural districts to sell water to thirsty but affluent coastal regions.

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River Policy Unchanged

If the Imperial Valley farmers were hoping for a better deal from the Bush administration, they’ve been disappointed.

Colorado River policy is one of the few environmental areas in which the new administration has continued the approach of its predecessor. Soon after Kuhn’s diatribe against Feinstein, Bennett W. Raley, assistant interior secretary for water and science, wrote to the irrigation district in support of Feinstein’s position.

On Friday, Raley repeated his warning at a hearing in Riverside County of a congressional subcommittee. He told the water and power subcommittee of the House Resources Committee that he understands the Imperial Valley farmers’ hard-set feelings about fallowing but that their opposition is not enough to kill the idea.

The fallowing clash has been brewing since 1995, when the San Diego County Water Authority and the Imperial Irrigation District began negotiations over what would be the largest farm-to-cities sale of water in the nation’s history. The 75-year plan would transfer billions of gallons in exchange for billions of dollars.

The Imperial Valley farmers would be paid to install conservation devices to allow them to continue cultivating the same number of acres with less water. From the beginning, the irrigation district was insistent: No fallowing.

In an agricultural economy, if farmers stop planting crops, the ripples can be immediate and profound. Myriad businesses that depend on farming, such as crop dusters, equipment stores and fertilizer companies, suffer a decline in revenue; land values can plummet; and farm workers are left jobless.

But devising a way to conserve water on farms--and avoid fallowing--has proved more difficult than expected. Now the year-end deadline looms, and the exact thing that the farmers have long feared is being suggested by Feinstein and others as the only alternative.

“The plan was supposed to be win-win,” Kuhn said. “But now it’s turned into they win and the Imperial Valley gets a kick in the ass.”

Officials are discussing fallowing 10,000 to 75,000 acres a year. Although that might seem a small fraction of the county’s 500,000 farm acres, Kuhn and others think it would be the beginning of demands for more water and more fallowing.

Although his comments have been widely criticized as intemperate, his hell-no-we-won’t-fallow stance has made Kuhn a kind of folk hero.

“It was pure Bruce,” said Al Kalin, a third-generation Imperial Valley farmer. “I’ve been at plenty of meetings where he’s said things just like that. Fallowing is a four-letter word in the Imperial Valley, and a U.S. senator should have known that.”

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Farmers Oppose Tactics

“Mr. Kuhn went over the line and made things personal, which you should never do,” said John Pierre Menvielle, also a third-generation farmer. “He made us all sound like hicks. It’s not what he said, it’s how he said it.”

Menvielle told a legislative committee in Sacramento not to expect Imperial Valley farmers to willingly or cheaply part with their water: “Farmer does not rhyme with stupid.”

Still, officials such as Adan Ortega, an executive with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, are confident that a method can be devised to offset any economic impact because of limited fallowing. A similar plan is being developed in the Palo Verde Valley near Blythe.

In Palo Verde, a tentative agreement with the water district calls for direct payments to farmers and establishment of a multimillion-dollar fund to aid farm workers and businesses hurt when crops are not planted.

Ortega notes that Imperial Valley farmers already fallow, although they refer to it as crop rotation. “They wouldn’t be doing anything they’re not already doing, except making money on it,” he said.

There is, of course, a difference between doing something voluntarily and doing something by government order. Stubbornness and cynicism about politicians run deep in the Imperial Valley’s farm culture. “I guess it’s the whole pioneer instinct,” Kalin said. “We don’t like outsiders telling us what to do.”

Feinstein’s dictum came in response to a meeting in Washington with officials from multiple Southern California water districts. In a letter to Stella Mendoza, board chairwoman of the Imperial Irrigation District, Feinstein warned:

“If Imperial does not decide to fallow, there is a serious risk that the Department of Interior ... could be forced to initiate the proceedings to take the water [the Imperial Irrigation District] had planned to transfer, and there would not be any compensation .... The more I have become involved in this issue, the more I’ve come to believe that there is no workable alternative other than fallowing.”

Mendoza was furious, but unlike Kuhn, was careful that her strongest statements were not quoted in the Imperial Valley Press, which covers water and the irrigation district as closely as national newspapers cover the White House.

“We are not going to bankrupt the Imperial Valley just so the coast can have our water,” Mendoza said. “I will not look someone in the eye and say, ‘Sorry you lost your home and your job, but you have to realize somebody else needed our water.’ ”

Imperial Valley officials have objections to the proposed deal with San Diego County Water Authority other than impacts on the farm industry.

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Salton Sea Is an Issue

Among their worries is that the cost of mending the sickly Salton Sea will be shifted by the federal government to the Imperial Valley. The water sale to San Diego could reduce agricultural runoff to the landlocked sea, thereby making it saltier and more contaminated. Some cost estimates of fixing the sea exceed $1 billion.

“San Diego is offering a fistful of dollars for a truck-full of liability,” said John Hawk, board member of the Imperial Valley Vegetable Growers Assn.

A saying in the Imperial Valley holds that the pioneers guarded their water rights with shotguns, and now their grandchildren and great-grandchildren guard them with lawyers.

Already there is talk of fighting all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary, to prevent any forced fallowing.

Said Imperial Irrigation District board member Andy Horne: “This is a hill we’re prepared to die on.”