Water Panel Holds Key to Transfer Pact

A plan to shift water from farms to cities and spare California a drastic cutback of its Colorado River supply got approval this week from three of the four agencies that must sign off on the deal and now rests in the hands of a conflicted Imperial Irrigation District board.

The board’s concurrence is by no means assured, said Stella Mendoza, one of the district’s five panel members. She said she will vote against the water transfer because of its potential harm to jobs and businesses in the Imperial Valley.

Under the agreement, hammered out in marathon negotiations last week, farmers would plant fewer crops and sell irrigation water to San Diego. The transfer could satisfy up to one-third of San Diego’s annual water needs. Over the 75-year life of the agreement, San Diego expects to pay $2 billion for the water and to offset the economic harm of idling farmland in Imperial Valley.

The importance of the pact extends to all of Southern California. The federal government considers the water transfer key to averting a sudden disruption of Colorado River supplies. For decades California has used more than its legal share of the river, to the growing ire of the six other states along the Colorado River. California has promised to reduce its take over the next 15 years. Part of that commitment involves meeting a Jan. 1 deadline to redistribute Colorado River water among in-state users through such means as the water transfer.

The broad elements of the transfer won approval this week of the boards of the San Diego County Water Authority, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the Coachella Valley Water District.

A hundred miles east of San Diego, where Imperial Valley residents must live with the consequences of less water, the Imperial Irrigation District board has decided to take no action on the plan until public workshops are held and lawyers have translated the deal into legally binding language.

“I think after I read all the paper they’re going to draw up in the next month or so, if it’s to my satisfaction then I can support the transfer,” said Imperial Irrigation District board member and farmer Lloyd Allen. “We down here don’t want to be anybody who stops the transfer.”

Allen said he is convinced that the district will face a legal attack on its water rights if it does not agree to another water transfer.

A third board member, Andy Horne, said he is reserving judgment until he is sure that the transfer does not violate federal guidelines governing the district’s use of the water it gets from the Colorado River. “I can understand why the other water agencies would move so quickly to approve it because they are the ones getting the water. We are the ones giving it up.”

Nearly a century ago, the Imperial Irrigation District locked up rights to roughly one-fifth of the Colorado River’s flow. Cities on the coast have lately viewed its alfalfa fields and unlined ditches as a water source. In the mid-1980s, after being accused of wasteful irrigation practices, the district agreed to transfer to the MWD enough water each year to supply half a million people.

Under the proposed agreement, the Imperial Irrigation District farmers would idle as many as 30,000 acres of 450,000 cultivated acres over 15 years. After that, water sold to San Diego would come from conservation measures.

For years Imperial Valley farmers resisted the notion of fallowing land, fearing harm to shopkeepers, tractor dealers, crop dusters and others who earn a living from agriculture. But environmentalists succeeded in making the Salton Sea a major issue in a water transfer. The giant lake is sustained by runoff from Imperial Valley farm fields. Fallowing frees up more water than conservation, allowing some water to continue flowing to the Salton Sea.

A possible fallowing pact with the Imperial Irrigation District comes on the heels of a historic agreement between the MWD and eastern Riverside County farmers in the Palo Verde Irrigation District.

On Tuesday, the MWD board voted to finalize an arrangement whereby the MWD will pay farmers not to grow crops on 7% to 29% of their land in any year and then transfer the water no longer needed for crops to the MWD for distribution among the 17 million people it serves. Farmers will receive a onetime payment of $3,170 and an annual payment of $550 for each acre they enroll.

Some of the water produced by Palo Verde farmers will be transferred to San Diego , a customer of the MWD, under the agreement reached last week.