Agencies Near Deal on Water

Prodded by the Davis administration, negotiators for four embattled Southern California water districts indicated Wednesday that they are close to a compromise on the contentious issue of divvying up the state’s share of the Colorado River.

Richard Katz, lead water negotiator for Gov. Gray Davis, said legislation may be introduced as early as today to ratify the four agencies’ agreement and allow the sale of water from Imperial Valley to arid San Diego County. That sale is considered vital by state and federal officials if Southern California is to avoid shortages.

“We are very, very close; we are dotting I’s and crossing Ts,” said Katz amid daylong bargaining sessions with representatives of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the Imperial Irrigation District, the San Diego County Water Authority and the Coachella Valley Water District.

Under the tentative deal, the water-rich Imperial district also would sell water to Metropolitan, which is the wholesaler to 18 million people in six counties. In exchange for being able to buy water, Metropolitan apparently is willing to drop its long-standing opposition to a four-agency deal.

“Metropolitan had been concerned that it was asked to pay money for nothing,” said Adan Ortega, Metropolitan vice president. “Now, Metropolitan would be paying for water.” Metropolitan is central to the overall plan because its owns the Colorado Aqueduct. The Imperial Valley farmers can only sell water to San Diego if Metropolitan allows the water to be shipped through its aqueduct to San Diego.

Katz said a tentative plan would be ready for a hearing Friday before the Assembly Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife. The legislation would then be rushed to the Senate for approval before it recesses late next week.

Katz said that waiting until the Legislature returns in January could kill the delicate negotiations. By January, he said, the lawsuit filed by Imperial against the federal government over its reduction of the irrigation district’s share of the river could be in court.

To make the compromise a reality, negotiators have been meeting in Sacramento to resolve complex details involving water, money and the Salton Sea. The deal would provide a fund for Salton Sea restoration.

One part of the legislation would renew a bill signed by Davis that, in effect, softened the environmental safeguards for the sea. The bill, however, expired on New Year’s Day after no agreement was reached by the four agencies.

The legislation would set a dollar limit on how much the agencies could be billed for Salton Sea restoration. Several politically active environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, have been part of the negotiations.

State and federal law requires that parties to a water deal repair any environmental damage done by such a deal. Since the Salton Sea survives on agricultural runoff from Imperial Valley, any large-scale sale of water by Imperial Valley to San Diego could decrease that runoff and increase the sea’s salinity level.

Another portion of the legislation would restore money needed to line the porous All-American Canal in Imperial Valley to save water. Although the Legislature already has allocated more than $200 million for the project, some of that money was set to be diverted.Although negotiators were optimistic, all were guarded in their predictions.

“I think we’re closer than we’ve ever been before,” said Steve Robbins, general manager of the Coachella Valley district. “But whether we’re going to get it done, I just don’t know. We’ve been here before.”

The overall plan, known as the Quantification Settlement Agreement, represents an attempt by California to live within its assured allocation from the Colorado River and wean itself from using “surplus water.”

Other Western states, increasingly restive with their big neighbor to the west, have demanded that California stop receiving surplus water.

In recent years, California has received up to 800,000 acre-feet of surplus water a year.

The six other states that take water from the Colorado River had agreed two years ago to allow California an additional 15 years of surplus water to provide a “soft-landing” if it could meet a deadline of Jan. 1, 2003 to approve the Imperial-San Diego deal and resolve related issues.

When that deadline passed, Interior Secretary Gale Norton immediately stopped surplus water allocations to Metropolitan.

Later, Norton also reduced allocations to Imperial, which uses more Colorado River water than any other agency in the seven states that depend on the river.

Imperial officials, feeling their water rights imperiled, sued the federal government. A San Diego federal judge tentatively sided with Imperial but reserved final judgment until the Bureau of Reclamation did a study on the contentious issue of whether farmers waste water.

The Bureau of Reclamation announced in July that it had decided that the Imperial Valley farmers have been wasteful and should have their allocation reduced.

If the optimism of Katz and others proves accurate and the agencies can approve a deal, the Interior Department has agreed to resume allocations of surplus water to both California and Nevada. “This is a win-win-win,” Katz said.