Feud Over River Water Simmering

The state’s water barons stood at the mighty Hoover Dam and triumphantly signed a deal meant to end decades of feuding by divvying up California’s share of the Colorado River between the water-rich Imperial Valley and the thirsty cities of San Diego County.

“With this agreement, conflict on the river is stilled,” Interior Secretary Gale Norton said at the Oct. 16, 2003, ceremony, which capped nine years of politicking, litigating and negotiating.

Now it’s two years later and, indeed, a portion of the Imperial Valley’s mammoth share of the river is flowing to San Diego through the aqueduct owned by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

More will flow in coming years, up to a maximum of 200,000 acre-feet annually, enough for 1.6 million people.

The San Diego County Water Authority is paying the Imperial Irrigation District for the water and paying MWD to deliver it.

“We’re moving the water and we’re sending checks,” said Gordon Hess, director of imported water for the San Diego agency.

But like all things involving California water, it’s not that simple.

A group of farmers and the Imperial County Board of Supervisors is attacking the water deal in Sacramento County Superior Court. The legal action challenges the authority of the Imperial Irrigation District’s board to make water deals without approval of the farmers.

If the farmers and county supervisors win, the deal could be squelched and negotiations would have to begin all over again on getting more river water to San Diego.

The water deal was made after years of pressure from the Clinton and Bush administrations for California to begin to live within a “water budget” instead of relying on taking more water from the Colorado than the state is assured under laws governing the river.

If push had come to shove, a federal cutback in water could have hurt not just the Imperial Valley and San Diego but water users throughout Southern California accustomed to receiving “surplus” allocations from the Colorado River.

In addition to the Sacramento legal action, environmental groups are suing in federal court in Las Vegas to block a project to line the All-American Canal, which brings river water to the Imperial Valley. Under the deal, lining the canal is meant to make water available for San Diego by reducing seepage.

The lawsuit alleges that by lining the canal, California would harm the farmers of the Mexicali Valley, who have come to depend on seepage from the canal.

Lawyers involved expect the litigants to seek a restraining order blocking the water agencies from awarding contracts for the lining project, expected to cost more than $200 million.

And while the litigation is fought in Sacramento and Las Vegas, the owners of some farm service companies in the Imperial Valley are crying foul, saying their businesses are being hurt by the fact that 12,000 acres of farmland are being left fallow to save water for San Diego.

The crying may increase greatly as fallowing -- in which farmers are paid not to plant crops -- is slated to double in the next decade so that even more water can be sent to San Diego.

Two of the three economists assigned to evaluate the economic effect of the water deal have declared that it is a net positive for the valley, which has 150,000 residents and more than 500,000 acres of farmland.

As long as the economists’ ruling stands, millions of dollars set aside to help farmworkers and business owners hurt by fallowing cannot be distributed.

Orby Hanks, 72, whose family has lived in the Imperial Valley since the 1930s, thinks the economists and a local committee assigned to work with them don’t understand the farm economy.

“I went to the meetings and basically was told to sit down and shut up,” said Hanks, whose company provides equipment for grain harvesting and hauling. “They see us as rich like the farmers. But we’re not.”

The Imperial Irrigation District is appealing the economists’ decision. It had been politically very painful for the district to decide to sell water to San Diego in the first place.

Only after the federal government sued to reduce the valley’s allocation from the river -- without compensation -- did the district vote 3-2 to sell water to San Diego.

The board member who was the swing vote in favor of the deal was promptly defeated by John Pierre Menvielle, a third-generation Imperial County farmer, who ran on a platform opposing the deal.

There is no easy way for the district to back out of the deal, which is meant to last for 45 years with a possibility of another 30.

Still, Menvielle and other board members say the matter of whether the district can get out of the deal is not settled.

“If we keep getting kicked around by San Diego, I’ll take another hard look at how things are going,” said Menvielle.

The Department of the Interior has asked all agencies that take water from the Colorado River to consider how much water they would be willing to give up to help their neighbors if the Western drought persists. Last week, the Imperial irrigation board voted unanimously to provide its answer: not a drop.

“The more we give, the more they want,” board member Stella Mendoza said. “The [Interior] secretary says we have peace on the river -- well, not in Imperial Valley.”

The sticking point remains fallowing. The agreement calls for it for 15 years.

Even with the Sacramento and Las Vegas litigation, and the unhappiness on the Imperial irrigation board over the deal, outside water watchers say the current conflict pales in comparison with the decades that preceded it.

One water official likened past litigation and conflict between water agencies, and between California and other Western states, to armies blasting away at each other with artillery.

“At least now we’re down to pistols and knives,” he said.