This is the smoking gun. I am convinced the major growers want to transfer their water rights to enable development projects which otherwise would be stopped cold because there is no water available.
I learned tonight that Stuart Resnick is planning a large project in Madera county, north of Fresno.
- Gary
In 2005, under the Bush administration, the Federal Bureau of Reclamation renewed contracts with major water contractors that promised an additional 1.5 million acre feet of water a year. See “Feds Promise Big Ag Water That Isn't There,” Environmental Working Group, March 2005:
http://www.ewg.org/files/agmag/Virtual-Flood.pdf Under the new contracts, Westlands Water District got contracts for 53% more water, from 755,635 acre feet a year, to 1,155,393 million acre feet a year. Madera Irrigation District got contracts for 28% more water, from 155,394 acre feet a year to 198, 280 acre feet – an increase of 28%. And so on.
Most of this additional water has never been delivered or used – and cannot be without severely impacting the Sacramento-San Joaquin River System and the Delta.
Dianne Feinstein, most likely at the urging of her good pal Steve Resnick, has recently introduced a “Water Transfer” bill, S 1759, that would allow the re-sale of these excess amounts of contracted water.
The Miller Miller-Bradley Act of 1992 restricted transfers of CVP water contracts to water that had actually been consumptively used, and to more than the average of the last 3 years of normal deliveries, prior to the act’s passage. Feinstein’s bill would end the restrictions for transfer of irrigation water between water contractors to “real” water.
It’s not clear what would happen if, say, Westlands bought up most of the “surplus” water contracts that were given to other districts, but likely nothing good, especially in conjunction with the likely construction of a Peripheral Canal.
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