Democrats vs Democrat in California's water wars
By: Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES  - A group of Democratic lawmakers on Thursday asked Senator Dianne Feinstein to abandon draft legislation that would divert more water to California's farmers, a plan that has quickly become a flashpoint in the state's long-running water wars.

Feinstein's proposal, which would ease Endangered Species Act restrictions, has angered environmental activists and fishing groups. The powerful Democratic senator's rebuke by members of her own party underlines the incendiary nature of water politics in the No. 1 U.S. farm state.

The 12 lawmakers, who sent a letter to Feinstein asking her to drop the plan, say it could ultimately lead to the extinction of Sacramento River salmon and eliminate up to 23,000 jobs in the Pacific coast fishing industry.

"Salmon may not have high-paid lobbyists like the corporate agriculture interests in the Central Valley, but they are critical to our economy," Rep. George Miller, a California Democrat, said in a written statement.

Feinstein did not issue an immediate response to the letter, but wrote in an opinion piece posted earlier on Thursday on the San Francisco Chronicle's website that it was a "make or break moment for California's agricultural economy."

Drastic cutbacks in irrigation supplies this year alone from state and federal water projects have idled about 23,000 farm workers and 300,000 acres (121,400 hectares) of cropland.

'THE HUMAN CONDITION'

California's Central Valley is one of the country's most important agricultural regions. The state's farmers produce more than half the fruit, vegetables and nuts grown in the United States.

"The Endangered Species Act is a vital yet inflexible instrument, and we must consider the human condition," Feinstein said in the article. "I can't sit by as farms, jobs and entire communities in the valley disappear."

Feinstein has released few details of her proposal, which may be attached as an amendment to a federal jobs bill. But she said it would grant Central Valley farmers up to 40 percent of their federal water allocation for two years.

Irrigation districts contract with the state and federal governments to deliver a certain amount of water to them each year. But shortages have recently kept them from getting their full allotments. Most farmers got just 10 percent of their contracted allocation in 2009 and could get less this year.

The cutbacks were forced by water shortages stemming from a three-year statewide drought and delta pumping restrictions imposed to protect imperiled salmon and smelt populations.

A string of Pacific storms this winter has dumped several feet of snow on the mountain ranges that feed California's reservoirs, but officials have not declared the drought over.

The state supplies more than 25 million people and over 750,000 acres (300,000 hectares) of farmland with water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, fed by rainfall and snow-melt runoff from the Sierra Nevada mountains.