Bill aims to stop farmers from selling water pacts
By: E.J. Schultz

SACRAMENTO — How can Valley farmers ask for more water if they are making money selling what they already have to cities outside the region?

It has happened only a few times in the last couple of decades. But one time is too many for a Valley lawmaker who has introduced legislation to stop the practice for state water contractors.

Assembly Member Juan Arambula, I-Fresno, said the ag-to-city transfers make it harder to build sympathy for the Valley’s farm water plight.

“What am I going to tell folks when farmers sell their water and put farmworkers out of a job — and they make millions at the public’s expense?” said Arambula, who has long pushed for state water investments in the Valley.

Arambula’s bill likely will face opposition from Valley water officials who say the drought and pumping cutbacks leave some growers with no choice but to cash in on their water allocations from the State Water Project.

“Very few of these sales are voluntary,” said Don Mills, chairman of the Kings County Water Commission, which advises that county on water issues. “The economics are forcing the farmers to sell the water.”

Assembly Bill 2049 would prohibit any water transfer from an agricultural user to a municipal user for a contract that lasts more than 10 years.

Because the Legislature has no authority over federal water contractors, Arambula’s bill only applies to the State Water Project, which provides a small percentage of the ag water in the region — all of it in the South Valley.

He introduced the legislation in response to last year’s $73 million water sale from the Dudley Ridge Water District in Kings County to the Mojave Water Agency, which serves several cities in San Bernardino County.

Profiting from the deal was Dudley Ridge landowner Sandridge Partners, a Bay Area company whose owners’ holdings include farms and real estate.

The transaction set off a passionate debate in the region, said Diana Peck, executive director of the Kings County Farm Bureau. “There are those that say they should not be able to sell their water when there are others who desperately need it,” she said. But some people “feel as a landowner, it is their right to sell that water.”

Sandridge got a price that no farmer would likely pay: $5,250 per acre-foot for 14,000 acre-feet. In the Valley, $1,000 is considered expensive. An acre foot is about 326,000 gallons, or a 12- to 18-month supply for an average Valley family.

The company plans to continue to farm in the district, but eventually could fallow its land.

Arambula said Sandridge owed it to the region to keep farming because it collects government subsidies. The company got more than $1 million in federal crop payments in 2007, the top recipient in California, according to a database published by the Environmental Working Group.

Sandridge partner John Vidovich said: “I don’t like selling the water. I hated it.” But he said the company’s allocations from the State Water Project have dipped so low that it makes farming cost prohibitive. He blamed environmental pumping cutbacks at the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta — the state’s water hub — and promised to reinvest the $73 million in agriculture, mostly in finding alternative sources of water.

Citing drought and pumping restrictions, the state last year allotted 40% of contracted supplies. The initial estimate for this year is just 15%, although that is likely to be increased, officials said Friday.

The Dudley Ridge transfer does not involve actual water. Rather the district, on behalf of Sandridge, sold a portion of the total contracted amount it is allowed to request each year.

Since 1991, there have been only 16 such permanent ag-to-city transfers for a total of 177,000 acre-feet — a small fraction of the 4.2 million acre-feet in allocation rights held by the 29 agencies with contracts, according to the state Department of Water Resources, which approves the requests.

In the federal Central Valley Project — which provides most farm water in the region — there never has been a permanent farm-to-urban sale, partly because such transactions face regulatory hurdles, said Gary Sawyers, a prominent water attorney in Fresno. But as farm hardships continue, more requests could be coming by state contractors. “Certainly there are other deals that people are looking at,” Sawyers said.

And there’s nothing wrong with that, said Jay Lund, director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California at Davis.

“In some ways it’s not much different from General Motors deciding to close a factory and sell off the equipment from a factory,” he said. Farmers are “allowing water to go to a different use that has high economic value to the state of California.”

Yet, he said the state should step in to help the region cope with the changes, such as setting up an economic development fund to promote other industries.