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Retiring Land for Drainage Peace?

Could a settlement in the decades-long battle over responsibility for draining salty irrigation water from the western San Joaquin Valley be at hand? At press time, the Interior Department and valley interests were continuing negotiations over just that, amid widespread speculation that such a settlement might include a large-scale land retirement program similar to one proposed earlier this year by Westlands Water District.

In mid-March, a federal court extended by 30 days Interior’s court-ordered deadline for solving the valley’s drainage problems. The area is slowly being poisoned by the buildup of salts — a side effect of irrigating with salty Delta water; last spring the court ruled that Interior had a duty to provide drainage to the region, although not necessarily via the highly controversial San Luis Drain. The drain, which was designed to empty into the Delta near Antioch, has been closed since 1986, when bird deformities at Kesterson Reservoir — then the terminus of the drain — were attributed to selenium in the drainage.

Earlier this year Westlands, which provides water to 600,000 acres of the valley, publicly floated a proposal under which up to 200,000 acres of threatened land would be retired and managed as habitat — at a cost to the government of up to $500 million.

That proposal met with a decidedly wary response from environmentalists and Westlands’ neighbors, many of whom are concerned about the impacts on local communities and economies. Some are also concerned that Westlands may simply be maneuvering to secure more water from the federal Central Valley Project than it currently receives. „We don’t want this to turn out to be a shell game where Westlands gets guaranteed water at others’ expense," says Randy McFarland of the neighboring Friant Water Users Authority.

Participants would not confirm the content of the current negotiations. However, according to BurRec’s Mike Delamore „the large plan that has been discussed in the press is not part of the drainage plan proceedings before the court."

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