Water facts and fiction

Think L.A. pulls the most water from the Delta? Think again

When the issue is a peripheral canal, it is tempting to fantasize about dividing California into two states at the Tehachapis and letting those people in La La Land worry about their own water.

We saw what they did to the Owens Valley, right? Let them desalinate sea water.

That wouldn't solve the problem because people in Los Angeles are not the biggest users of Delta water. We can fight a peripheral canal more effectively if we know the various interests behind it.

Here's the situation: Water leaves the Delta through two major water projects, California's State Water Project (SWP) and the federal Central Valley Project. The SWP delivers about 3 million acre-feet annually to farmers in the San Joaquin Valley and to urban users in both Northern and Southern California.

The SWP's South Bay Aqueduct provides water to users in Alameda and Santa Clara counties. The California Aqueduct takes water south over the Tehachapis to Southern California counties and, via the Coastal Branch Aqueduct, to areas around San Luis Obispo.

The other major water project, the CVP, is operated by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The CVP was built mainly to irrigate the Central Valley. According to Water Facts, a publication of the nonprofit Water Education Foundation, the CVP delivers 7 million acre-feet of water in a normal year, and about 90 percent of that is used to irrigate farmland.

To put it another way, the federal water project takes over twice as much water as the state water project that supplies L.A. and other urban and farm users, and it delivers 90 percent of what it takes to farming interests in the southern part of the Central Valley.

Over the decades, Delta water has been used to create a multibillion dollar agricultural economy in the southern Central Valley. At the same time, though, agribusiness has developed a sense of entitlement to that water.

The San Luis Unit of the CVP, including San Luis Dam and Reservoir west of Interstate 5 near Santa Nella, stores water pumped from the Delta, then releases it to the state and federal facilities when Delta flows are too low to meet project needs. Last January, the non-partisan General Accountability Office (GAO) reported that four large irrigation water districts in the Central Valley still owe federal taxpayers nearly $500 million for facilities constructed in the 1960s as part of the San Luis Unit.

Water exported from the Delta is distributed by contractors who pay for the water at a wholesale rate and can then store it or resell it. For example, the Kern County Water Agency contracts with the SWP to distribute water in Kern County. Recently, a Contra Costa Times investigation found that taxpayers paid $96 million to the Kern County Water Agency in a scheme that amounted to arbitrage. The Agency sold water at up to $200 an acre-foot to a publicly financed state environmental protection program. Meanwhile, it bought Delta water from the state for as little as $28 an acre-foot.

Another export contractor is Westlands Water District, which contracts with the federal government to deliver CVP water to farmers in western Fresno County and Kings County. Some of the lands irrigated by Westlands farmers contain selenium and other salts. In the 1980s, drainage from these lands deformed livestock and birds and caused a die-off of migratory waterfowl in the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge. The cleanup cost taxpayers $26.6 million, and $19.8 million of that is supposed to be repaid by Westlands, according to the GAO report. Westlands still owes the money.

So much salt drains into the San Joaquin River from lands served by the Westlands Water District that there is a special monitoring station at Vernalis just to keep track of how bad the daily load of salt gets.

A third major export contractor is the Metropolitan Water District in Southern California. This district has gotten water not only from the Owens Valley and the Delta but also from the Colorado River. All those sources are threatened and MWD knows it. Through recycling, storage and conservation strategies, MWD has held its water use to early 1990s levels despite a growth in population. It has become a widely recognized leader in water-use efficiency.

Meanwhile, agribusiness in the southern Central Valley keeps using Delta water to grow crops on land where nature grows sagebrush.

Two-thirds of Californians depend on the Delta for drinking water, but it is agriculture that uses over 80 percent of California's developed water. So if you thought that Los Angeles is the main force pushing for a peripheral canal, think again.

Jane Wagner-Tyack of Lodi is a freelance writer, writing consultant, and former educator who serves on the board of directors of Restore the Delta (restorethedelta.org), a grassroots campaign focused on protecting recreation, agriculture, and the environment in the Delta. You can reach Jane at janetyack@gmail.com.