Top Story

Editorial: Water Deal Illustrates Potential For Agreement

Jul 29, 2010

Visalia Times-Delta

Editorial • July 29, 2010

Water politics makes strange bedfellows indeed.

The deal between the Westlands Water District of
western Fresno County and the Metropolitan Water
District of Los Angeles is an interesting agreement
between traditionally competing interests. Solutions
to California's water problems will need the same
kind of collaboration among interests that have
usually been enemies.

The deal is also a triumph of pragmatism. Realizing
that its position is tenuous, Westlands decided that
it was better to make a deal than suffer.

But the agreement does have one troubling aspect: It
is another instance of Valley water being moved out
of the area to serve a huge urban population center.
All the competing interests in California's vast and
complicated water arrangements will have to work
with each other. But Valley agricultural interests are
probably the weakest of those groups politically.
Concessions that cost the Valley water can have
repercussions for all of us in the San Joaquin Valley.

The deal is intriguingly simple: Westlands sends
Metropolitan 50,000 to 100,000 acre-feet of water
this summer and fall through the California
Aqueduct, the 700-mile system of conduits that
transfers water from the north to the south and the
19 million thirsty Southern Californians
Metropolitan serves.

Next summer, Westlands would get back 2 acre-feet
of water for every 3 acre-feet it sends this year.

It's a smart deal for Westlands, which can't use all
the water it is storing in the San Luis Reservoir this
season. Westlands received 45 percent of the
maximum water delivery from the federal
government. But since westside farmers were
planning on less water, they didn't plant as much.

This is ultimately a win-win deal for all.

It's also a classic example of how water works in
California. It is transferred from one part of the state
to another where the need is greater. The
Westlands-Metropolitan deal isn't huge by California
standards. It represents only about 10 percent of
Westlands' federal contract allotment. And it's
literally a drop in the bucket compared with the 2
million to 2.5 million acre-feet Metropolitan's
customers consume each year. But the deal itself is
momentous. It demonstrates some of the
possibilities for balancing all the state's water
interests productively.


The three basic uses for water — agricultural,
environmental and urban — must all be in balance
for this to work. More and more, the agricultural leg
of this three-legged stool is being undercut. For
that reason, people in the Valley need to keep
pushing the idea of more development of surface
water sources as well as support efforts for
conservation.

The Valley must also make sure it doesn't further
undercut its own position by transferring more
water to urban interests. Valley water is already
being transferred to environmental uses to support
fish and wildlife. That need not be a threat as long
as that agricultural water is replaced with more
development. Willingness to cooperate with urban
interests in deals such as the Westlands-
Metropolitan agreement will help the Valley gain the
political clout it needs to promote more
development.

It will be interesting to see how this deal works next
year when it is time for the Metropolitan Water
District to reciprocate. We would hope it confirms
what we have suspected about progress of
California water policy and what Westlands seems to
have discovered with this deal: Cooperation is better
than conflict, and collaboration is more productive
than isolation.