Feinstein's slick maneuver to move water around
San Francisco Chronicle
12/27/2011
Just two sentences, dropped into a 1,221-page, $915 billion omnibus spending bill, have streamlined the controversial practice of selling water from north of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to farms and cities south of the delta. This little provision merited more scrutiny and debate than it received.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., inserted the language into the bill, a complex document that authorized the spending needed to keep the government in business through September that President Obama signed into law Dec. 17, to provide more flexibility in moving water around the Central Valley - something she has sought for several years.
The first sentence eases water transfers from irrigation districts served by the federal Central Valley Project, including the Westlands Water District and the privately owned Kern Water Bank. The second sentence mandates a study to streamline water sales, both among south-of-the-delta water contractors and north-south transfers.
State law has been moving for the past decade toward water markets as a way to distribute more equitably the state's most precious resource. The transfers are in keeping with that policy.
The rules matter because if they could ease the transfer of "paper water" - water a district has contracts for but doesn't actually have - it could increase the overall amount of water exported. That water would have to come from someone else; that could be bad for fish, farmers or San Francisco Bay.
Those concerned about the state's salmon and trout fisheries fear more flexibility to transfer water will reduce the Sacramento River to the same state as the San Joaquin River - but a trickle of its former flows. They want greater protections for the fish. The delta ecosystem is already declining as pumping has increased.
