Storing Water for a Dry Day Leads to Suits
Felicity Barringer
New York Times
07/26/2011
Peter Key knew something was strange when the water levels in his tropical fish tank began to go down last summer. Then the washing machine took 40 minutes to fill, and the toilets would not flush.
But even as Mr. Key and neighbors spent $14,000 to deepen their community well here, they had identified a likely culprit.
They blamed water banking, a system in which water-rights holders — mostly in the rural West — store water in underground reservoirs either for their own future use or for leasing to fast-growing urban areas.
So the neighbors’ small local water utility has gone to state court to challenge the wealthy farming interests that dominate two of the country’s largest water banks.
Viewed as test cases for the size and scope of water-banking operations, the lawsuits claim that enormous withdrawals of water by the banks lowered the water table, causing geological damage, service disruptions and costly repairs.
Water managers and the farmers they serve have long been major political players here in Kern County, a center of conservative political power. But even inside these tight circles, there is increasing friction as governments, businesses — especially agriculture — and a population that has swelled by 26 percent in a decade all compete for water. Even a trendy fruit, the pomegranate, plays a role in these water wars.
A memorandum of understanding between the small local utility that brought the suit, Rosedale-Rio Bravo Water Storage District, which serves 20,000 customers, and the Kern County Water Agency, which operates one of the water banks, stipulated that any problems resulting from its bank would be the agency’s responsibility.
But the agency said it was not to blame, and made no effort to cover costs.
“For two years, we asked them to do it and they didn’t,” said Eric Averett, general manager of the district.
Instead, the smaller districts and the City of Bakersfield had to pay to deepen wells. The two water-banking operations, one public and one quasi public, have denied responsibility.
Water remains a contentious subject. Everyone’s complaining, said Mr. Key, a horse trainer, who had to borrow from his neighbor to water the horses he boards.
Water banking has been widely embraced as a tool for making water supplies reliable, sustainable and marketable. Groups traditionally at odds — environmentalists seeking full rivers for fish and farmers tending pistachio or pomegranate trees — agree that water banking is a useful strategy for managing a vital resource. A consulting group based in Idaho, WestWater Research, estimates there are up to 30 working water banks in the West.
As climate change produces earlier snowmelts, sending too much of the water into reservoirs in the spring and too little in summer, the need for storage grows.
“Water banking is a way of dealing with the volatility,” said Bruce Aylward, an expert in water economics who founded Ecosystem Economics in Oregon.
The economic concept is simple. Farmers, through the water districts that they control, have acquired land entitling them to use water, or have contracted for water supplies flowing to their region. Municipal and industrial water users also have rights.
While some districts limit sales to distant urban areas, others allow them. One Kern County district, Berrenda Mesa, sold part of its state entitlement for a one-shot payment of $3,000 an acre-foot — about 90 percent higher than its costs. The buyers were water districts supplying homes and golf courses in Palm Springs.
The value in banking lies in the certainty that water will be available when it is needed. In wet years, excess water recharges the depleted aquifer, a hedge against a prolonged drought.
The porous soil below the gravel and sand here, which are carried here from the Sierra Nevada by the Kern River, is ideal for the purpose. “It’s a huge bucket,” said Florn Core, the former water resources manager for the City of Bakersfield, which is located in a natural desert where rainfall averages 5.7 inches annually.
Yet with its local supplies and water deliveries from the state and federal governments, Kern County is an agricultural paradise of carrots, citrus, pomegranates and pistachios.
