[Water_news] 4. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: WATER QUALITY - 6/12/07

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

June 12, 2007

 

4. Water Quality -

 

 

Editorial:

Feinstein turns to drainage

Her goal is to bring together principals on west side drainage.

Fresno Bee – 6/12/07

 

California's senior senator, Dianne Feinstein, is taking another stab at solving a persistent and seemingly intransigent water problem. This time the focus is on drainage along the west side of the Valley. We wish her luck.

 

The method is right out of Feinstein's playbook. On Thursday she convened a group of water experts and representatives of the major players in the west side drainage issue in her Washington office. The discussion was described as more foundation-laying than actual negotiations, but the process has to start somewhere. It's a strategy Feinstein has used successfully in the past.

 

Actually, the discussion has been going on for decades, with little to show for it. Back in the 1980s it was discovered that thousands of birds were dying of selenium poisoning in the Kesterson Reservoir. That led eventually to court rulings holding the federal government responsible for the problem because it failed to keep a promise to create drainage for used irrigation water.

 

In the absence of effective drainage, selenium and other poisonous trace elements built up in the soils. With nowhere to go, the drainage water continued to rise under the surface, and the poisons began to reach the root zones of crops, stunting and killing them.

The cost of fixing the mess has been estimated at $2.6 billion.

 

It would certainly have been cheaper, at this point, to have built a drain to move the irrigation water to San Francisco Bay, as originally envisioned. But political and environmental constraints made that impossible.

 

Now it's been suggested that the federal government walk away from the problem, turning over reservoirs and canals to the growers who farm on the west side, and forgoing a nearly half-billion dollars in debt those growers owe for the construction of the water system. A drainage solution would then become the growers' responsibility.

 

That won't fly in every quarter, from environmentalists who are leery of the growers to those who don't like the idea of American taxpayers giving away a valuable asset to private interests.

 

Another suggestion -- already being employed to some extent -- is to let some of the west side land lie fallow, returning it to its semi-arid nature before irrigation arrived in the last century. That's costly, too, since farmers would have to be compensated for giving up their livelihoods.

Other ideas may emerge from Feinstein's initiative. We hope so. This problem has been with us for a long time. It's not going away. We need a solution that works. #

http://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/story/56582.html