[Water_news] 1. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS - Top Item for 9/4/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment

 

September 4, 2008

 

1.  Top Item -

 

 

California farmers' ads clash over Delta water

Sacramento Bee – 9/4/08

By Matt Weiser, staff writer

 

 

California's ageless struggle over water has seen battles between man and nature, between cities and farms, and, of course, between rich and poor.

Now it's farmer vs. farmer.

 

In an advertising slugfest in newspapers and on television in recent weeks, farming interests have waged a war of words over proposals to build a canal to divert water around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

The Delta, hub of the state's water system, is threatened by environmental collapse. This has reduced deliveries to farms in the San Joaquin Valley and cities throughout California. Some view a canal as the solution.

 

The fracas between farmers began last month when Dino Cortopassi, a lifelong Delta farmer and produce packer, bought full-page ads in The Bee and Stockton Record newspapers attacking the canal. He also purchased ads on KCRA-TV in Sacramento.

 

Cortopassi fears a canal will ruin the Delta environment and its farming economy.

 

His ads specifically target Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a leading advocate for a canal.

 

Cortopassi, 71, was a major donor to Schwarzenegger's campaigns. But he recently quit the Republican Party over the matter, and is now registered as an independent.

 

"I have served as a catalyst to get this thing where it should be in the public eye," he said. "I will fight to the death to protect the Delta, because I love it."

In response, a coalition of politically active farmers in the San Joaquin Valley last week purchased a full-page ad in The Bee targeting Cortopassi. These farmers depend almost entirely on Delta water, and consider a canal the best fix.

 

"Shame on you, Dino Cortopassi," shouts their ad, which goes on to criticize his "desperate attempt to confuse the issues."

 

It was signed by Jean Sagouspe, a Los Banos farmer, and purchased by California Westside Farmers State Political Action Committee.

Many members of the PAC buy their water from Westlands Water District in Fresno County, the largest agricultural consumer of Delta water. Sagouspe is Westlands' board chairman. He did not respond to a request for comment.

 

Sarah Woolf, treasurer of the PAC, said Westlands itself is not a member of the PAC.

 

She said the committee's ad was "not an attack on Dino." Instead, the goal was to rebut his claim that taxpayers will bear the burden of building a canal.

"It's not going to be paid for by taxpayers. It's going to be paid for by water users," said Woolf, also spokeswoman for Westlands Water District. "Westlands will pay their share for it and have stated so publicly many times."

 

Schwarzenegger, however, is pushing a state water bond that includes nearly $2 billion that could be used for initial studies for a canal.

Cortopassi has likely spent more than $200,000 on his ad campaign so far, all of it on his own. His most recent ad – in full color – is in today's Bee.

He claims Schwarzenegger is holding the water bond out as a carrot to San Joaquin Valley legislators to induce them to support a tax increase to balance the overdue state budget.

 

Schwarzenegger denied that.

 

"We don't trade water for the budget or vice versa," the governor told the Associated Press.

 

The tussle highlights the fractious nature of water politics in California, said Barbara O'Connor, a communications professor at California State University, Sacramento, and director of its Institute for the Study of Politics and Media.

 

She said the ads are not aimed at the general public, but at opinion leaders.

 

"There are huge economic interests at stake here, and the public is almost peripheral to that," she said.

Where the two sides stand depends entirely on where they get their water.

 

Both depend on Delta water. But Cortopassi diverts directly from the estuary.

 

Westlands farmers get Delta water under contract with the federal government, which operates one of two major pump and canal systems. The state operates the other.

 

Both systems have been blamed for killing millions of fish, and are under court order to limit diversions.

 

Cortopassi has much in common with Westlands farmers. He even buys tomatoes from some Westlands growers for his processing business.

But that affinity may be eroding amid the water crisis.

 

To oversimplify the conflict, the more water Westlands farmers take from the Delta, the more it harms Cortopassi.

"It is farmer against farmer," Cortopassi said. "But I believe we can get together."

 

He fears a canal will lead to more water diversions, which could make the Delta too salty to directly irrigate crops and support wildlife.

Both sides want to capture more water in wet years. This water, often in the form of floods, now flows out to sea as a "surplus" that cannot be harnessed for farms or cities.

 

Cortopassi wants more groundwater storage systems and reservoirs to capture that surplus. Westlands farmers want a canal to capture the surplus and also to separate routine flows from the Delta's environmental problems.

 

"We all believe it's possible to reach a compromise," Woolf said of her committee. "What it takes to get there, I don't know."#

http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/1209154.html