West's Hot Issues

NWU Radio Script

5-7-01

There's no shortage of major Western water issues. Last week we focused on the Klamath Basin in Oregon, where more than 2,000 farmers have been told they will receive no irrigation water this year as water from their project must be used to "protect" fish that fall under the protection of the Endangered Species Act.

This week we'll take a look at three other areas of the West with equally hot and heavy issues that were discussed at the recent Family Farm Alliance Annual meeting.

Jason Peltier, who has just recently left the Central Valley Project Water Association in California, spoke about the Trinity River case and former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. "In one of his final acts of destruction," Peltier said, Babbitt signed a record of decision restoring 800,000 acre-feet of wet year flow and 600,000 acre-feet of flow in other years to the Trinity in Northern California.

That water has long been used in the Central Valley Project and its loss would worsen water supply reductions caused by endangered species and other environmental mandates.

Fortunately, since the annual meeting, a federal judge in Fresno has announced he will issue an injunction limiting Trinity River restoration flow to 29,000 acre-feet because of the current power crisis and other legal issues.

John Porter from the Dolores Water Conservancy District in Colorado detailed the Dolores River issue, essentially a result of there not being enough water to satisfy demands of competing stakeholders served from McPhee Reservoir, a multi-purpose project.

"It has all the classic components of a good water fight," he said. It has, he said, made good progress. "We've come a long way in managing our supply and managing spills. We do have a willingness to work together, even though we threaten to sue each other."

Brent Graham, who chairs the San Joaquin Valley Ag Committee, detailed a Kern County California takings case that involves water rights taken from the State Water Project and its contractors and users by the federal government without compensation.

"I impaired the operation of the State Water Project in the 1990s," he said. 

The water was used to benefit two listed species, Chinook salmon and the Delta smelt, for three years. The ESA is not being challenged but just compensation is being sought.

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