State’s approach to water rights is two-faced and shortchanges Merced-area farmers | Opinion
Given the devastation we will soon bear under the state’s Bay Delta Water Quality Control Plan, our community and the Merced Irrigation District have had plenty of disagreements with our state’s resource management leaders over the past decade.
But in recent weeks, at MID we have been heartened to see several of California’s most influential leaders actually agree with us on the issues of “equity” and “disproportionate impacts.” And we agree with how those values are being applied to some of the most important water management decisions our state, and indeed our nation, has seen in decades.
Wade Crowfoot is the secretary of natural resources in California, which is the agency that oversees the State Water Resources Control Board. Crowfoot was recently quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying actions compromising water rights would be “a bridge too far in the near-term.” Adel Hagekhalil, general manager of Metropolitan Water District, was also recently quoted as saying a water management proposal should be implemented in a way that “does not devastate our $1.6 trillion economy, an economic engine for the entire United States.” Metropolitan Water District consists of 26 member agencies and serves 19 million people in Southern California.
MID and our community could not have said it better. That’s because they are among the exact same comments we have been making for the past decade. There’s just one small catch: these comments were made about a multi-state proposal to change the apportionment and management of Colorado River water, which tremendously benefits our neighbors in Southern California.
The Colorado River supplies water to more than 40 million people, as well as hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland as it traverses through seven states before reaching the U.S.–Mexico border. But the river has been pushed to its breaking point by chronic overuse, drought and other factors. Just weeks ago, the states of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming offered the Biden administration a plan to reapportion and reduce the use of water from the Colorado River.
California officials submitted a much different counterproposal that seemingly forces more cuts on the other states, and less cuts on Southern California.
“The six-state proposal directly and disproportionately impacts California,” said Crowfoot. J.B. Hamby, chair of California’s Colorado River Board, said about the proposals: “We need to be able to reach consensus among the seven basin states to come up with voluntary approaches where each state is comfortable with the direction.” And in a joint statement, U.S. Sens. Diane Feinstein and Alex Padilla took issue with the six states’ proposal because it “fails to recognize California’s senior legal water rights.”
Although MID agrees wholeheartedly with all these comments, they are admittedly difficult to read because what’s good for Southern California should be good for us, too. But it’s just not the case and never has been. Those of us who live and work in the San Joaquin Valley — one of the most agriculturally rich, ethnically diverse, and economically disadvantaged regions in the nation — often joke that we live in “The Other California.”
That’s because to many of us, it often feels like we are treated as second-class citizens by our politicians and the bureaucrats in Sacramento. When you see leading political voices stepping up to argue against a new Colorado River management plan for the benefit of Los Angeles — after years of us making the exact same arguments to save our own community in the San Joaquin Valley — is there any other way to feel? Is it any surprise that when it comes to the celebrity-haven, heavily populated Southern California, state leaders argue that historic water rights should be recognized and economies protected?
The fact is, we have been arguing these same principles and offering voluntary, collaborative-based alternative approaches for more than a decade as the State Water Resources Control Board has worked toward developing its Bay Delta Water Quality Control Plan. That plan is currently on the verge of being implemented and will devastate our already disadvantaged community as the state takes up to half the water supply from our locally built, locally funded and locally managed reservoir, Lake McClure.
We too have an economy to protect. We too hold some of the most senior water rights in the entire state. Similar to our neighbors in Southern California, we have taken great strides to do more with less water, and we continue to make investments in environmental stewardship.
Similar to the state’s counterproposal on the Colorado River and in the spirit of the sentiment that voluntary approaches are the most durable path to resolving California’s water issues, MID has offered a series of alternatives to help the state meet its goals in the Bay Delta. We have offered more water. We have offered more fish habitat, and predator suppression proposals. We have offered money, cooperation and immediate water management changes, all in the spirit of collaboration and avoiding years of protracted litigation. But so far this has fallen on deaf ears. Why?
The state can’t have it both ways. How can California be focused on “practical solutions that can be implemented now to protect volumes of water in storage without driving conflict and litigation” — as quoted by Hamby in relation to the Colorado River and Southern California — but completely ignore practical solutions that can be implemented immediately in the San Joaquin Valley? How can the same state officials fight the potential loss of a significant portion of Colorado River water supply, arguing senior water rights, equity and disproportionate impacts — while at the same time ignoring those same exact arguments in the San Joaquin Valley?
If the state is concerned about historic water rights and the economics of Southern California, if it is concerned about equity among water users and disproportionate impacts of forced water reductions in Southern California, it also ought to care about those issues in the San Joaquin Valley. We should not be treated as second-class citizens of “The Other California,” whose needs matter less than those of our neighbors to the south.
Mario Bandoni is president of the board of the Merced Irrigation District.
