Assembly bill could impact farms By BRIANNA LUSK, Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 8, 2008 10:27 PM PDT
With a statewide drought ongoing and predicted to get worse, a proposed Assembly bill is stirring up the Imperial Irrigation District’s water concerns.
Assembly Bill 2175, proposed by Assemblymen John Laira, D-Santa Cruz, and Mike Feuer, D-Los Angeles, aims for water conservation by urban areas.
But the bill also would cut 500,000 acre-feet of water from agricultural use in the state by the end of 2009.
“This is another in a series of wasted pieces of legislation,” said Brad Luckey, governmental and regulatory affairs manager for IID. “This is a one-sided attempt to take water from agriculture.”
Luckey said the district has already had talks with the authors of the bill about the proposal, which has left the Assembly and is now on the Senate floor.
The statewide drought declared by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been compounded by ongoing wildfires in Northern California.
Central Valley farmers have already seen water rationing in place and IID area farmers are already implementing conservation efforts stemming from the existing water transfer agreement.
As the California Farm Bureau’s director of water resources, Danny Merkley said the organization has been working with the Assembly members to promote increased efficiency without a numerical target.
The bill proposes urban water use to be reduced by at least 5 percent per capita by 2012 and increasing to meet a 20 percent reduction in use by 2020.
For agriculture, the legislation would require the Department of Water Resources to establish a target of reduced water usage.
That target has amounted to 500,000 acre-feet to be conserved by 2015.
“Over the last 30 years agriculture water use has remained virtually stagnant,” Merkley said. “Production has increased about 89 percent.”
Merkley noted that 500,000 acre-feet a year is a significant amount to be conserved throughout the state.
Sprawling urban areas are increasingly looking to the agriculture industry to provide more water, said IID General Manager Brian Brady.
“We are far outnumbered by urban districts and they’re running out of options,” he said.
Brady said the district is already part of the largest agriculture-to-urban water transfer in history with the Quantification Settle-ment Agreement, a 75-year water pact designed to prevent future water wars.
“This would be inequitable,” Brady said of the proposed legislation.
Luckey said with IID implementing conservation measures to live within the guidelines of the QSA, to add additional measures would be too much for the local industry.
“Why would they pass legislation that would jeopardize that agreement?” Luckey said. “What the Legislature forgets is that means crops that are not planted, job losses, a decrease in food production.”
The California Farm Bureau has already opposed the bill as it is written, and Merkley said a coalition continues to work to amend the bill to include efficiency without a set number of acre-feet.
“We’re helping to educate them,” Merkley said. “There’s a lack of understanding on how things affect agriculture.”
" Should Gray Davis be eleced as Governor again? Maybe he can do a better job than Arnie if things are going that badly. It doesn't matter who the Governor is, it's your state assembly and senate members who are incompetent. I never thought that term limits would have caused such a legislative fiasco that it has. It seems that the professional politician needs to be resurrected to get things back on tract despite the corruption it brings into state government. "
T-CART wrote on Jul 9, 2008 4:44 AM:
" Where is Bonnie Garcia on this legislation, and why didn't the paper get a statement from her? Taking more water from the Imperial Valley for the benefit of the urban wasters is never equitable. Why doesn't Sacramento work on their bloated budget or find ways to encourage energy development? As for Arnold, nothing but disappointment from that guy. "
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leneeg wrote on Jul 9, 2008 4:56 PM: