The Trump administration is urging a federal court to reject a multimillion-dollar claim over water rights from California farmers, in the latest round of a politically sensitive and long-running lawsuit.
At issue is a decades-long case from major farmers claiming that the Bureau of Reclamation has failed to build a drainage system in the San Joaquin Valley’s Westlands Water District.
The Interior Department on Friday awarded the nation’s largest farm water district a permanent entitlement to annual irrigation deliveries that amount to roughly twice as much water as the nearly 4 million residents of Los Angeles use in a year.
Gaining a permanent contract for so much cheap Central Valley Project water represents a major milestone for Westlands Water District, which supplies some of the state’s wealthiest growers and has long-standing ties to Interior Secretary David Bernhardt.
Despite President Donald Trump’s highly publicized signing of a memo last week directing more water to San Joaquin Valley farmers, the Bureau of Reclamation’s initial allocations announced Tuesday more closely reflected the below-normal Sierra snowpack and scant winter rain.
Farmers in the Friant Division will receive 20% of their Central Valley Project contract allocation while South-of-Delta growers will get 15%, Reclamation officials said.
The state Department of Water Resources reports that as of Monday, the average snow water content in the Sierra was 41% of the April 1 average. Northern Sierra precipitation is about 51% of the seasonal average.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, in a preemptive strike against President Donald Trump, said Wednesday he plans to sue Trump’s administration to block a controversial plan to increase water deliveries to the San Joaquin Valley.
Newsom’s office said he “will file legal action in the coming days … to protect highly imperiled fish species close to extinction.”
The announcement came just minutes before Trump appeared in Bakersfield to announce he’s finalized an order removing regulatory roadblocks and enabling the giant Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta pumps to deliver additional water to the southern half of the state.
California’s perpetual, uber-complex conflict over water progresses much like the tectonic plates that grind against one another beneath its surface.
Periodically, as subterranean friction increases, there’s a sudden movement that we call an earthquake — sometimes imperceptibly small, but occasionally large enough to disrupt and endanger life at the surface.
Westlands Water District, a sprawling San Joaquin Valley farm district with ties to the Trump administration, is poised to get a permanent entitlement to a massive quantity of cheap federal irrigation supplies.
Westlands is the first in line to permanently lock in its contract for Central Valley Project deliveries under a 2016 law. Other valley farm districts are expected to follow, but as the project’s biggest customer, Westlands arguably has the most to gain.
The deal would entitle Westlands to annual deliveries that are roughly double what the entire city of Los Angeles uses in a year.
For years, the Interior Department resisted proposals to raise the height of its towering Shasta Dam in Northern California. The department’s own scientists and researchers concluded that doing so would endanger rare plants and animals in the area, as well as the bald eagle, and devastate the West Coast’s salmon industry downstream.
