CVP-Wide Water Allocation at 91 Percent

On Monday, the Bureau of Reclamation announced its revised water allocation numbers for the year.  If you listen to certain water users and members of Congress, you’d think that the recent rains have allowed the CVP to increase its water allocations to 65 percent.  But actually, system-wide, the Bureau of Reclamation projects that it will deliver over 91 percent of its generous CVP water contracts. 

Stories about the CVP tend to overlook the vast majority of the project’s deliveries.  For example, the Bureau has projected that the following categories of contractors will receive 100 percent of their contract amounts.  (The contract amount for each is included in parentheses).

• San Joaquin River exchange contractors (800,000 acre-feet)
• Sacramento River settlement contractors (2,113,209 acre-feet)
• Friant Class 1 (800,000 acre-feet)
• Contra Costa Water District (195,000 acre-feet)
• North of Delta agricultural water service (434,132 acre-feet)
• North of Delta municipal and industrial (12,592 acre-feet)
• American River municipal and industrial (313,750 acre-feet)
• East Side water rights (600,000 acre-feet)
• East Side water service (155,000 acre-feet)
• Buchanan Unit (24,000 acre-feet)
• Hidden Unit (24,000 acre-feet)
• Wildlife refuges level 2 (442,251 acre-feet)

Two categories of contractors are receiving a lower allocation this year – a 65 percent projected allocation for the South of Delta agricultural water service contractors (1,965,000 acre-feet) and a 90% allocation for South of Delta municipal and industrial users (139,571 acre-feet).  All told, the CVP anticipates delivering more than 7,370,000 acre-feet this year – or just over 91 percent of full contracts for all of these water users. 

To be fair, I have excluded a few categories above.  I did not include “level 4” deliveries for wildlife refuges, which do not come from CVP yield – and which are far below the deliveries required by federal law.  I didn’t include a category for surplus “Section 215” CVP water.  These deliveries are unpredictable and are in addition to contractual deliveries.  This surplus water may significantly increase total CVP deliveries this year.  I included the reliable Friant Class 1 contractors above, but not the lower priority Friant Class 2 deliveries, which fluctuate wildly from wet year to dry – and which will fall short of “full” deliveries even this year.  This is the area in which the Bureau most wrote contracts that most dramatically exceed reasonably expected deliveries.  These projected class 2 deliveries push anticipated total CVP deliveries to just over 7,660,000 acre-feet this year. 

The small group of agricultural contractors who are projected to receive 65 percent have long known that their contracts are junior to their neighbors.  These were the last CVP contractors to join the system.  As a result, the “South of Delta Water Service” contractors receive the lowest priority in receiving water. 

Water projects are notorious for over-promising deliveries – and in this area, the CVP has long been a leader.  But a 91 percent allocation of overly-optimistic contracts hardly sounds like a crisis.  It sounds like what it is – a good year.   

Westlands and the other junior users simply don’t like the CVP’s priorities and California’s water rights system.  There’s a clear solution here.  Westlands farmers have a long history of purchasing water from their water rich neighbors.  Such voluntary transfers encourage senior water rights holders to conserve and help the junior users to meet their needs.  State and federal agencies facilitated 600,000 acre-feet of transfers in 2009.  Last year, the Bureau facilitated more than half a million acre-feet of transfers.  (See page 8 in this document.) And the Bureau could facilitate a similar quantity of transfers this year.  

There is one catch.  Water purchased on the market comes at full price, while CVP deliveries for the junior water service contractors come with enormous taxpayer subsidies.  It’s not a surprise that these junior users fight to maximize their subsidized deliveries.  But with 91 percent deliveries, surplus water available and a strong transfers market, legislation to block science-based protections for the Bay-Delta and its fisheries looks like a lousy solution in search of a problem.

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