Water Transfers: A Quiet Solution for California Farmers in Dry Times
Posted January 27, 2010 in Health and the Environment, Living Sustainably
600,000 acre-feet is a lot of water. It’s just about a year’s supply of water for the City of Los Angeles. You’d think that a tool that provides this much water in California during a third consecutive dry year would be attracting headlines across the state.
You’d be wrong. The quiet solution here is water transfers – a powerful tool that has been nearly overlooked in the superheated media coverage of water in the past year.
The federal government helped to facilitate 600,000 acre-feet of water transfers during 2009.. Many of these transfers were made by farmers with senior water rights and abundant supplies, selling to their water-short neighbors.
That’s a lot of water, especially during a drought. So why aren’t transfers getting more attention? And why aren’t more farmers embracing them?
One answer lies in the checkered past of California’s water wars.
When some farmers hear the phrase “water transfer”, they think of the fate of agriculture in the Owens Valley. A century ago, the City of Los Angeles secretly bought water rights in this Eastern Sierra valley and shipped it to Southern California through the Los Angeles Aqueduct. With no water left for local farmers, Owens Valley agriculture died.
The memory of Owens Valley still lingers. I know one farmer who is interested in selling some of his water. He told me, “I could conserve more water if I knew I could sell it.” Yet he is reluctant to step into the market because of pressure from his neighbors, who fear another Owens Valley.
But Owens Valley isn’t the only example of how water transfers work. The Palo Verde Irrigation District in California’s remote Southeast corner tells the other side of the story. Local farmers have signed a long-term agreement to sell some of their Colorado River water to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
The agreement provides for up to 3.6 million acre feet over the 35 year life of the agreement. These farmers have found that selling some of their water in some years can generate revenue that helps them invest in their farms and stay in production. The agreement helps to provide a bit of security in a notoriously volatile agricultural industry.
I’dd like to see more farmers follow the Palo Verde model. Last year, senior water rights holders south of the Delta received nearly a million acre-feet of water. Some of that water went on the market. For example, the Westlands Water District alone purchased 165,000 acre feet in 2009 But a more robust water market could create incentives for more conservation among senior water rights holders and more supply available on the market for others.
Environmentalists have long supported carefully-designed water transfers as a voluntary solution in dry years.
Of course, these deals must be done right – by freeing up water through conservation, switching to less water-intensive crops or fallowing. Some past deals have been revealed as nothing more than scams in which sellers propose to transfer more water from streams, not water actually conserved. Some have been bold enough to try to sell non-existent “paper water”. And, of course, transfers should not be allowed to further harm the Delta or the state’s imperiled fisheries. Like any market, appropriate regulation is needed to make a water market work well.
Done right, water transfers can benefit everyone: they offer security to the farmers who sell the water, they provide a precious water source for farmers and cities who buy it, they provide an incentive to increase investments in efficiency, and they can reduce pressure on the environment.
Water transfers work – particularly during dry years. Let’s start drawing more attention to this quiet solution.
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Comments
John A — Jan 28 2010 02:19 PM
The problem is that farmers receive water at a subsidized price much cheaper than market rate. That water is then sold to municipalities at huge profit. We subsidize farmers to grow us food not to sell off precious resources we give them.
Wes Strickland — Jan 28 2010 08:22 PM
I agree that water transfers can be a useful tool for increasing the efficient utilization of water resources. There are many barriers to transfers, though, that the federal and state governments are not acting very effectively to remove. Eg, even though DOI says in the fact sheet that 600KAF was transferred in 2009, that is incorrect, and only about 70KAF was transferred. The plan was not achieved for a number of reasons, but including: (1) restrictions on moving water through the Delta pumps prior to July 1; (2) the USBR's refusal/inability to store flows from April 1-July 1 behind Shasta Dam leading to a loss of any water conserved during that period; (3) high rice prices. If some of these problems can be fixed through increased water storage, better conveyance methods through the Delta, etc., we can create greater opportunities for water transfers and the resulting more efficient and flexible water use in California.
Philip — Jan 30 2010 06:50 PM
John A., the subsidies are far smaller than you imagine. In any event, farmers who receive subsidized water are generally in no position to transfer any, either legally or physically; they do not have enough water as it is. There are other water rights holders who have rights senior to the state and feds (but not to public trust) who are in a position to transfer water, and they do. They can do more, and as Barry points out, this can be a vital part of meeting our environmental and agricultural needs. There are some legal and physical restraints to this, but the biggest one is cultural. Farmers fear ending up with no money and no water. They also (like the rest of us) fear change, adaptation, and new ways of thinking about what they do for a living. In California, however, farmers are more innovative, and better educated than most farmers in this country. Reassurance and co-operation, not calumny and exaggeration are needed on the "environmental" side of the aisle.