Sept. 15--The federal government and Westlands Water District have approved the settlement of a long-fought legal battle over hundreds of thousands of acres of badly drained, tainted farmland that lies within district boundaries on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley.
"The settlement has been the subject of comprehensive review by the Department of Justice, Department of the Interior and Westlands," the district said in a news release Tuesday. "After this extensive review, the parties determined the settlement to be the best path forward for the federal government and Westlands and its landowners."
Details of the deal, which must be approved by Congress, were not available. But U.S. Interior officials last week told members of California's congressional delegation that the settlement terms were similar to a 2013 draft agreement.
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Under the draft, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation would be relieved of its obligation to provide drainage to Westlands cropland. The district would permanently retire 100,000 acres of ill-drained fields and agree to a cap on water deliveries that amounts to 75% of its current contract amount.
In return, the reclamation bureau would let Westlands off the hook for the roughly $350 million the irrigation district owes federal taxpayers for construction of a portion of Central Valley Project facilities. The government would also lift limits on the size of Westlands farms eligible for subsidized water deliveries and give the district an open-ended water contract that did not require periodic renewal.
Westlands is the biggest -- and most contentious -- contractor in California's sprawling federal irrigation system. So a deal that changes the terms of its water contract and forgives its substantial debt will be heavily scrutinized.
Thanks to local geology and a high water table, the soil in a good portion of Westlands is loaded with mineral salts and selenium, a natural trace element. The salts are harmful to crops and when concentrated in field drainage, the selenium reaches levels that are toxic to wildlife.
After waterfowl in a wildlife refuge were poisoned by Westlands drain water in the 1980s, the reclamation bureau shut down the region's master drain. That led to decades of legal wrangling and ultimately a court order that the federal government was under legal obligation to provide drainage.
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In 2007, the reclamation bureau proposed a $2.7-billion project that would have permanently retired 200,000 acres of badly drained cropland and also called for treatment facilities to cleanse tainted drain water from other fields.
The high price tag doomed the proposal, spurring continued negotiations to settle the issue.
"Without the settlement, the financial liability mandated by a court-imposed obligation would jeopardize important investments in conservation, environmental restoration and water infrastructure," Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Estevan Lopez said Tuesday in a statement.
But environmentalists and others worry that changing Westlands' contract terms could give the district a firmer hold on water deliveries from the environmentally troubled Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. They also say the agreement won't end the vexing problem of tainted drainage that has long plagued the San Joaquin Valley's west side.
"Leaving this land in production will ensure perpetual taxpayer subsidy to agriculture's wealthiest 1% and continued environmental destruction of fish, wildlife, water quality and air quality from desertification of salty lands," said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla of Restore the Delta, a delta advocacy group. "The Obama administration is making a terrible mistake that will haunt us for generations to come."
bettina.boxall@latimes.com
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