Sen. Dianne Feinstein ignited a firestorm among fellow California Democrats on Thursday as word spread of her proposal to divert Northern California water to Central Valley farmers.

Feinstein wants to attach the proposal as an amendment to a fast-tracked Senate jobs bill. She is pitching the plan as a jobs measure to address the economic calamity in the Central Valley. It would increase farm water allocations from 10 percent last year to 40 percent this year and next, an amount that farmers say is the bare minimum they need.

Bay Area Democrats were livid, accusing Feinstein of concocting the plan in secret, upending fragile water negotiations that Feinstein has supported and pitting California's Central Valley against its coast. Telephone calls flew as lawmakers learned of Feinstein's plan.

"I was pretty shocked," said Rep. Mike Thompson, a St. Helena Democrat and ally of North Coast salmon fishermen who support efforts to save fish species that are declining.

Influential farmer

Feinstein has long supported California agriculture but began to weigh in on the side of farmers in the water wars after requests from Stewart Resnick, the well-connected owner of Paramount Farms, which grows citrus and nuts on 118,000 acres in Kern County.

In September, Resnick wrote Feinstein complaining that "sloppy science" by federal wildlife agencies was causing farm water shortages. A week later, Feinstein forwarded the letter to Obama administration officials, who authorized a review by the National Academy of Sciences.

"It seems to be a complete reversal of her position," Thompson said. "The entire Bay Area delegation had agreed we would do this National Academy of Sciences report to find out scientifically what should and shouldn't be done, and for her to turn that on its head and go out unilaterally with this proposal does not take into consideration the needs of all of California."

Thompson accused Feinstein of "trying to spin this as a job saver, but that ignores the jobs up north that depend on water." He compared Feinstein's plan to the Bush administration's water diversions in the Klamath River Basin in 2002 that severely damaged fisheries and were later reversed.

Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, said, "Best I can see, she's making a decision that jobs in the Bay Area and Northern California and the Peninsula south of San Francisco aren't as important as jobs in the Central Valley."

Feinstein contends that the amendment to the jobs bill would not waive the Endangered Species Act but instead follow a 2003 precedent that guaranteed water deliveries in New Mexico despite restrictions imposed to protect the silvery minnow.

Miller, a former chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said Feinstein's amendment would suspend federal environmental laws that protect fish.

Verifying the science

Feinstein made no mention Thursday of her demand for the National Academy of Sciences report, due next month, to verify the science behind fish-conservation demands.

Resnick's business has given $29,000 to Feinstein's campaigns and $246,000 more to Democratic political committees during years when she sought re-election, according to a report by California Watch, an investigative journalism nonprofit organization, that was published in The Chronicle in December.

Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Atwater (Merced County), defended Feinstein's move. "The situation in the valley is continuing to deteriorate, and we have a situation where even with more rain than usual, we could have less allocations than last year," Cardoza said. He said even with large cutbacks in water allocations to farmers, delta smelt and other fish populations have not improved.

Cardoza said recent studies show the pumps that environmentalists say pulverize fish are in fact destroying only a handful. "The pumps were shut down for six or 10 additional fish," Cardoza said. "This is the height of insanity, and it's time we quit devastating the California economy and understand what is really going on here."

In a statement Thursday, Feinstein said that recent weeks of heavy rain and Sierra snowfall have brought snowpacks to 130 percent of their normal level. At the same time, "water has been gushing past the canals and into the oceans while farms on the west side of the (Central) Valley are likely to receive a very low percentage of their water allocations for a second year because that water cannot be pumped and stored."

Political jockeying

Feinstein's action comes after months of political jockeying between Republicans and Democrats over whether the Endangered Species Act is destroying California's farming industry. Several fisheries on the coast from southern Oregon to San Luis Obispo have been shut down for three years for lack of runoff, idling commercial and recreational fishing and devastating the small businesses that depend on it.

Farmers have also seen water supplies evaporate. Before this season's heavy rains, a three-year drought forced big cuts in their water allotments, forcing 400,000 acres to lie fallow and pushing unemployment in some towns toward 40 percent.

Farmers, fishermen and environmentalists had been negotiating on a long-term remedy to the decline of California's delta estuary, one of the largest in the world and on a scale with Florida's Everglades, but even more heavily damaged by a century of water diversions.