Group wants chemical-filled farmland retired

The giant state and federal pumps in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta that funnel water to 25 million Californians should be shut down until certain Central Valley farmers retire hundreds of thousands of acres of chemical-laden farmland, according to a lawsuit filed today by a state water watchdog.

Irrigating agricultural land in the western San Joaquin Valley tainted with selenium, mercury, boron and other toxic substances constitutes an unreasonable use of a public resource protected by state laws and has contributed to the sharp decline of endangered fish species, said the California Water Impact Network.

"We think there is a simple solution to California's water problems - to retire all of the drainage-impaired lands in the Central Valley. A second is water conservation - agriculture uses 80 percent of the developed surface water," said Carolee Krieger, president and founder C-WIN.

The lawsuit marks the latest twist in the continuing Delta drama. The hub of the state's 1,300-square-mile water system is also at the heart of the fight between uses for food and human needs, and those of wildlife and rare plants. In recent years, failure of the ecosystem forced legal rulings that curbed water exports - a move made more complicated this year by a drought and fears of another dry winter.

In the 27-page lawsuit filed in superior court in Sacramento , C-Win, the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance and an individual, Felix Smith, lays much of the blame for the system's problem on water over-allocation. One culprit, the lawsuit said, is the State Water Resources Control Board, which issues all water permits in the state.

Also named were the state Department of Water Resources and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the two operators of the huge pumps and pipelines that send water, mainly from the north, to water users throughout California.

Although turning off the pumps would impact residential, industrial and agricultural users, plaintiffs in the case, as well as environmental and other groups contend that recent, increased pumping by the state and federal agencies through the Delta has killed millions of protected and endangered fish species, including the Delta smelt. Much of the water has gone to watering cropland laden with chemicals that filter into the San Joaquin River and back to the southern Delta.

Poor regulation decried

"California has regulated its waters like the feds have regulated Wall Street and the result has been a collapse of fisheries and aquatic ecosystems," said California Sportfishing Protection Alliance Chairman and Director Bill Jennings. "We have little alternative but to turn to the courts to prevent the extinction of our historic fisheries."

Officials at the state Department of Water Resources, the Water Control Resources Board and the Bureau of Reclamation could not be reached for comment.

A spokeswoman for the largest irrigation district in the country, located around Fresno, called the lawsuit "disappointing."

To date, about 100,000 agricultural acres have been taken out of production due to poor drainage and chemical saturation, said Sarah Woolf, of the Westlands Water District, which serves 600,000 acres and about 700 farms.

Working with state

At the same time, the agency has been working with state and federal legislators over the past 25 years to craft a deal that would fix the drainage problems with funds from the water district and landowners. Westlands estimates there are about 100,000 more acres of contaminated acres with poor drainage; Krieger put the number at closer to 1 million acres.

"We're moving forward and being aggressive about it," Woolf said. "But really it's the environmental community that's holding it up."

Last year, in an effort to curb the fish population decline, a federal judge ordered reduced Delta pumping - a move that critics like Westlands claim has not helped boost the smelt or other fish species.

"In the last year we had the biggest cutbacks in pumping in the history of the entire system," Woolf said. "Six hundred acre feet were dedicated to helping fish, and the numbers of the Delta smelt are still down."

But Krieger, of C-WIN, said the rapid die-off of the Delta smelt adds more urgency to fixing the ecosystem.

"You can't interrupt the food chain without having dire consequences," she said. "It's not just a little fish. It's the bellwether of the Delta."