From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]

Sent: Monday, January 16, 2006 10:13 AM

To: [email-masked]

Cc:

Subject: washingtonpost: Tide of Sentiment Shifts in Western Water War

Dah. . . what do farmers do with the
water?  They grow the crops and animals that feed not only American's but
the world.  Not one word in this article about how important food
production is in this country for National Defense and the well being of it's
people.  Crops not only need water, but they need sunshine and open
space - the same sunshine and space that people are moving west to
enjoy.  Then add in the environmental groups that want the Wildland's
Project to succeed and the Indian tribes with their Tribal Trust and you've got
technicolor confrontations.  ~  Barb

Tide of Sentiment Shifts in Water War

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/14/AR2006011400820.html

Tide of
Sentiment Shifts in Water War

Traditional Favoritism to
Agricultural Interests Is Challenged as Demand Increases

By Juliet Eilperin

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, January 15, 2006; Page A03

BIG SKY, Mont. -- A hundred years after the city of Los
Angeles and San Fernando Valley farmers battled neighboring Owens Valley for
control over water from the Owens River, there's a new kind of water war in the
West.

Montana's Poorman Creek, a spawning
ground for trout, was drained by ranch irrigation. It has since been restored.
(By Mike Roberts)

From Montana to Arizona to California and beyond, alliances
of environmentalists, fishermen and city dwellers are challenging the West's
traditional water barons -- farmers and ranchers -- who have long controlled
the increasingly scarce resource.

The West largely depends on its rivers and snowmelt for its
water supply, and a combination of recent urban growth and prolonged drought
has resulted in demand greatly outstripping supply. Under longstanding federal
and state policies reinforced by farmers' historic political clout, agriculture
has laid claim to about 80 percent of those scant resources -- at rock-bottom
prices -- on the grounds that water is critical to the survival of crops and
livestock.

Now, however, other users are arguing that this system is unfair,
uneconomical and a threat to many delicate ecosystems, and not only in the
West.

Farmers typically pay less for their water than nearby
cities: In California's Central Valley, they get their water from the federal
government at below-market prices, a subsidy that amounts to $416 million a
year, according to the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization.
And unlike cities getting the same water, farmers are paying back the cost of
the region's giant irrigation system without interest.

In areas such as the Pacific Northwest's Klamath River
Basin, commercial fishermen and Indian tribes say agriculture is depriving them
of the water they need to maintain the local salmon fishery and a way of life.

Near Yuma, Ariz., alfalfa and cotton farmers in the
Wellton-Mohawk Irrigation and Drainage District are concerned that the rapid
growth of Phoenix will threaten their water rights. "There's fear,"
said Robert Glennon, a University of Arizona professor of law and public
policy. Steve Owens of the state's Department of Environmental Quality sees
water conservation as "probably the number-one environmental issue"
facing the state.

Such battles have spread nationwide as groups from Florida
to Nebraska squabble over farmers' voracious water use, but nowhere are the
stakes higher than in the fast-growing West. Rivers and streams there occupy
just 5 percent of the land but sustain nearly half of the fish and wildlife
species.

In the past, when the competition for water was less
intense, Western cities often cut deals with agricultural interests to build
massive projects to supply both. But rapidly growing municipal needs -- the
West is now home to nine of the 10 fastest-growing metropolitan areas -- mean urban
areas now are in direct competition with ranchers and farmers.

"To me, this is deja vu all over again," said John
Vincent, a commissioner in Montana's Gallatin County who served for 16 years in
the state legislature and two years as Bozeman's mayor. "It's a new phase
of the water wars. The players have changed."

In some cases, such as Big Sky's Poorman Creek, compromise
turned out to be easy. Montana rancher Eddie Grantier, who raises 100 head of
cattle on the ranch his parents founded, conceded that the ranch had wasted
water for years, ultimately drying up a tributary of the Blackfoot River used
by vulnerable bull and cutthroat trout swimming upstream to spawn.

After officials from the advocacy group Trout Unlimited
raised $110,000 to install a sprinkler irrigation system, pump and pipeline,
and a screen to keep fish from getting trapped in the intake pipes, Grantier
threw in $20,000 worth of his own work to conserve water.

Since the project was completed last year, the creek has
been carrying nearly 7,000 gallons more per minute, a flow equivalent to
Washington's Rock Creek. Grantier, whose ranch lies just west of the
Continental Divide, said the new irrigation system allows him to grow twice as
much hay and has not interfered with cattle raising.

"It didn't make a problem for me," he said.

Laura Ziemer, who directs Trout Unlimited's Montana Water
Project, said this success shows that even modest changes in water use can make
a major difference for wildlife.

"Every river has been drained within an inch of its
life," said Ziemer, adding that every native trout species in the West is
either on the federal endangered species list or being considered for it.
"We're going to make a small difference in key pieces of stream. . . . We
had to, in essence, create a water right for fish."

But for every feel-good story such as Poorman Creek, there's
at least one Klamath Basin. The 250-mile-long Klamath River flows from Oregon's
Upper Klamath Lake to the Pacific on the northern California coast.

The federal Bureau of Reclamation, which has the job of
allocating Klamath water among competing interests, has been at the center of a
seesaw battle over the irrigation needs of agriculture and the preservation of
fish species prized by sportsmen and local tribes.

When the government deprived Klamath farmers of about
three-fourths of their regular water allotment in 2001 to help sustain two
species of endangered sucker fish -- lake-dwellers that migrate upstream in the
Klamath -- farmers howled. The next year, the government allocated more water
for farmers, and tens of thousands of salmon and steelhead trout died from
disease and heat strain.

Farmers' Political Clout

Agriculture has long been a potent political force in local,
state and federal politics, both because farmers remain an American icon and
because they are well organized and have close contacts with lawmakers.

Not surprisingly, Congress and the executive branch have
historically sided with farmers. States usually doled out water rights, and the
federal government funded massive engineering projects to make irrigation
affordable.

Jeff McCracken, spokesman for the Bureau of Reclamation's
Mid-Pacific bureau, said his agency has no choice but to give farmers in
California's Central Valley a better deal on water than their urban neighbors.
"The law does not allow us to charge interest" to farmers, he said.

Like Congress, the Bush administration has championed
agriculture's water claims.

"The administration is not paying attention to the laws
of biodiversity," said Glen Spain, the Northwest regional director for the
Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations. "It's paying far
more attention to the laws of political expediency."

But Rep. Wally Herger (R-Calif.), a third-generation farmer
with a farm 35 miles north of Sacramento, said farmers already have made
concessions.

"These farmers here have just about compromised to
death up in the Klamath Basin," Herger said, noting farmers have put in
screens to protect migrating fish and approved the removal of Chiloquin Dam to
increase water flow. "One thing you find out in a hurry is that
environmentalists do not compromise."

Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.), who represents fishermen and
Indian tribes in the northern part of the state, has been pushing
unsuccessfully to provide $200 million over the next 12 years for conservation
projects, including lining and piping irrigation ditches to reduce water loss
and recycling irrigation water.

"I'm not saying you've got to stop farming and let the
water go wherever it wants to go." But, said Thompson, "you don't
want to kill off all the wildlife to promote farming."

Federal authorities have poured tens of millions into the
region for habitat conservation, but in October the San Francisco-based U.S.
Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit rejected the government's new 10-year
regional water plan as environmentally inadequate.

Farming's water demands are becoming more contentious in the
Southeast and the Great Plains, as well. While the number of irrigated acres
has recently dipped nationwide, according to Agriculture Department statistics,
Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska and the Corn Belt have all increased
irrigation since 1982.

A Question of Balance

Some environmentalists are concerned that even where water
is relatively plentiful, as in the Southeast, irrigation projects can harm
valuable habitat. Two advocacy groups are fighting proposed U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers irrigation projects along Arkansas's White River, arguing that they
are economically unjustified and could drain swamps that could be sheltering
the rare ivory-billed woodpecker.

In Tampa, the group Earthjustice is trying to block tomato
farmers from using so much ground water, citing evidence that salt water is
intruding inland at a rate of five inches a day.

In Nebraska, federal and state authorities are struggling to
balance corn and soybean growers' use of water from the Platte River against
the needs of about 220 endangered wild whooping cranes, who depend on the river
on their twice-yearly migrations.

But farmers and ranchers say critics fail to appreciate how
they help society. Jim Beecher in California's Central Valley, who receives
subsidized water to irrigate his 8,500 acres of cotton, lettuce, tomatoes and
vineyards, said cheap water helps protect the country's economic security.

"Ultimately, Americans need to ask themselves if they
want to be dependent on feeding themselves, or be dependent on the importation
of food the way we're dependent on the importation of fuel," Beecher said.

Researcher Don Pohlman contributed to this report.

This information and much more that
you need to know about the ESA, the Klamath Basin, and private property rights
can be found at The Klamath Bucket Brigade's website - http://www.klamathbucketbrigade.org/ -- please visit today.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted

material  herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who
have

expressed  a  prior interest in receiving this information for
non-profit

research and  educational purposes only. For more information go to:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

----------------

Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.

Checked by McAfee VirusScan

Installed September 7, 2003 - Updated Jan 11, 2006

_______________________________________________

This list is for discussion of property rights issues and related subjects. It
is provided by Citizens Alliance for Property Rights, but message content is
the responsibility of the sender, not CAPR. Do not infer that posters are
officials, members, or even friends of CAPR. This is an unmoderated list.
Anything you send to the list will go immediately to all subscribers,
unless  the filters think it may be spam. Please observe the common sense
rules of civil discussion.

Subscribe to our main list (Capr-announce) to receive meeting announcements,
etc. from CAPR. Those items will not be sent to this list.

Capr-discussion mailing list

[email-masked]

http://mailman.celestial.com/mailman/listinfo/capr-discussion