Water Sale to South Falls Short, But Rain Makes it All Right
Chico Enterprise Record - 4/25/03
By Heather Hacking, staff writer

Surface water transfers from the Sacramento Valley to Metropolitan Water District of Southern California are still in the works, but the largest irrigation district involved in the sale didn't have enough takers to fulfill its full contract amount.

Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District was set to provide 60,000 acre-feet, but farmers in the district only signed up to provide 41,000 acre-feet, said Van Tenney, Glenn-Colusa general manager.

"I think the voluntary program served its purpose," Tenney said. "Anybody who wanted to take part did so."

He said turnout was lower because the price of rice has risen and this made it a better economic decision for many growers to plant vs. selling water.

He said Metropolitan was fine with that because April rains have boosted the amount of water that state water contractors will receive this year. When the deals were made, state water contractors were told they would receive 45 percent of their water contracts, that number was raised to 70 percent Monday.

"We've had an April miracle with a lower case m," said Tim Quinn, the deal-maker for Metropolitan Water District.

Throughout the process Quinn has said the Southern California water wholesaler is trying to build a relationship with Northern California water users.

"He said even without the water transfers, Metropolitan "would have rolled with the punches."

"Flexibility in resource management was where we were coming from," he said.

He said the higher estimates of water deliveries from the state makes it less likely that Metropolitan will go through with a deal with Placer County Water Agency to buy an additional 20,000 acre-feet.

In February Metropolitan finalized deals to buy up to 60,000 acre-feet of water from Glenn-Colusa, 20,000 from Western Canal Water District and 17,200 from Richvale Irrigation District.

The deal will pay $100 an acre-foot and require that the land, mostly planted in rice, be fallowed. An additional $5 an acre-foot will go toward a mitigation fund, which may go toward funding water studies or economic analysis of water transfers.

Under terms worked out with the Department of Water Resources, the growers will idle their land this year if they take part.

Richvale and Western did not receive enough applications during the first round of requests to farmers. But they sent notice to those who wanted to fallow some land and asked if they wanted to transfer larger amounts of water. Enough growers did and the full water transfer amount was reached.

Ted Trimble, manager of Western Canal, said the spring rains mean some rice growers are having a difficult time getting out to work in the fields and additional acreage might be fallowed due to the weather. Some farmers don't have enough equipment to chisel and disc their land in time for planting.

Wet land is sticky and difficult to work. In 1998, Trimble said, more growers chose to use crop insurance because wet weather made it too late to plant. Many growers have contracts for growing certain varieties and can't easily switch to a type of rice that can be planted later.

As for the third-party impact funds, Western Canal and Richvale plan to offer that $5 an acre-foot to the counties. Butte County has been shying away from taking over third-party impact funds. Board of Supervisors Chairman Bob Beeler said the definition of what third-party impacts are has not been figured out. He said he's not comfortable with the county taking on responsibility for that right now.

Glenn County has said it will use the funding for ongoing groundwater monitoring and water management studies.

Glenn-Colusa plans to keep the funding for third-party impacts in a separate fund controlled by the irrigation district.

Lester Messina, of Glenn County's water agency, said the subject was discussed at a recent Glenn-Colusa growers meeting and the district plans an economic impacts study. Messina said the district will be willing to provide funding if the county requests it for a water-related project.

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