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The Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District has plans to take some of the third-party impact funding received from this year's sale of surface water to Metropolitan Water District, to fund a study of whether land fallowing affects the local economy. Glenn-Colusa will sell 60,000 acre-feet of surface water this year and fallow rice land. Western Canal Water District and Richvale Irrigation District will sell a total of an additional 37,000 acre-feet. Metropolitan Water District, which serves 18 million customers in Southern California, also decided to go ahead with a deal to buy 50,000 acre-feet from a combination of Sacramento River contractors south of Butte and Glenn counties, including Reclamation District 108, Sutter-Mutual Water Co., Natomas Water Co., River Garden Farms, Meridian Water Co., Pelger Mutual Water Co. and Pleasant Grove-Verona Mutual Water Co. That deal should be sealed as soon as a few details are worked out, a Metropolitan spokesperson said. In addition to $100 an acre-foot for local water transfers, Metropolitan set aside $5 an acre-foot of water for "third party mitigation." This idea has caused some controversy because it isn't clear who is affected when land is taken out of production. When the local deals were put together, their environmental impact reports stated that there would not be significant third party impacts. However, leaders of Butte and Glenn County farm bureaus have argued that there are third party impacts such as aerial applicators, fertilizer companies etc. who won't get income if less land is farmed. Van Tenney, manager at Glenn-Colusa, said he believes crop idling can be a financial tool for farmers, some of who have not been making healthy profits in times of low commodity prices. He said fallowing means farmers can take a year off to improve their soil, improving yields in the future. "I'm convinced the fallowing programs we're entering into have an overall benefit," Tenney said. Tenney said his district is not yet sure who will conduct a study of third-party impacts, but the board of directors should get the process started in the next few months. He said the goal is to find out where the threshold is where land fallowing and water sales help the agricultural community and at what point they harm it. This way the district can better gauge transfers it may do in the future. Glenn County Farm Bureau president Larry Domenighini has asked many questions about third-party impacts and water transfers. "I look forward to seeing how the study is conducted and the results they get," Domenighini said. "I think it will go a long way toward answering questions we have." Some in the community feel that a $5 an acre-foot third-party impact payment by Metropolitan is inadequate and that the effects of land fallowing on the economy is greater. However, farmers who have made the deal say in any given year land could be fallowed for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with water transfers. Western Canal and Richvale Irrigation District plan to turn the third-party impact funds from their water sales over to Butte County. It's unclear at this time whether the county will go ahead and take the money for a study similar to that planned by Glenn-Colusa. Butte County is also getting closer to receiving $55,000 in third-party impact fund from a 2001 water transfer by Western and Richvale where water was transferred to the state dry year water account. The legal wording for that money, approved by Department of Water Resources director Tom Hannigan, called for the county to "identify and mitigate all third-party impacts." Vickie Newlin, of the county Water and Resource Conservation department, said that language could have put the county in a liability situation. Since then, DWR and the county have been going back and forth on contract revisions to find a way that the county could use that money to study the effects of that 2001 water transfer. |
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