U.S. Water News Online
FRESNO, Calif. -- Under court pressure to come up with a plan to drain brackish water from the 605,000-acre Westlands Water District, the federal government filed documents recently saying it could have a solution -- in four more years.
The Bureau of Reclamation's plan, filed in U.S. District Court in Fresno, says the agency would begin an evaluation of "viable drainage alternatives" with "a record of decision by 2005." In September, U.S. District Judge Oliver W. Wanger ended 15 years of legal wrangling by ordering the bureau to come up with a plan to dispose of the tainted water.
Forty years ago, the idea was to build an 87-mile drain to remove the tainted water from Westlands, and that alternative remains a part of the bureau's plan filed with the court. In addition to the drain, which was considered the least expensive alternative when it was first proposed, a second alternative would be a series of evaporation ponds.
Early 1990s estimates for the cost of the drain were $810 million, according to bureau estimates. The evaporation ponds were estimated to cost $1.5 billion, including wildlife-protection measures.
When the San Luis water project first brought water to the Valley's west side in the 1960s, experts knew the water would pass through the topsoil and carry salt and minerals with it, settling on a shallow clay layer below the surface. They also knew that when the dirty water reached high into the root zones, the land would be worthless for farming.
So, for several years in the late 1970s and 1980s, Westlands sent drainage from 42,000 acres into the San Luis Drain. The water went to western Merced County at Kesterson Reservoir in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The Kesterson project turned into a wildlife disaster, killing and disfiguring thousands of birds, and was discontinued in the mid-1980s. After the closure, legal action flowed from the west side.
Environmentalists and Northern Californians have continuously opposed completing the drain or even reopening it for Westlands. They don't want the drain water in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta or San Francisco Bay.
Even after Kesterson was closed, Westlands -- which contracts for 1.15 million acre-feet of water annually from the federal Central Valley Project -- has continued to deliver water for farmers in the problem areas.
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