Way Cleared for Farmers’ Suit Over U.S. Water Policy

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal appeals court cleared the way today for a court trial of claims by San Joaquin County farmers that the federal government has been diverting too much water to farmers in the southern end of the valley.

The ruling is expected to heat up the long-simmering battle over which farmers--north or south--have first rights to water from the nation’s largest water reclamation project, the Central Valley Project.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Department of Interior and Bureau of Reclamation waived the government’s “sovereign immunity” rights and were open to a suit by South Delta Water Agency farmers.

Attorney David Whitridge said the federal government has diverted far too much water south to Fresno, Merced and Kings county agriculture in violation of the historic water rights of farmers around Stockton who depend on San Joaquin and Stanislaus river water.

The water quantity and flow are far too low to allow farmers on 120,000 acres served by the water agency to properly irrigate their land, Whitridge said.

“The problem has been extremely serious this year,” he said.

The affected San Joaquin farmers raise chiefly tomatoes, alfalfa, corn, walnuts, asparagus and sugar beets, which require large amounts of water, he said.

Water pumped from the north through the Delta-Mendota Canal and stored in Friant Dam north of Fresno is used by farmers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley for irrigation of largely cotton crops, according to Whitridge.

The Central Valley Project was created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935 to help California finance the construction of the water diversion project. The system of channels and dams was designed to take the high level of rain runoff from the mountains in the northern end of the valley and ship it to the south which had more usable land but not enough water.

Whitridge argues that the federal government has ignored state law and taken water rightfully belonging to farmers in the north for distribution to federal water contract customers in the south.