Water bank deals drag on too long, threaten transfer system's viability

By Wes Sander
Capital Press

Members of California's agriculture board say streamlining the system for approving water transfers will require public agencies and the general public to adopt a new mindset.

The California State Board of Food and Agriculture has devoted much of its time this year to grilling state officials on why red tape seemed to stifle the state's ability to promptly approve water transfers through its 2009 drought water bank.

Board President Al Montna said he has yet to find a satisfactory answer on why the process proved so unreliable and cumbersome.

In 2008, the state established its second drought water bank, a clearinghouse for those selling water, usually north-state users, and those buying water, largely San Joaquin Valley farmers.

The state's first water bank was in the early '90s. Both versions worked reasonably well, although last year's showed problems, said Montna, a Northern California rice farmer. Sale contracts often emerged from approval processes in altered forms, causing delays that created frustrations, he said.

The problems worsened this year, Montna said. Buyer-seller contracts "got into the bowels of the agencies, and we couldn't get the documentation out," he said. "It drug out way into spring, and I don't think that was necessary."

The state permits a transfer after examining its environmental and economic impacts and making sure the water in question is eligible to be transferred.

Officials have cited heavier species protections on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, narrowing the seasonal window during which water can be traded from north to south. In the past year, federal rules and court decisions have further restricted when and how much water can be pumped through the estuary.

Combine that with stringent environmental- and economic-impact reviews, and the approval for each transfer can take months, with no reliable timeline, said water bank Coordinator Teresa Geimer.

"It's very difficult," Geimer said. "It's very risky for the buyers."

Montna acknowledges the regulatory burden, but says those hurdles could be overcome if agencies saw things with the urgency that farmers do. The challenge, he said, lies in "getting folks to have the urgency to get the product out the door, so users can get the benefit of it."

It's in the fall that growers need reliable estimates of their access to water for the coming year, Montna said. Growers are now approaching banks for loans, and lenders often ask for a farmer's water plan before anything else.

Ag board member Adan Ortega has spent several weeks examining water management as chair of the water subcommittee. At an October meeting in Fresno, he introduced a resolution urging state and federal agencies to communicate more effectively, both among themselves and with farmers.

But to fix California's system in the long term, society must change how it views the resource, Ortega said. That means shaping policy with the view that water scarcity is a permanent reality.

"We need to be looking at these broader dynamics, because otherwise we'll be like hamsters running in a wheel," he said. "This whole discussion about loans and delivery schedules is going to get old."