By Warren Lutz,
Record Staff Writer
Saturday, March 25, 2006
FRESNO - Critics of a 14-year-old law that saves large amounts of state water for fish habitats lashed out at lawmakers about its shortcomings at a special congressional meeting Friday.
The Central Valley Project Improvement Act guarantees a certain amount of water and money annually for fish and wildlife to replace the impact of the Central Valley Project, the system of 20 dams and reservoirs that delivers water to millions of California residents and farmers. San Joaquin County gets some water from one of those dams, at New Melones Lake. The upstream dams also have cut the floods historically seen in the Delta area.
President George H.W. Bush signed the act in 1992 in part to help fisherman and anglers restore fish populations with enough reserved water to serve the equivalent of 1 million families.
Few things anger farmers more than being denied water that's been promised to fish.
"The people who authored this bill did not have the slightest clue what they were doing," testified Tom Birmingham, general manager of the Westlands Water District, which delivers water to farms in Fresno and Kings counties.
Members of the House Water and Power Subcommittee who held the panel at the Fresno fairgrounds were generally supportive of retooling the act.
Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Visalia, grilled U.S. Bureau of Reclamation regional director Kirk Rodgers on the results of $830 million in fish restoration money provided through the act.
He also accused the bureau of spending the money "off budget" and with little oversight.
Rodgers countered that the agency's budgets go through an approval process and outlined $120 million in projects paid for with restoration money.
But Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, said the report didn'tinclude many specifics. He said later he hoped to make the act "less burdensome on those who are paying the bills."
Subcommittee Chairman Rep. George Radanovich, R-Mariposa, said he had no immediate plans for a bill changing the act, but had concerns.
"This is just the first action," Radanovich said after the hearing.
One of two environmentalists who appeared on the panel, The Nature Conservancy's Campbell Ingram, said he was disappointed there was little talk about increasing fish numbers that resulted from the act.
That's been particularly true in the northern part of the Central Valley, where the federal government spent the bulk of funding, he said.
"Where we've put the money and the focus, we've done good things," Ingram said.
Reach reporter Warren Lutz at (209) 546-8295 or wlutz@recordnet.com