July 10,2015
Late spring rainfall in the upper San Joaquin River watershed has added about 70,000 acre feet of water to the reservoirs says Dan Vink, a board member with Friant Water Users representing the Lower Tule ID. The extra supply was not expected this time of the year.
“We had hoped this extra water could go to our irrigation districts” says Vink as a result of what they thought was an agreement with the San Joaquin Exchange Contractors, based in Los Banos.
“Our original agreement with them over a month ago was we would get 50,000 to 60,000 af of water to run down the Friant Kern Canal and if more supply became available we would get it.”
“We sent them a check for $10 million“ to buy water from Westlands ID in lieu of taking it from the porous San Joaquin River.
But Vink says the Exchange contractors “saw the deal differently” and will demand release of the extra water down the San Joaquin River starting Wednesday. They see this as an exercise of their historic water right.
“We tried to come to a new agreement with them” over the extra water but “that is all unraveling” admits Vink, who says there are, nevertheless, no plans for litigation.
Releasing water down the sandy river bed means only about 70% of what is released will be delivered with the rest – sinking in.
High sierra precipitation due to the active monsoon season this year also bumped up the late season supply by 2X on the Kings River -benefiting downstream farmers.
But farmers along the Friant Kern,apparently will get no windfall from the late season storms but will have to make due on what amounts to about a 5% allocation.
“Our farmers could have really used a little more.” Friant irrigates about a million acres from Fresno to Kern County,including a score of Tulare County water districts.
Pictured” Summer storm in the Sierra closed Tioga Pass briefly this week.
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