Initial 5% Water Allocation Stings

Initial 5% Water Allocation Stings

Patrick Cavanaugh
Patrick Cavanaugh
An initial 5% water allocation for Central Valley Project growers on the Westside, especially the Westlands Water District was announced this week. Many farmers on the Westside, in the Westlands Water District, grow treenut crops. With little rain and snow this season, the growers didn't expect a big allocation, but that 5% really stung.

Jose Gutierrez is Chief Operating Officer for Westlands Water District. He said, if available, Westlands will be buying supplemental water for growers.

“We not only manage our CVP allocation for our water users, but Westlands is also active on procuring what we call supplemental water. We buy water in the open market from willing sellers, North of Delta and South of Delta. And we purchased that and allocated to our water users,” said Gutierrez. “So, every year we're faced with the review and approval requirements of state and federal agencies.”

“We're hoping that we will continue to cooperate with our federal and state agencies and hopefully they will help improve and streamline the process for obtaining those approvals. So we can convey that water procured North of Delta and conveyed South Delta and allocated to our land donors and water users. So, it's not just the allocated CVP water,” noted Gut

Gutierrez said, it'll be tricky this year because there's overall less water to purchase on the open market.

“We want to make sure that we get that cooperation from our state and federal agencies to help streamline that process, in order to make transfers of that supplemental water, more efficient,” he said.

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