Supervisors back IID’s play to secure federal funds
EL CENTRO — The Imperial Irrigation District received a show of support Tuesday from the Imperial County Board of Supervisors in its efforts to secure at least $200 million in federal funding for remediation efforts in the Salton Sea.
The board voted 5-0 on a resolution to support IID’s request for the funding from the United States Department of Agriculture, which became potentially available through language included in the 2018 Farm Bill.
Such funding represents one of the conditions set by the IID Board of Directors in December before it would approve a full suite of agreements that would make up a drought contingency plan among the states in the Colorado River Basin.
However, the County Board of Supervisors took care to stop well short of endorsing a drought contingency plan itself.
Early in the discussion of the resolution, District 3 Supervisor Michael Kelley raised questions regarding IID’s intra-state agreement with the Metropolitan Water District that would cap IID’s contributions to water held in reserve in Lake Mead at 250,000 acre-feet.
“It appears to me that in California, the only people benefitting from our contribution to the DCP is the LA Metropolitan Water District, because if there’s a drought in the state of California, they will just take off the top of Lake Mead what we put in there,” Kelley said.
Kelley said he would like to see an independent recommendation from someone other than IID as to what is the best direction for the county to take with regard to a drought contingency plan.
The DCP would involve a complicated suite of agreements among the water authorities in the seven Colorado River Basin states designed to protect water levels at Lake Powell and Lake Mead in the face of ongoing drought.
The worst-case scenario for Arizona, California, Nevada and Mexico — which draw from Lake Mead — is a phenomenon called “dead pool,” in which the level of the lake’s surface falls below the gates that let water out. To avoid it, the agreement calls for an escalating array of cutbacks as the lake level drops.
In December, the IID’s Board of Directors voted 4-1 to approve three intra-California agreements to save the river and maintain elevation at Lake Mead contingent on, among other things, the state and federal governments fully funding Salton Sea restoration efforts.
Ultimately, Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors resolution had little to do with taking a position on a DCP, other than to support IID’s efforts to persuade USDA to allocate funding to Salton Sea remediation.
“IID considers the Salton Sea, and what happens to it, as an essential component of that (DCP) package, and a real opportunity now exists, through key provisions in the 2018 Farm Bill authored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, to secure a federal match of up to $200 million in support of the state of California’s Salton Sea Management plan.” IID Board President Erik Ortega said earlier this month.
“IID sees this not as an either/or proposition, but as an honest effort by the district to improve the sustainability of the Salton Sea and to ensure the viability of the DCP.”