Eight years ago, California’s Imperial Valley, a blooming desert that has access to more water than any place in the West, agreed to transfer 10 percent of its bounty to San Diego and Los Angeles and other metropolitan areas of Southern California.
It was and remains the country’s largest transfer of water from farmers to cities. This week a state appeals court rejected a request to invalidate it as unconstitutional.
The transfer left the two most important local government boards in El Centro, the Imperial County seat, at odds. The county’s Board of Supervisors went to state court to challenge the transfer because of the harm it does by depriving the Salton Sea, which gets the runoff from Imperial farms, of needed water.
As part of the agreement, Imperial farmers will plant less and use less water themselves, getting money for freeing the water up so it can be sent to the west.
In Wednesday’s ruling, a three-judge panel of California’s Third District Appellate Court turned back the county’s claim that the transfer was unconstitutional because the terms under which the state would get money to pay for environmental remediation violated another state law on how Sacramento can make appropriations.
But the court sent the environmental claims about the air pollution caused by blowing dust back to the trial court to be thoroughly aired. Jack Tezzaras, chairman of the Imperial County Board of Supervisors, told The Imperial Valley Press that he wanted to prevent the Salton Sea “from becoming a dust bowl.”
Kevin Kelley, general manager of the district, told The Los Angeles Times that he welcomed the news but that more needed to be done to ensure that the agreement was “environmentally sustainable for the Salton Sea and economically viable for Imperial County Agriculture.”