Water Deal Is Reached on San Joaquin Riverbed

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Farmers and conservationists have reached a compromise in California's Central Valley, putting an end to a decades old battle over water and salmon. As Sasha Khokha of member station KQED reports, the agreement will lead to one of the most ambitious river restoration projects in the nation.

SASHA KHOKHA: The San Joaquin River starts high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains near Yosemite National Park. It flows down the mountain until it runs into the massive Friant Dam in the foothills above Fresno.

(Soundbite of flowing water)

KHOKHA: There water is channeled into irrigation canals stretching for miles across the thirsty Central Valley. They nourish more than a million acres of the nation's most productive farmland. But all that diverted water means that for a 60-mile stretch in the valley, the river runs dry. And that has killed off a once thriving salmon population.

Local legend says before the Friant Dam, salmon ran so thick in this river the noise kept people awake at night. Back in the 1980s, environmentalists sued, and in 2004 a federal judge agreed that the dam violated state law by failing to release enough water to maintain a fish population. But the question has always been how much water, and that's what farmers and environmentalists finally worked out in an agreement announced Wednesday.

Mr. HAL CANDEE (Natural Resources Defense Council): We'll have fish again. We'll have the magnificent southernmost Chinook salmon population on the west coast of North America.

KHOKHA: Hal Candee is a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Mr. CANDEE: This is a vision that has been very, very important to the environmental and fishing communities. We have all hoped that this day would come.

KHOKHA: But California farmers also had to be sure a river restoration plan included enough water to keep them in business. Cole Upton stands next to a canal that sends water from Friant Dam to lush rows of cotton plants. He has represented farmers in the negotiations over the San Joaquin River. It's been a bitter fight for the past 18 years. Many growers felt elite San Francisco environmentalists were threatening their livelihood by prioritizing salmon over farms.

Mr. COLE UPTON (Representative, San Joaquin River Area Farmers): So that's why we fought it so hard. So if you don't have enough water, then you're either going to grow crops that don't take a lot of water, or you're going to lay the land fallow.

KHOKHA: Pressure from Senator Dianne Feinstein and Central Valley politicians finally brought farmers and environmentalists together to come up with a solution that would guarantee enough water for irrigation and for the river. Toward the end of the negotiations, the bitterness gave way to compromise. The farmers brought sweet corn to the environmental lawyers and they learned to crack jokes with each other.

Mr. UPTON: We had pretty much insulted each other every way possible in that 18 years, so we were over that. So now we may as well see if there's some way we could work this thing out.

(Soundbite of running water)

KHOKHA: Working this thing out has meant about 15 percent of the water that went to the farms will flow back into the river by 2009. Three years later, salmon will be reintroduced. That project could cost as much as $800 million. Farmers who use the San Joaquin River water will share the cost with the federal and state government.

For NPR News, I'm Sasha Khokha in Fresno.

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