{"id":364197,"date":"2010-02-25T14:01:24","date_gmt":"2010-02-25T19:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/waterfront\/?p=557"},"modified":"2010-02-25T14:01:24","modified_gmt":"2010-02-25T19:01:24","slug":"central-valley-project-contracts-make-no-allocation-promises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/364197","title":{"rendered":"Central Valley Project Contracts Make No Allocation Promises"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/a>\"\"<\/a>Mark Hitchcock is a Legal Fellow at EDF.<\/em><\/p>\n

As a first-year attorney, my understanding of the intricacies of California water law is limited. Still, I am always bothered by the fact that the battles over Central Valley Project<\/a>\u00a0(\u201cCVP\u201d) exports regularly allude to the idea that water users have seen their contractual rights to Bay-Delta water decreased by environmental protection laws. In her recent op-ed proposing an Endangered Species Act rider, Senator Feinstein wrote about the percentage of a \u201ccontractual allocation<\/a>\u201d available to Central Valley users. The New York Times referenced percentages of \u201cnormal allocations<\/a>,\u201d and the Fresno Bee used that same term<\/a>. Even the rebuttal letter questioning the wisdom of Senator Feinstein\u2019s proposed rider sent by Representative George Miller and ten other members of Congress referred to water users receiving percentages of their \u201ccontract supply<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, there is no contractual right to any set or \u201cnormal\u201d amount of CVP water. Exporters do not receive varying percentages of a set amount of water that they have continuing contractual rights to; it is the amount of water that they are contractually entitled to that varies from year to year.<\/span><\/p>\n

CVP contracts<\/a> specify maximum <\/em>delivery amounts, and the contracts are generally explicit that that there is no right to receive that amount of water (emphasis added). The CVP contract<\/a>\u00a0between Westlands Water District and the United States, most recently renewed in 2006, authorizes delivery of up to 1,150,000 acre-feet of water per year if \u201cconsistent with all applicable State water rights permits, and licenses, Federal law, and subject to the provisions\u201d in other parts of the contract (Article 3(a) at page 14). While the contract does note that that in the five years before the contract was signed an average of 756,700 acre-feet of water was made available to Westlands, the contract is explicit that \u201cthe likelihood of the Contractor actually receiving the amount of Project Water set out in [Article 3(a)] in any given Year is uncertain<\/em>\u201d (Article 3(b) at page 15) (emphasis added). It is clear that the contract does not contemplate percentages of \u201ccontractual\u201d or \u201cnormal\u201d allocations. Rather, the Bureau of Reclamation makes water allocations in each independent year based on detailed procedures that account for numerous conflicting concerns, and each year exporters receive that amount of water pursuant to the express terms of CVP contracts.<\/p>\n

Westlands and other water users signed contracts to export water from the Bay-Delta, and those contracts explicitly address the uncertainty of water deliveries. Shouldn\u2019t the discussion start with the terms of those contracts?<\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Hitchcock is a Legal Fellow at EDF. As a first-year attorney, my understanding of the intricacies of California water law is limited. Still, I am always bothered by the fact that the battles over Central Valley Project\u00a0(\u201cCVP\u201d) exports regularly allude to the idea that water users have seen their contractual rights to Bay-Delta water […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4273,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-364197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4273"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}