“A water utility on paper,” the Westlands Water District in Southern California “is a formidable political force” with a $950,000 budget in 2015 for government and political relations, reports the New York Times. “Aggressive, creative and litigious – minutes of a board meeting (in 2015) cited 11 continuing or anticipated lawsuits – the district has made enemies of environmentalists, rival politicians and other farmers whose water it has tried to appropriate. But it has also repeatedly made deals and won legislative favors to keep water flowing to itself and to farms across the San Joaquin Valley, California’s agricultural heartland.”
Agriculture is a small part of California’s economy, yet the San Joaquin Valley “remains the nation’s green grocer and farming is still the economic lifeblood of the state’s arid center. Both locally and nationally, farmers pack a punch well above their weight,” says the Times. The district “is seeking to persuade Congress to loosen the federal rules that now set aside Sacramento basin water for salmon fisheries and endangered species like the delta smelt,” says the story, which describes Westlands backing of a group, El Agua Es Asunto de Todos, that builds Latino support for more irrigation water.