Water ‘Bank’ Proposed to Assure Supply : Shortage: Southland water providers are seeking an exchange agreement with the San Joaquin Valley. The storage proposal is designed to meet the needs of a booming population.

BAKERSFIELD —  Urban water providers in Southern California are pitching a precedent-setting water plan to their neighbors in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley to meet demands of a booming population.

The Metropolitan Water District, which serves portions of six of the heavily populated southern counties, is proposing a water exchange to make up for a shortfall estimated at 1 million acre-feet a year by 2010.

The program, pending state and federal approval, would operate something like a bank account.

In wet years, MWD would store some of its state water in underground aquifers at the Arvin-Edison Water Storage District southeast of Bakersfield. In dry years, Arvin-Edison would pump the stored water to serve its own needs and let some of its federal water continue through the California Aqueduct to Southern California.

“It’s a major cooperative between an urban water contractor and an agricultural contractor,” MWD spokesman Timothy Quinn said. “It’s a unique program that will definitely set a precedent.”

The arrangement would give the MWD an additional 100,000 acre-feet of water during dry years, which Quinn said it will need to make up for some of the water it has lost in court actions giving Arizona a share of the Colorado River and reducing the MWD’s share from Owens Valley and Mono Lake.

Arvin-Edison would benefit by increasing the ground-water table with water stored in wet years that would otherwise be lost to runoff. Farmers, in turn, could benefit by reducing the amount of money they must spend to pump water, Arvin-Edison manager Cliff Trotter said.

To ensure local residents enough water during dry years, the program would extend surface water deliveries to property owners on 5,000 additional acres in exchange for allowing the district to use private wells during dry years.

“If we’re going to give Metropolitan a part of our surface water in years when they need it, we’ll need a certain number of wells to give our people the water they’re guaranteed,” Arvin-Edison staff engineer Bill Bowers said.

Opinion on the proposed exchange ranges from support to guarded approval among water districts associated with the Kern County Water Agency, according to a report by an advisory committee.

The water agency serves as an advisory panel to the state Deparment of Water Resources, which must give final approval to the plan, along with the federal Bureau of Reclamation.

The agency wants a guarantee that districts will get replacement shipments of water in years following dry years, said John Stovall, a lawyer for the agency.

Among those most suspicious of the plan are farmers in the district.

John Waters, president of Nalbandian Farms in Arvin, compares the agreement to “making a pact with the devil.”

He recalls the time in the early part of this century when the Los Department of Water and Power bought land in the Owens Valley and diverted the water southward.

“We think it’s a bad precedent. We feel it will compromise our water rights. Ultimately, they will be our competitors for agricultural water,” Waters said.

“In a nutshell, we feel that if we don’t stand up for our rights, the San Joaquin Valley could become the Owens Valley,” he said.