By Heather Hacking, Staff Writer, Chico Enterprise-Record, April 18, 2013:

Butte Water District, with headquarters in Gridley, is negotiating to move 5,350 acre-feet of water through groundwater substitution. This means transferring surface water and using groundwater instead.

Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District, based in Willows, is also negotiating a transfer of 5,000 acre-feet.

One acre-foot of water equals 325,851 gallons, or enough water to cover one acre of land at one foot deep.

Barbara Vlamis, a water watchdog with AquAlliance of Chico, watches water transfers closely and is especially concerned when groundwater is involved.

In some water transfers, growers will leave the land fallow for a year and sell the groundwater instead of irrigating crops. But that’s not the case this year.

Vlamis said she’s also concerned because the environmental report for the Butte Water District deal mentions that buyers are seeking up to 135,000 gallons of transfer water from “various willing sellers in Northern California” to State Water Contractors.

Not much more was known as of deadline about which water users would receive the water. Several calls have been made to state water officials to learn more.

Last year, AquAlliance filed a lawsuit against Butte Water District for a similar amount of water proposed to be transferred. The legal argument was that the transfer did not comply with the California Environmental Quality Act.

That deal fell through due to the inability to transfer the water due to river conditions, Vlamis said. But the circumstances are similar to the transfer proposed for this year, she added.

These amounts of water seem small, Vlamis noted, but combined, they are about 40 percent of the water used by the city of Chico, she said.

Vlamis said she has been asking the Department of Water Resources and the Bureau of Reclamation for years to conduct environmental reports on the cumulative impacts of water transfers from the Sacramento Valley.

“They keep hemming and hawing and nothing is produced. Meanwhile it’s business as usual.”

The Glenn-Colusa transfer for 5,000 acre-feet would be to San Luis and Delta Mendota Water Authority, using Glenn-Colusa district wells.

Glenn-Colusa General Manager Thad Bettner said growers have already started preparing fields for planting, so fallowing land was not an option this late in the season.

This year is an extremely dry year, and districts in other parts of the state will receive only a fraction of their water contracts.

“If we have an opportunity to help other regions, as long as we’re not going to injure neighbors, we should try,” he said.

He said the money from the transfer, probably around $1 million, will help the district with groundwater monitoring, public outreach on water models and other projects.

Also, the water transfer could be used to test and refine the groundwater model and have it looked at by scientists, a memo to the district’s board states.

Since 2000, Glenn-Colusa has transferred 2,000 acre-feet of water, which was to the Drought Water Bank in 2009, Bettner said.

Reach Heather Hacking at 896-7758, hhacking@chicoer.com or on Twitter @HeatherHacking.

http://www.chicoer.com/ci_23051073/aqualliance-wary-water-transfer-deals-works