Sutter makes friends with water

Sutter County supervisors voiced confidence Tuesday night that farmers and water districts will continue to be good groundwater stewards.

The Department of Water Resources' Drought Water Bank is buying water for $275 per acre-foot from willing water rights holders upstream of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The water would then be transferred to entities suffering water shortages.

"We are trying to help our brothers down in the Central Valley," said Supervisor James Gallagher. "We are building goodwill, and that goodwill will be very important in the future."

In giving up some of the surface water they would otherwise use, the rights holders would likely use groundwater in lieu of surface water. Other solutions include not growing crops or substituting less water-intensive crops to save on surface water usage.

The farmers and water districts can be trusted to use the groundwater responsibly because they are stewards of the groundwater, said Brad Arnold, manger of South Sutter Water District.

"They rely on that for their livelihood and for their children's children," he said.

Of the 80,000 acre-feet of water committed to the drought bank for 2009, 29,098 acre-feet are from water rights holders in Sutter County. Of that amount, 24,315 acre-feet comes from groundwater substitution.

As water becomes more scarce, the Drought Water Bank will take the pressure off water rights, said Lynn Phillips, general manger of Sutter Extension Water District. It is important for farmers and water districts to help their struggling neig bors to protect their own investments.

"We didn't want to give the appearance of Northern California holding all the water and basically ignoring the droughts in the rest of the state," he said.

The primary concern regarding the Water Bank is an increased reliance on groundwater.

"I'm concerned monitoring may not be strong enough and action not taken quick enough," said Supervisor Stan Cleveland.

Using weekly and monthly monitoring, any problems will be examined on a case-by-case basis, said Chris Bonds, geologist with the Department of Water Resources.

In addition, the 2009 Drought Water Bank is a pilot program to see how such a project could work in future years, said Dan Peterson, Sutter County water resources chief.

While working at a small-impact level, the state and districts can look at the program's monitoring, reporting, analysis and action to see if it is a viable solution to the state's problem.

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Ashley Gebb at 749-4724 or agebb@appealdemocrat.com.