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Butte County Officials Object To Biggs-West Gridley Water Sale

Butte County officials Tuesday sought to upend, or at least moderate, plans by a local irrigation district to sell vast amounts of water to growers in the San Joaquin Valley, requiring thousands of acres of local farmland to remain fallow for a second year. 

Plans by a local agency to sell more than 6.3 billion gallons of water to growers in the San Joaquin valley ran into unanimous opposition from the Butte County Board of Supervisors, who called on local and state officials to reduce or cancel the sale. 

The plan would sell, or in the parlance of water managers “transfer,” water from the Biggs-West Gridley Water District to West Hills Farm Services, a Fresno-based company managing almond and pistachio orchards in the San Joaquin Valley. Biggs-West Gridley has coveted senior water rights; West Hills does not. 

It wasn’t necessarily the amount of water that raised concerns, as much as the possible impacts. County officials, in an analysis of the deal prepared for the board, noted that the sale would require fallowing more than a quarter of the rice fields in Biggs-West Gridley’s service area. 

Vickie Newlin, assistant director of the county’s Department of Water and Resource Conservation, referenced a long-standing custom not to fallow more than a fifth of land devoted to any single crop. 

“Biggs West-Gridley says that they would like to exceed this and they are allowed because it’s less than 20 percent of the whole county, and our argument is that if you are not in control, if you don’t have authority over the rest of the acreage, then, that’s probably not what we’d like you to do,” Newlin said.

Board members expressed concerns about the economic impacts of fallowing that much land. 

The report also suggested that much more land could be fallowed should the state water project reduce deliveries. Additionally, the report suggests that if the deal goes forward, groundwater pumping within the area served by Biggs-West Gridley may violate other county ordinances. 

It is unclear what impact the board’s action will have. Calls to the Biggs-West Gridley Water District were not returned. The state Department of Water Resources could accede to the county’s demand by cutting the amount of water sold by about a quarter. It could also opt to approve the plan as-is — potentially triggering legal action.

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