The House voted to put farmers first in line in California for water, passing legislation that Republican proponents said would end the state's "man-made" drought and Democrats said flouted state sovereignty on behalf of a few powerful agricultural interests.

House lawmakers voted 246-175 to approve a bill (H.R. 1837) introduced by California Republican Devin Nunes that has little chance of advancing in the Senate. The legislation would shift water from environmental uses in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to sprawling farms in the Central Valley.

At its core, the bill would repeal a 2009 law governing central California water and replace it with 1994 policy known as the Bay-Delta Accord, while also rolling back Endangered Species Act compliance requirements to that year.

It would cap at 800,000 acre-feet the amount of water that can go to fish and wildlife. The measure would also extend water contracts from 25 to 40 years and enable their automatic renewal, while eliminating a requirement that contracts undergo an environmental impact study.

Republicans pointed to the devastating 2009 drought that dried up Central Valley farms and contributed to unemployment levels of 40 percent in some agricultural communities as reason to end a policy that, they said, "puts fish ahead of people."

"This bill is a chance to right the regulatory wrongs of the past, end future man-made droughts and protect the jobs and economic livelihoods of farm families and workers," said House Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), whose committee passed the bill earlier this month (E&E Daily, Feb. 17).

Democrats slammed the legislation for, they said, trampling states' right to devise their own water policies and, in the Bay-Delta region, disregarding 20 years of environmental science and endangered species provisions intended to protect, among other things, the state's multibillion-dollar fishing industry.

"Let us understand quite clearly here that 150 years of California water law is thrown out," said Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), the former deputy Interior secretary under President Clinton who has campaigned against the legislation. "It is one of the biggest water grabs at least in the last half-century, and it will have profound negative effects."

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) appeared on the House floor briefly to speak in favor of the legislation, which he said would cure federal government's regulatory overreach. "This is a good bill, and it ought to pass," Boehner said.

But the legislation is expected to gain little traction in the Democrat-controlled Senate, where both California Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D) and Barbara Boxer (D) are opposed. The Obama administration nonetheless threatened a veto should the bill reach the president's desk (E&ENews PM, Feb. 28).

Western states came out in opposition to the bill, because of the overriding effects it would have on California state water law. Letters of opposition came from attorneys general in California, New Mexico and Montana as well as the states of Oregon, Colorado and Wyoming, the Colorado River Commission of Nevada and the Western States Water Council, whose representatives are appointed by the governors of 18 states (Greenwire, Feb. 29).

Republicans cited the support of regional water agencies, the agriculture industry and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

California Rep. Jim Costa, one of the Democrats who crossed party lines to support the bill, cited the suffering in his Central Valley district resulting from the "hydrological and regulatory drought" in explaining his vote.

"Our water system is broken in California but while we're trying to fix it, we need operational flexibility," Costa said.

Citing the controversial bill's lack of Democratic support in the upper chamber, he added that lawmakers "should be discussing more constructive ways that we can work together."

"Unless we are willing to work with Ms. Feinstein, who I know wants to be helpful, I predict this legislation will never be heard in the U.S. Senate," Costa said. "I think we can do better for our constituents by working together on a bipartisan basis."

Familiar battle lines

As in so many debates this Congress, Democrats accused Republicans of ignoring science on behalf of a powerful industry -- in this case, agriculture -- while Republicans accused Democrats of seeking to sabotage the economy on behalf of the environment. Democrats offered seven poison-pill amendments, all of which failed.

A Congressional Budget Office analysis noted that the bill would reduce future budget deficits by $221 million over the next decade and called for cutting spending on environmental restoration on the San Joaquin River by $190 million over a four-year period.

Republicans highlighted those projected cost savings and the failures of some of the scientific efforts underpinning the 2009 water agreement. Nunes pointed out that nonnative striped bass were eating many of the endangered delta smelt that pumping limits were intended to protect. Aides lofted placards depicting charts that indicated salmon populations have continued their decline, even as more water was diverted to the Bay-Delta in recent years.

House Water and Power Subcommittee Chairman Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) blamed the "ideological zealots that created this human disaster."

"What they are referring to is not science, it is ideology masquerading as science," McClintock said.

California Democratic Rep. Jerry McNerney, who represents both Central Valley farmers and the delta, called the delta a "treasure" in decline because of excessive pumping that, in turn, causes saltwater to migrate inland.

The bill, he said, "would ship even more water out of the delta, turning this precious estuary into a salty, stagnant marsh crushing, crushing an economy that generates hundreds of thousands of jobs."

Speaking to a full House chamber just before a vote that would have sent the bill back to committee, which failed 178-248, Garamendi implored colleagues to consider the environmental and federalist stakes.

"This bill will lead to the destruction of the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Western Hemisphere and it does so by overriding California law and the Constitution," he said. "There's been much talk of in this House of a 'man-made' drought -- that's baloney! It was a real drought. So what are we talking about in this bill? We are talking about the usurping of power by the federal government."

McClintock responded by saying that the bill "doesn't trample states' rights -- it invokes them and enforces them" by reigning in onerous federal environmental regulations.

He blamed the Obama administration for enforcing regulations that, he said, fueled Central Valley job losses. "This administration caused thousands and thousands of hard-working, farm-working families to lose their jobs," he said. "This measure solves that travesty."

Environmental groups panned the vote.

"This is an ill-conceived proposal in search of a problem," Scott Slesinger, legislative director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. "Instead of focusing on the country's real challenges, the House Republican Leadership would rather unravel a widely acclaimed agreement already in place to restore the San Joaquin River that agricultural, fishing and environmental interests all support."