IID to release early mitigation water to the Salton Sea
During a regular meeting of the Imperial Irrigation District Board of Directors, General Manager Brian Brady announced that IID will release 41,250 acre-feet of early mitigation water to the Salton Sea. In total, the district will send 76,250 acre-feet to the sea this year to mitigate impacts through the first six months of 2012 caused by the water transfer agreements authorized by the Quantification Settlement Agreement with the San Diego County Water Authority and the Coachella Valley Water District. This amount, Brady said, includes 35,000 acre-feet of mitigation water to the sea that IID is already obligated to release under terms of the QSA.
Brady told the board that he had advised the Bureau of Reclamation of IID’s intended release of the early mitigation water to the sea in a letter sent yesterday to the bureau’s regional director Lorri Gray-Lee. The district has also submitted a revised annual water order to Reclamation that reflects the change in its consumptive use.
This early release of mitigation water to the Salton Sea consists of 26,400 acre-feet in 2011 and 14,860 acre-feet in 2012, all of which will be delivered this year.
“This is not unused entitlement water,” Brady said. “Rather, it is entitlement water available to IID that we have determined can and should be used in this way as an appropriate and prudent response to uncertainty surrounding the QSA litigation.”
By releasing this mitigation water early, said Brady, the QSA joint powers authority will save an estimated $6.3 million in mitigation reimbursement expenses through the first six months of 2012. It will also reduce the district’s reliance on fallowing to meet its water transfer obligations in the same time period, Brady said, adding that it is consistent with the IID board’s “oft-stated goal of taking on no more financial or environmental risk than the district bargained for when it became a signatory to the nation’s largest agricultural-to-urban water transfer agreement in 2003.”
Click here to view IID General Manager Brian Brady’s prepared remarks from 9-21-2010.
Click here to view Brady's Bureau of Reclamation letter from 9-20-2010.
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