SAN DIEGO -- Farmers in the Imperial Valley are wasting water on their desert fields and should lose hundreds of thousands of gallons from their Colorado River allotment next year, the federal Bureau of Reclamation said.
The recent decision could be a victory for urban areas that have been demanding more water from the drought-stricken Colorado.
The 400 or so farmers in California's southeastern corner use about 70 percent of the state's share. The Bureau of Reclamation said its first-ever review determined that the growers should lose 275,900 acre-feet of that water, or 9 percent of their current allotment.
The bureau has authority to take Colorado River water away from anybody found to be wasting it in Arizona, Nevada and California.
Imperial Valley farmers, among the first to stake a claim to the Colorado, flood their fields to allow water to percolate to the roots and to flush salt from the sun-baked soil. They produce about $1 billion worth of produce each year -- chiefly alfalfa, a thirsty, low-value crop used for livestock feed.
Farmers could make do by adopting water-conservation measures already used in other irrigated areas of the Southwest, suggested Robert Johnson, a regional director for the bureau in Boulder City, Nev.
Imperial's water board said it would challenge the bureau's decision. It is a ``travesty of justice,'' said Lloyd Allen, the board's president.
A spokesman for Gov. Gray Davis, whose office has been working for months to broker a deal, urged the parties to reach agreement or face years of protracted litigation.
``Nobody won today,'' Byron Tucker said.
Interior Secretary Gale Norton tried to reduce Imperial's share by 10 percent earlier this year when the district failed to meet a Dec. 31 deadline on a deal to sell San Diego County up to 200,000 acre-feet of water a year -- roughly a quarter of its total water supply.
Imperial's water board challenged Norton in federal court in San Diego and won. A judge found in March that the Interior Department had acted improperly and ordered it to conduct a review as outlined in federal regulations.
It was the first time that the bureau had conducted a special water-use review of a single county.
Reducing Imperial Valley's water supply could free up more water for the area around Palm Springs, which was hard hit by cutbacks earlier this year, as well as urban Los Angeles and San Diego.
It also could hamper efforts to reach a long-term deal among four Southern California water agencies who are under pressure to reduce the state's overuse of the Colorado, which is shared with six other Western states