FRESNO, Calif. (AP) – The nation’s largest irrigation district agreed to spend $3.5 billion to clean up contaminated water in California’s fertile Central Valley in a tentative deal announced Tuesday that will settle a decades-old dispute with the federal government.
Westlands Water District will clean up water tainted by salt that has accumulated in soil from years of irrigation, general manager Thomas Birmingham said. Federal officials have failed for more than half a century to do the work that the district will undertake, he said.
But critics say the district and the U.S. Department of Interior secretly forged the agreement that wipes away large amounts of the district’s debt and potentially gives it greater access to the state’s scarce water supplies amid a record drought.
Responding to critics, Birmingham said that negotiations were done in private, but were not secret.
“They feel the need to attack anything that benefits Westlands,” Birmingham said. “Westlands, by doing this, is undertaking significant risks and obligations that we currently don’t have.”