Embattled Westlands, the nation's largest irrigation district, is suing to reverse Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt's decision to cut diversions from the Trinity River to the Central Valley.
In a complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Fresno, Westlands estimated that 23,000 acres of farmland will be taken out of production and 380 jobs lost if Babbitt's decision, announced Dec. 19, is allowed to take effect.
The district, which sprawls over 550,000 acres on the arid west side of the San Joaquin Valley, relies heavily on Trinity River water imported from the northern end of the state via the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Central Valley Project.
Since 1963, when the Trinity and Lewiston dams were completed, the bureau has diverted up to 90 percent of the Trinity River's flow into the Central Valley. Babbitt's decision, aimed at restoring the Trinity's once-rich salmon and steelhead fishery, reduces the diversion to 52 percent.
Westlands general manager Thomas W. Birmingham said Babbitt's decision "failed to consider the impacts of water supplies and power supplies" in the Central Valley.
Several utility districts that rely on the Central Valley Project for power have complained that Babbitt's decision was ill-timed, because of California's energy supply crisis, but none have joined Westlands in suing the government.
The Trinity River contributes one-fourth of the electrical power generated by the Central Valley project, as well as one-seventh of the project's water.
David Hayes, the Interior Department deputy undersecretary who worked out the Trinity River agreement with the Hoopa Valley tribe, minimized Westlands' contention that the government had inadequately evaluated the effect of the decision on water and power users. "The record is very solid," Hayes said. "We're confident it will hold."
Westlands, which is at the end of the Central Valley Project pipe, is chronically short of water, and its critics contend that California would be better off without it because much of the district's ground is contaminated with toxic elements and because the crops it produces are surplus.
In October, Westlands took the radical step of suing to contest the Friant Water District's share of water in the San Joaquin River -- a step that alienated water managers in most of the Central Valley's irrigation districts.
E-mail Eric Brazil at ebrazil@sfchronicle.com
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