Riverdale farmer Dan Errotabere says it's not enough to make a difference on west side farms.
Errotabere said, "You have a 100 percent of precip and all they can give us is 5 percent. There's talk of additional water but you know what, until it's in our hands it's just talk."
Westland's water district spokesperson Sarah Woolf added, "Really 5 percent might as well be zero. It does very, very little for us. It's not anything we can get a bank loan with. We are not putting people back to work."
But U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is confident the allocation will improve in western Fresno County. Salazar explained, "If it is an average year then we get to that 30 percent allocation and that's what we are hopeful we'll be able to get to."
Salazar also hopes to secure additional water through transfers around the state. Errotabere responded, "That's what they should have been doing all along. My question is, where have they been? If these tools are out there and they could have done this, they could have done this a long time ago."
But Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said, "This is an important step for California and San Joaquin Valley farmers."
Errotabere says the plan is the result of pressure put on by Senator Dianne Feinstein's push for an amendment to increase water deliveries.
