Westlands is throwing a temper tantrum? How fun. They’re stomping out of BDCP because an Interior official told them that they cannot be sure they will continue to get their record high water deliveries from the early 2000’s? Good. After that bullshit they pulled with Feinstein last year, I thought they should have been kicked out of BDCP. I thought they had shown that they weren’t working towards a cooperative solution in good faith and had forfeited their right to be there. But they were let back in, and now they’re quitting in a huff. Because I’m a small, petty person, I particularly enjoyed this:

At a meeting last week in Washington, D.C., representatives of the Westlands Water District, a huge irrigation agency in the San Joaquin Valley, reportedly stormed out of a meeting with David Hayes, an Interior Department undersecretary. Other meeting participants told The Bee the trigger was a discussion that the plan may include reduced water deliveries.

It was only two years ago that Jason Peltier himself was Mr. High-up Interior Water Guy. Now he’s representing Westlands at meetings with Interior and hearing the inevitable. They will not reliably get the deliveries they want in the future. There will not be as much water in California, because of climate change. The obvious, that the Delta itself will need flow, has been substantiated. Westland’s deliveries will go down, because Los Angeles’s will not. This has been coming for years, but it took a new administration to say the words.

I think it is perfectly appropriate for Westlands to withdraw from BDCP. They shouldn’t pay for a Peripheral Canal that can’t reliably deliver water to them. Without the west side arguing for a large Peripheral Canal (for ag deliveries), the conversation about a small Peripheral Canal (to assure that L.A.’s water supply isn’t dependent on Delta levees) can go forward. We’re watching the future happen, in jerky steps like this. I hope the politicians don’t yield to Westland’s temper tantrum on this. It’ll only drag the process out.