If you'd read everything published about San Diego’s proposal to import water from the Imperial Valley, you wouldn't have learned much about the Bass brothers of Fort Worth, other than the recurring notion that they pose a threat to the well being of the Imperial Valley and San Diego and perhaps to the potency of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

    Usually the threats are vague, though the Imperial Irrigation District's dissident board member, Don Cox, was quoted rather clearly in the New York Times on Aug. 6:

    "They came down here to buy up the ground and sell off the water," said Cox. "It’s going to kill a lot of jobs and hurt a lot of people. It’s really a transfer of wealth."

    It was an irresistible quotation, though it might have been resisted had the New York Times understood that the Bass brothers have no water to sell. The water in the Imperial Valley is held in trust by the Imperial Irrigation District (IID). Like other water users in the Imperial Valley, the Bass brothers' Western Farms can buy what it needs from IID, but Western Farms can’t re-sell the water and by law must be penalized heavily if it buys more than it needs and wastes water.

    Only the IID can sell IID water, although IID can do other things that might allow farmers and ranchers to benefit. If IID buys water for $12.50 an acre-foot and re-sells it to San Diego for $200 per acre-foot - as is proposed starting in 1999 - the profit can be used by IID for irrigation improvements, most importantly the lining of its canals to conserve water. IID could use the money for landscaping, maybe even street paving or other public uses. IID conceivably could reduce the cost of water to customers within its own district so all its customers might benefit from the San Diego deal.

    That might save the Bass brothers money, might even enhance the value of their land over the next five to 15 years if they were to sell it after its appreciation. But how the Bass brothers might unduly profit has not been explained.

    Certainly the money San Diego spends to buy IID water will never be huge when contrasted with the number of acres under cultivation in the Imperial Valley. Even in the biggest year, 2008, San Diego would buy 200,000 acre-feet of water at $306 per acre. That $61.2 million, divided by the 400,00 acres under cultivation, equals $153 per acre, gross. If, implausibly, all that money went to the landowners, the Bass brothers would get $6.12 million for their 40,000 acres. Hardly a windfall.

    The L.A.-based Metropolitan Water District (MWD), which supplies 90 percent of San Diego’s water, has spent thousands of dollars - Mark Watton says millions of dollars - to derail San Diego’s proposed deal with IID and discredit the Bass brothers. Watton is chairman of the San Diego County Water Authority

    "MWD has spent more money to fight our deal than we have spent looking at the deal," says Watton. "I understand why the Met thinks it’s a bad deal. For them, from a standpoint of power and control, it is a bad deal. But in today’s reality, utilities are changing and water is not to be excluded from those changes."

    While MWD has sewn seeds of discontent, Watton claims he's received "a lot of support" for San Diego’s proposal from other major players, including the federal Bureau of Reclamation, Arizona and Nevada (which with California comprise the lower basin states along the Colorado River) and the upper basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

    "I’ve got a ground swell of support to see this through, but the Metropolitan Water District doesn’t want to acknowledge that," Watton asserts.

    "Frankly, the Metropolitan Water District is looking for angles of attack and when you start talking about a very wealthy family like the Bass brothers, that brings intrigue and curiosity into it. From everything I’ve been able to ascertain - from the public election of IID directors to the other governmental agencies and regulations involved - I just don’t see an angle for the Bass brothers to get a special deal. People are just using their name to call up the bogey man."

    Adds Patricia Tennyson, director of public affairs for the San Diego County Water Authority, "Our objective is to deliver safe water reliably and as inexpensively as possible. Whatever perceived influence the Bass brothers enjoy by virtue of their holdings in the Imperial Valley is a drop in the bucket compared to the real power and influence of the MWD."