“It is nearly as important as the far more publicized political and policy fight over the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Area of Origin is as much a pocketbook issue as an emotional issue, especially for farmers. If you live in the north, where the water is, you want first-come, first-serve rights before any of that water flows to the south. That, in a nutshell, is the problem.”

…. Protecting the “areas of origin” is the mantra of the North — and should be. It is at the core of California’s water dispute. It is the essential reason northern Californians overwhelming rejected the Peripheral Canal nearly 30 years ago. It is the final turf proclamation of every town and irrigation district north of Sacramento. It is nearly as important as the far more publicized political and policy fight over the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Areas of origin is as much a pocketbook issue as an emotional issue, especially for farmers. If you live in the north, where the water is, you want first-come, first-serve rights before any of that water flows to the south. That, in a nutshell, is the problem. So that takes us to the Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority, the latest in a long line of Northern California agencies battling over the area of origin. The board of directors of the TCCA voted unanimously last month to appeal a ruling by a Fresno-based federal judge, which said that water users in the northern Sacramento Valley have no preferential right to Central Valley Project water deliveries under California’s area-of-origin laws. The TCCA was intimately interested in this ruling, since all of the 16 members of the TCCA have water contracts with the federal government, as do Glenn Colusa and Yolo counties. And that’s a big part of the problem: During the last 33 years, the TCCA received less than its contracted amount a third of the time. BOTTOM LINE: The fundamental issue, not surprisingly, is that the water users of the north say they should get 100 percent of their contracted water before anybody down south gets their promised amount. Clearly, that doesn’t play in Fresno …. Selenium, that Kesterson malady that that got national attention more than 20 years ago, could be back, this time in the Delta. The operative words here are “could” and “may,” but however imprecise the notion of an infusion of selenium into the Delta raises the jitters of everybody from Tracy to Freeport. BOTTOM LINE: If it really is a problem, then it needs to be addressed. So is it really a problem? ….