A front-page San Francisco Chronicle piece discussing a federal deal with California's Westlands Water District quotes Steyer-Taylor Center Faculty Fellow and Stanford Law Associate Professor Michael Wara.

A staggering economic and environmental problem festering for three decades in the southern San Joaquin Valley would be addressed by a secret deal reached between the Obama administration and farmers — one that is sounding alarms for Bay Area lawmakers.

The deal would retire 100,000 acres of farmland damaged by salt and selenium in the Westlands Water District, an arid, 600,000-acre patch of farms running along Interstate 5 from Mendota in Fresno County to the Kings County town of Kettleman City. About 600 farms there produce $1 billion in food each year.

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The more land is irrigated, the more pollution is produced, “at which point you need to treat the water in some way that’s very expensive,” said Michael Wara, a Stanford University law professor and former geochemist. “Or you cause Kesterson Wildlife Refuge 2.0.”

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Stanford’s Wara said that if the new technology proves workable, “that would change the ballgame for water in the western United States.” But he was skeptical, noting among other things that the capital cost of plants big enough to handle Westlands drainage would be huge.