Re "Don't let growers grab water with their distortions" (Viewpoints, June 26):

The commentary in The Bee alleged that San Joaquin Valley farmers are using distortions to steal water from Northern California with new legislative efforts. That description is unfair. Nowhere is there an acknowledgment that valley farmers have already given more water for the environment than any other region of California over the past two decades.

The Central Valley Project Improvement Act of 1992 is diverting more than 1 million acre-feet of water from San Joaquin Valley agriculture annually for environmental purposes. A large part of this water was voluntarily given up by farmers as part of the Bay-Delta Accord. Farmers were assured "a deal is a deal," a promise quickly broken. Even so, CVPIA has largely failed in its dual mission of improving the environment and providing a reliable water supply for federal contractors.

Farmers in the Central Valley must meet the most exacting environmental protections for water use. Yet they are continually blamed for the Delta's decline, and federal regulators remain focused on water project operations, which are only one piece of a much larger puzzle.

The National Academy of Sciences, in its first Bay-Delta report in March 2010, found urban runoff and pollution, ammonia discharges, upstream diversions, unscreened private diversions and population growth all contribute to the degradation of the Bay-Delta ecosystem.

From 2007 to 2009, in the middle of a recession and foreclosure crisis, San Joaquin Valley farmers were told they would have to make do with virtually no water, while other regions received 100 percent of their supply. Attempts to ignore the effects of the drought are insulting to the thousands of people I represent who lost their jobs during that period.

Some suggest the valley should lose its water supply, wither and die. They fail to understand water flowing to the Central Valley enables thousands of family farms to feed a hungry world, creating tens of thousands of jobs and generating billions for our local economies. San Joaquin Valley farmers understand the value of water. That's why they have invested millions to develop irrigation conservation techniques among the most efficient in the world.

To create a balanced and reliable water supply we must stop repeating inaccurate rhetoric. My colleagues in Congress have proposed one legislative fix to California's water crisis. I have introduced HR 1251, the "More Water for Our Valley Act." But we'll reach consensus only if we stick to the facts, remember our history and work together.

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U.S. Rep. Jim Costa, a Democrat, represents the 20thDistrict, which includes Kings County and parts of Fresno andKern counties.

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