Spreck Rosekrans is an Economic Analyst at EDF.

It is good to see that Congressman George Miller, sixteen years after working with Senator Bill Bradley to pass the Central Valley Project Improvement Act, hasn’t missed a step. His editorial opinion on the future of the Bureau of Reclamation in today’s San Francisco Chronicle is a slam dunk.

It seems that President-elect Obama’s call for smart government struck a chord with Miller, whose crusade to reform the Bureau is obviously not over. The Bureau was conceived more than a century ago when most Americans worked the land and it was in our national interest to get people to move out west to places like California. At a time when government subsidies were far less common, funds were put aside to help small family farmers settle in the west.

Today, much of the benefit of the billion dollar water subsidies instead goes to huge farms that are measured in the tens of thousands of acres. The food they put on the table is invaluable, of course, but the incentive to irrigate efficiently is diminished by the low cost of their water supplies.

As diversions from our rivers and the Bay-Delta have increased, California’s salmon and other fisheries have been devastated to the point where several species are listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act and fisherman have been put out of work.

We do need to be smarter. Miller’s column puts dams in the right context; they should be considered in the context of science, stewardship and economics, along with other water management solutions, hopefully the Schwarzenegger Administration is listening. It is the right approach.