As federal officials prepare to begin reviving the storied San Joaquin River, some of the farmers who made the project possible are growing worried that it will leave them short of water.

A complex legal settlement that led to the restoration aims to return salmon to the river. The fish disappeared more than 60 years ago after Friant Dam diverted much of the river’s natural flow for irrigation.

East-side farmers and water districts will be giving up about 170,000 acre-feet of water each year to help bring the river back to life. That’s roughly about 15% of the average deliveries to the Friant Division’s 15,000 farmers.

Water officials have proposed several ideas to offset that loss of water, including underground “banking” of excess flow in wet years and pumping water back to farms out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where the river ends, through the California Aqueduct.

But many farmers are not optimistic these measures will make up for the water they will lose.

Gary Serrato, general manager of the Fresno Irrigation District, wonders what will happen if the restoration effort stumbles and officials need more water to meet their goal of restoring fish in the river.

That could mean less water for east-side growers — raising the potential for the kind of shortages that have crippled west-side growers over the past year.

Serrato’s water district provides irrigation water to Fresno-area farmers and is among those that could take the brunt of the water losses under the restoration plan.

That’s because the district has a lower priority for water than some other users. These buyers of “Class 2” water have access to water from other sources, such as the Kings River, and use their supplemental water to replenish groundwater basins.

Higher-priority buyers, with rights to what is known as Class 1 water, have fewer sources of water available to them.

Options may be limited even for those who do have alternatives, however. Groundwater storage is finite, and imported water can be prohibitively expensive. And while further conservation is possible for some, many growers have already invested in drip irrigation and other methods to avoid waste.

Mario Santoyo, assistant general manager of the Friant Water Users Authority and a key player in the restoration plan, said that if federal regulators continue with the current process for allocating water, buyers with lower priority will likely take the biggest hit.

To make up for potential water losses, Serrato said, the district is looking at developing a groundwater banking facility and replenishing its groundwater supply when state officials make flood releases from Friant Dam.

In the Chowchilla Water District, farmer Kole Upton is blunt about the risks he sees in the restoration project. About three-quarters of the Chowchilla district’s irrigation water is Class 2.

“I don’t have a lot of hope that we will get any water back,” Upton said. East-side growers might have to idle up to 20% of their farmland — as many as 15,000 acres, he said.

“If people were upset about what happened on the west side, wait till they see what happens on the east side,” Upton said. “It will be devastating.”

Unlike the west side, much of the east side is planted in permanent crops, including citrus, almonds and stone fruit. Growers must provide water to their trees to keep them alive.

As in Chowchilla, farmers in the Madera Irrigation District receive a substantial amount of Class 2 water.

Madera County farmer Denis Prosperi, who grows wine grapes and almonds, said that if he loses water, he probably will increase pumping from wells. Other growers would do the same thing, he said. “We are going to be turning our pumps on, and it will become a race to the bottom for farmers,” Prosperi said.

But Santoyo and others believe they can minimize the loss of irrigation water through several projects that are part of the restoration’s water-management plan.

One of the most ambitious is recirculation. Under this plan, pumps would capture water from the delta — equivalent to a portion of the water needed for restoration of the San Joaquin — and send it south down the California Aqueduct toward 1 million acres of east Valley farmland.

Once the water is pumped into the California Aqueduct, it would run along the Valley’s west side.

The water would have to be moved east across the Valley in new canals or the existing Cross Valley Canal in Kern County.

These transfers could require tens of millions of dollars for new canals, pumping plants and other changes along 200 miles of the Valley.

Other plans include increasing the capacity of the Friant-Kern Canal, and greater use of water banking and water recharging.

Harvey Bailey, a farmer in the Orange Cove Irrigation District, believes the settlement plan and the efforts to recirculate water can work. The Orange Cove district receives Class 1 water.

Bailey farms citrus and olives, and he and his brother manage a farm growing avocados and pomegranates.

He has good wells, a low-volume irrigation system, and his district has water-banking agreements with neighboring water districts.

“We are keeping our fingers crossed,” Bailey said. “But I think we will squeak by.”