The report issued Thursday by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office says four large irrigation contractors owe the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation nearly $450 million for building pumps and canals. The Westlands Water District, a coalition of giant agribusinesses in the San Joaquin Valley, owes an additional $48 million, according to the report. The farmers are in the midst of negotiating a proposal with the bureau that would forgive some of the cost of building the Central Valley Project, a vast irrigation system that serves the state's most fertile farmland. The report makes public for the first time the official size of that debt. A federal watchdog agency said Thursday some of the San Joaquin Valley's largest farms owe the government hundreds of millions of dollars for the cost of building California's water infrastructure. 

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