More on the pipeline proposal

I thought the SacBee's opinion piece summarizing the Delta issues explains most things pretty well. On the origins of the Delta:

Long before Europeans came to California, water bursting from a crack in a Mt. Shasta lava flow became the Sacramento River. Snow falling south of Yosemite became the San Joaquin River.

These two giant streams joined just east of San Francisco Bay to form the Delta, tens of thousands of acres of tule marshes, islands and channels, before the water poured into the Bay.

Here is their summary of Delta issues:

... [T]he continued existence of the Delta is in doubt. The Delta marshes have been turned into fertile agricultural islands, whose fragile peat soils are subsiding due to farming practices. Some Delta islands are more than 20 feet below sea level, protected by inadequate levees.

In addition, huge state and federal pumps at the south end of the Delta (near Tracy) pump water from the Delta channels to more than 20 million Bay Area, Central Valley and Southern California water users and irrigate millions of acres of farmland in the Central Valley.

Catastrophic collapse of Delta islands will almost certainly occur due to subsidence, flooding, earthquakes and rising sea level, cutting off a major part of the water supply to most Californians. Recent analysis by Jeffrey Mount at UC Davis indicates island collapse is likely to occur relatively soon.

In addition, due to farming, water pumping and the nature of the Delta soils, Delta fish populations are crashing, and Delta water is far more polluted than the Sacramento River.

It seems to me that there are two interrelated issues here: how can we save the water supply, and how can we save the Delta? The piece summarizes it like this, however, seemingly ignoring the first point in their summary:

What is required to solve these two fundamental problems of the threatened loss of Delta islands, and the damage caused by diversion of water from the Delta?

Here is the summary of the pipeline project and it's potential benefits:

Diverting water through a pipeline beginning on the Sacramento River south of Sacramento and passing around the eastern end of the Delta to the pumps would have three beneficial effects. The pipeline would supply water of greatly improved quality, compared to water that is diverted today from the Delta. It would eliminate the threat to the exported water supply from earthquake and flood. According to University of California, state and federal fish experts, fish populations in the Delta would greatly benefit from such a facility due to restoration of more natural flows through the Delta. Substantial amounts of water would continue to enter the Delta to protect the Delta and San Francisco Bay environments.

Who would get control of such a pipeline?

But Northern Californians fear control of such a facility by irrigators in the Central Valley and the huge Southern California population. Diverting too much water could harm the environment.

However, if the new facility were owned and operated by Northern California communities, northerners could be assured that the facility would be operated for the benefit of the Delta and its related ecosystems. By giving a new Northern California agency control of the facility, the critical issue of trust could be resolved. The cost of a new facility would be less than $2 billion, easily affordable as a bond act, and far cheaper than trying to repair the system after a Katrina-like natural disaster.

I'm not entirely sure how letting one group operate the pipeline resolves the control and trust issue. Won't SoCal residents and Central Valley farmers be just as prone to mistrusting their NorCal neighbors?

Other opinions include this Alameda Times Star op-ed that focuses more on environmental issues, a version of which has appeared in several Bay Area papers:

Findings released at a recent scientific conference found a degradation of the wildlife populations at almost every level in the food chain...

There are multiple causes of the Delta's condition. New toxins in pesticides used to replace the longer-lasting older pesticides are proving to be harmful themselves. Accelerating development in San Joaquin County is pressuring the environment. A plan to export water south during the summer instead of the spring was supposed to prevent fish from being sucked into the turbines, but during the summer more of the fishes' food supply gets shipped away with the water.

And if that weren't enough, non-native invasive species are crowding out food sources more nutritional for fish.

Calfed Diagnosis

The Ventura County Star ran a piece on the increasing criticism of Calfed today. The article is peppered with various opinions on the issues with the agency:

"If I had do sum up why I believe CalFed has strayed from its course," former Gov. Pete Wilson said during an Aug. 25 hearing in Sacramento, "it would be: Process has replaced leadership."

"We have learned a tremendous amount about the delta in the past five years and most of it is really bad news," said Steve Hall, executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies.

Several of those who testified before the Little Hoover Commission pinpointed where they believe CalFed has gone astray. Most agreed that the peculiar structure of the program contributes to confusion and inertia. Overseen by the California Bay Delta Authority, which has no authority over the state and federal agencies responsible for water projects and environmental regulation, the program is funded piecemeal by periodic and unpredictable congressional appropriations, bond measures and state budget allocations.

The biggest single weakness in the program is the failure of CalFed administrators to recognize the financial limitations facing the state and federal governments and to decide which of the many delta projects are of highest priority, said Bennett Raley, former assistant secretary for water and science in the U.S. Department of Interior.

"To be blunt, I lost confidence in CalFed when it essentially refused to develop budgets that recognized unavoidable fiscal realities," Raley told the Little Hoover Commission. "You can shoot the messenger, but that will not change the harsh reality that CBDA must evolve away from an organization that acts as if infinite funding will magically appear into one that is able to prioritize and effectively spend whatever funding is provided."

The increasing number of articles reporting the issues with Calfed leave one wondering whether the issues with the Delta or the agency are the more serious.

CALFED setback

From the LA Times, by way of today's BC News:

The 5-year-old CalFed program, which governs California's single largest source of fresh water, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, has been dealt a setback by a state appeals court that ruled that parts of the program's environmental review were inadequate.

The opinion, released late Friday, concluded that the review was too narrow because it failed to consider the effects of reducing water exports from the delta to Central and Southern California. The CalFed program was created to balance the state's water needs with protection of the delta, including its fish.

"The implications are substantial," said longtime delta advocate Bill Jennings, chairman of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance. "It's certainly a huge victory that will perhaps dissuade us from continuing this headlong rush of increasing exports that have contributed to the delta's decline."

The Central Valley's RecordNet puts it more dramatically:

CALFED, the 5-year-old program that was designed to solve the state's water battles, should be almost entirely frozen and restudied because its founding environmental documents didn't adequately study whether less water should be sucked from the Delta and sent south, according to a state appeals court decision released late Friday.... "We're very happy. We're going to celebrate," said Dante Nomellini, attorney for the Central Delta Water Agency, which in 2000 sued over the CALFED program.

Auburn Dam?

An interesting story from bizwomen with some history about reviving Auburn dam:

If you didn't know it before [New Orleans], you should know by now that levees are no match for a major act of Mother Nature. But a lot of people have known this for a long time. And back in the days when our leaders thought big, back in the days when we built the University of California campuses and the interstate freeways, California had a plan.

In 1965, after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers determined that it would be the best protection against a major flood [in Sacramento], construction of the Auburn dam was authorized by the federal government. Groundbreaking ceremonies were held in 1968, and a giant concrete and steel foundation was poured.

The government bought land upstream from the dam to set aside as a new water reservoir. A 720-foot-tall bridge was built to carry traffic from one side to another. Construction got under way on the Folsom South Canal to incorporate the Auburn dam into the new enhanced flood control system.

In the mid-1970s, however, earthquake concerns were raised. The Bureau of Reclamation hired a panel to review the concerns, and it eventually came up with design modifications so the structure could withstand geologic shifts.

But it was the political ground that shifted. By the late 1970s, opposition to dam building had become a major tenet of the environmental movement. A debate raged for more than 20 years. Then in 1992 there was a meeting of the minds. Local congressmen Bob Matsui, Vic Fazio and John Doolittle (representing roughly the left, the center and the right of the American political spectrum) all agreed to go together to ask Congress for the funding to build the dam.

They were, first and foremost, concerned with the safety of the people of this region.

Alas, despite their unified front, no money was allocated. And the discussion faded.

You can read Doolittle's Q&A on the dam here. His info on the prospects of floods in Sacramento were quite revealing:

A review of Sacramento's flood protection after the 1986 flood found that Folsom Dam and Sacramento's 60-year old levee system provided Sacramento with just 78-year level protection, the least of any major urban community in America.

After the disastrous flooding in 1986 (which caused 13 deaths and $1 billion in damage), a review of Sacramento's flood protection by the US Army Corps of Engineers found that levees along the American River have about a 60% chance of failing during a 100-year flood event. Experts predict that there is a one-in-three chance that a flood larger than the floods in 1986 will occur in the next thirty years.

More Colorado River Negotiations

From trivalleycentral.com, a brief report on continued Colorado River negotiations.

"This is very, very intense for the department right now," Karen Smith, deputy director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, told last month's meeting of the area Groundwater Users Advisory Council. "Our director, Herb Guenther, is very engaged in our efforts to protect Arizona's allocation of the Colorado River.


"You can't pick up the newspaper, I think perhaps once every other week there's a story on the Colorado River and the tensions among the seven basin states. That has not abated.

"Week to week," Smith continued, "it seems to me that our director and our staff working on this are in telephone conversations with Nevada, with California, with the Upper Basin states, and so I would just simply share with you we are working very hard.

"I'm confident that at the end of the day we'll prevail and that we will have some kind of a working agreement among the seven Basin states, but we are preparing for any eventuality."

Continued negotiations were mentioned in the RockyMountainNews as well:

Colorado's stake in the river that bears its name would be protected under a broad-based proposal now being negotiated among seven Western states, even if a long-term drought forced it to temporarily reduce the amount of water it now delivers through Lake Powell to the thirsty cities that lie downstream.