To the last drop

Snowpack still low

2007-04-05T12:25:00.000-07:00

From redding.com, via today's BC:

The latest round of snow surveys -- done at the end of March and beginning of April -- shows the Sacramento River Basin at 46 percent of average for this time of year and the Trinity River Basin at 36 percent, according to the state Department of Water Resources. Statewide, the snowpack is at 39 percent of average.

Water, the west, and climate change

2007-04-04T11:20:00.000-07:00

There was a great piece in the NY Times today on water, the west, and climate:

Some $2.5 billion in water projects are planned or under way in four states, the biggest expansion in the West’s quest for water in decades. Among them is a proposed 280-mile pipeline that would direct water to Las Vegas from northern Nevada. A proposed reservoir just north of the California-Mexico border would correct an inefficient water delivery system that allows excess water to pass to Mexico.

In Yuma, Ariz., federal officials have restarted an idled desalination plant, long seen as a white elephant from a bygone era, partly in the hope of purifying salty underground water for neighboring towns.

The scramble for water is driven by the realities of population growth, political pressure and the hard truth that the Colorado River, a 1,400-mile-long silver thread of snowmelt and a lifeline for more than 20 million people in seven states, is providing much less water than it had.

According to some long-term projections, the mountain snows that feed the Colorado River will melt faster and evaporate in greater amounts with rising global temperatures, providing stress to the waterway even without drought. This year, the spring runoff is expected to be about half its long-term average. In only one year of the last seven, 2005, has the runoff been above average.

Everywhere in the West, along the Colorado and other rivers, as officials search for water to fill current and future needs, tempers are flaring among competing water users, old rivalries are hardening and some states are waging legal fights.

The whole thing is certainly worth a read.

One-sided dam?

2006-09-19T11:27:00.000-07:00

There was a piece yesterday with an interesting (though a bit one-sided) history of the Auburn Dam and Peripheral Canal in Rocklin and Roseville Today written by Dan Walters:

Elvis Presley was a young man when bureaucrats and politicians began talking about two large projects to control and use the water that in seasonal rain and snow storms dump on Northern California.

Building a high dam on the American River near Auburn, water engineers reasoned, would hold more of the seasonal flows for later use while protecting the Sacramento area from flooding. A "Peripheral Canal," meanwhile, was touted to divert water from the Sacramento River around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta for delivery to San Joaquin Valley farmers and Southern California homes and industries.

Construction actually began on both. Site clearance and foundation work for the Auburn Dam began in 1967 while the chunks of the 42-mile Peripheral Canal route were dug out in the 1970s to supply materials for constructing Interstate 5 south of Sacramento.

Both projects, however, fell victim to the rapidly expanding power of environmentalism in the 1970s and 1980s. The Jimmy Carter administration halted work on Auburn Dam, ostensibly to study its ability to withstand an earthquake, and while the Peripheral Canal project was pushed through the Legislature by then-Gov. Jerry Brown, a referendum sponsored by an odd-bedfellows alliance of environmentalists and San Joaquin Valley farmers led to voter rejection in 1982.

"fell victim to the rapidly expanding power of environmentalism"? Come on, Dan, tell us what you really think! It's sad to me that the author didn't attempt to represent more of the reasons for why the Auburn Dam, for instance, may not be a good idea.

Walters has Auburn axed by Carter decades ago "ostensibly to study its ability to withstand an earthquake". The equally one-sided story told by Friends of the River, for instance, puts it this way:

A multi-purpose Auburn Dam on the American River near Auburn would cost more than two billion dollars, be constructed on several earthquake faults, and flood nearly 50 miles of river canyon visited by more than a half million people a year for outdoor recreation.

In any case, these issues are never simple one-sided things, and it is incredibly frustrating that writers continue to paint them as such. It seems inevitable to lead to the "us versus them" mentality, instead of promoting cooperation between the different factions that instead continue to war over California's water.

2006-08-11T16:44:00.000-07:00

There are some great photos from a Colorado Water delivery to the Coachella Valley in this brief, general piece in The Desert Sun.

All over the West, and especially in the desert, water is a vital element we dare not take for granted. Yet even as California embarks on an endless quest for more water to provide for a rapidly swelling population, in our desert, water flows plentifully - for now.

Most of it is hidden from sight, 350 feet below ground in the Coachella Valley aquifer. But at times it's visible, by the millions of gallons, in a square mile and then some that's home to 18 percolation basins in the Whitewater River flood plain at Windy Point northwest of Palm Springs.

Operated by the Coachella Valley Water District, they make up one of three replenishment points for the giant underground reservoir. Two smaller facilities are in the Oasis and Desert Hot Springs areas.

Our water comes from far away, imported from the Colorado River by way of Lake Havasu, Ariz., in sporadic deliveries. One such delivery came in May, when these photos were taken.

The river water snakes its way through an aqueduct that pierces the mountain ranges north of the valley, then dips below ground and spills out at a rate of 300 cubic feet per second into the Whitewater River channel. (With three other delivery points in the aqueduct, that's half the potential delivery rate.) From there, it rushes south, slides under Interstate 10, turns southeast and empties into 700 acres of percolation ponds. At a rate of 2 acre-feet per acre per day, the water seeps into the aquifer, which feeds dozens of wells for municipalities and golf courses around the valley. The deepest well, 1,800 feet in the Indio area, doesn't reach the bottom of the aquifer.

Hetch-Hetchy restoration "feasible" but fabulously expensive

2006-08-01T18:09:00.000-07:00

From the Fresno Bee, via today's BC news:

Environmentalists heard exactly what they wanted to hear in the Department of Water Resources' study on draining Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park: The project is feasible.

Those opposed to poking a hole in O'Shaughnessy Dam heard exactly what they wanted: The project could cost up to $10 billion, an incredible figure.

In other words, the long-awaited DWR report hardly moved the debate forward. That's not to dismiss the report; it just means that those inclined to debate this daydream now have vaguely better numbers to bolster their arguments.

Those arguments resumed in press releases even before last Wednesday's report was released. A chief proponent of the plan, Environmental Defense, crowed that the Schwarzenegger administration had determined "it is feasible to restore Hetch Hetchy."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has called water from Hetch Hetchy every San Franciscan's birthright, said the study proves that the cost of draining Hetch Hetchy is "indefensible, particularly given the tremendous infrastructure needs facing our state." Hetch Hetchy is hardly a birthright, but Feinstein is correct that draining it would be very costly.

The report's authors made no recommendation, and emphatically pointed out that every aspect of the report suffered from too little concrete information. To get better information, DWR's chief hydrologist, Gary Bardini, estimated a more complete study would cost about $65 million. There was no mention of who would pay.

Colorado flows low again

2006-08-01T18:04:00.000-07:00

From the Las Vegas Sun, via today's BC news:

Water-system managers on the Colorado River had high hopes for high water at the beginning of this year.

Those hopes, like the snow on top the Rocky Mountains, are rapidly evaporating. The critical April-through-July runoff period in the mountains, which provides most of the water going to the river, is more than 25 percent off the average. The disappointing results make this the sixth year of the last seven in which flows were significantly below average.

"We still have a couple of weeks, but it looks like it is going to be a little disappointing," said Colleen Dwyer, a federal Bureau of Reclamation spokeswoman. The bureau is the manager of the lower basin of the Colorado River, including Lake Mead. Las Vegas and suburbs get more than 90 percent of their drinking water from Lake Mead.

Water managers and scientists earlier this year had predicted near-average runoff. Hopes were particularly high because the previous year had spectacular snowfall in some areas that at least temporarily reversed five crushing years of drought.

"Around about April or March, it was looking like another decent year," said Kelly Redmond, regional climatologist with the Desert Research Institute's Western Regional Climate Center in Reno. "Runoff was looking at being close to 100 percent. But we got warmer temperatures and less precipitation, not dramatically so, but still it was considerably drier and warmer than usual. Both those things hastened the demise of the snowpack and sent it up to the atmosphere rather than into the Colorado River."
....
The warmer temperatures could mean that precipitation, when it does come, would come more as rain, less as snow. That's bad news for water-systems dependent on the Colorado River because rain evaporates more quickly and puts less water into the river.

Ken Albright, resource director of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, water wholesaler for most of Clark County, said there is some good news in this water year, which officially ends Sept. 30.

"Upper basin reservoirs are in many instances now full," he said of the lakes high in the mountains. "That is a good sign for us."

Climate Change and California

2006-08-01T17:57:00.000-07:00

From the San Francisco Chronicle, via today's BC News:

California will become significantly hotter and drier by the end of the century, causing severe air pollution, a drop in the water supply, melting of 90 percent of the Sierra snowpack and up to six times more heat-related deaths in major urban centers, according to a sweeping study compiled with help from respected scientists from around the country.

The weather -- up to 10.5 degrees warmer by 2100 -- would make last month's heat wave look average. If industrial and vehicle emissions continue unabated, there could be up to 100 more days a year when temperatures hit 90 degrees or above in Los Angeles and 95 degrees or above in Sacramento. Both cities have about 20 days of such extreme heat now.

The good news: If emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are significantly curtailed, according to the report released Tuesday, the number of extremely hot days might only increase by half that amount.

The report, released by the California Environmental Protection Agency, comes from the California Climate Change Center, established three years ago by the California Energy Commission. Scripps Institution of Oceanography and UC Berkeley are responsible for the core research and about 75 scientists from universities, government agencies and nonprofit groups contributed to the report, which has been billed as a layperson's guide to technical documents prepared in support of initiatives to address global warming by Gov. Schwarzenegger and legislators.

Judge declines to block All American Canal proposal

2006-07-06T11:05:00.000-07:00

From the San Diego Union Tribune, via B&C:

In a case with implications across the arid West and into Mexico, a federal judge has refused to block a controversial water conservation plan aimed at providing San Diego with a vast new supply from the Imperial Valley.

The ruling this week by Nevada federal Judge Philip Pro lifts a potential legal hurdle to the $251 million project that involves building a lined 23-mile section of the All-American Canal near the Mexicali border. The project could save 56,000 acre feet of water – enough for about 112,000 households – from seeping into the ground every year. But, in doing so, Mexican farmers will lose that groundwater they have counted on for decades.

“This is a battle for the future of our city, of our region – and today's ruling only strengthens our resolve to halt the canal project,” said Juan Ignacio Guajardo, a member of a business group called Consejo de Desarollo Económico de Mexicali.

Describing many of the claims of damage as “speculative,” Pro's order denies a petition by two U.S. environmental organizations and the Mexicali business group to block the project.

More canal lining projects proposed

2006-04-28T08:04:00.000-07:00

From the NC Times, via today's BC Water News:

Saying the water it would bring to San Diego County over the next century was too cheap to pass up, regional water leaders voted Thursday to spend an additional $38.3 million on a long-discussed project to line a canal in Imperial Valley.

Four North County water agencies opposed the expenditure, saying it wasn't quite as cheap as it looked.

San Diego County Water Authority board members also voted to spend $4 million more on a similar lining project in Coachella Valley.

The two actions mean the Water Authority, and county water ratepayers, will spend at least $134.3 million ---- on top of the $219.3 million the state is giving the Water Authority for the projects ---- to complete the projects for a total of $353.6 million.

Officials say the water that the canal-lining projects will bring to county residents will be the cheapest, most reliable portion of the county's water supply for most of the next 110 years.

"It is dirt-cheap water," Halla Razak, the Water Authority's Colorado River program manager, said during a break in Thursday's meeting. "I mean, trying to find new sources of water right now is like ---- not possible."

SoCal paper pushes peripheral canal

2006-04-25T09:08:00.000-07:00

An LA Times piece on Simitian's resurrection of the Peripheral Canal proposal does it's best to plug the proposed "facility", painting the Senator as courageously ready to bring the crusade for the canal back to the main stream:

Simitian is doing what no one else in California has dared in the last 20 years: reviving the debate over a more direct and secure way of getting Northern California water through or around the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California.... Simitian says he's in a position to lead such a crusade: He's a northerner with a 100% pro-environment voting record and no prior involvement in the state's water wars, thus, no axes to grind. No one else seems to want the job. And somebody has to do it.

The Times pushes the reasons for the canal, and paints environmentalists who are supporting the canal as the more "thoughtful" ones:

But since 1982, the need for a transfer facility has become far more necessary and justifiable — though some have called for a much smaller pipeline than the Peripheral Canal. It's now recognized that a massive failure of delta levees, by flooding or earthquake, could shut off the supply of water to Southern California for months or longer. The transfer facility also would give the south better quality water. In the longer range, climate change could force flows of salty ocean water to back up into the delta and the pumps, contaminating the south's drinking water. "We are one dramatic event away from disaster," says Simitian — a view now shared by many, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

More thoughtful environmentalists are coming around to the need for a facility. Even without a canal, and after spending hundreds of millions of dollars for environmental restoration, the delta is a mess. Fish life suddenly is plummeting, and no one knows why. Simitian's bill would impose a modest surcharge on delta water use to pay for conservation programs, which could lead to a reduction in the amount of water that has to be shipped south.

Looking for a balanced piece on the peripheral canal is like looking for a needle in a haystack. I suppose the best one can do is to read Southern and Northern papers on this brewing water war over a proposed massive civil engineering work with a nasty history.

EDIT

Two reader responses in today's LA Times illustrate the way this debate seems to take place; with both parties talking past each other. One response says:

The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta's decline has been accelerating; it started when water deliveries to the south commenced and has dropped with each increase.

Another reader comes a bit closer to the point, but reverts to rhetoric and pie-in-the-sky:

The Sacramento levees must be repaired to spare the people living in the area a terrible disaster; as for who gets the water, Los Angeles needs to stop stealing from its neighbors and begin a major overhaul of its own system.

We need a system that doesn't funnel most of our rainwater into the Los Angeles River and doesn't depend on a few reservoirs that lose water to evaporation. We need to let the river run wild where we can safely do so, and rededicate green spaces and wetlands, allowing water to settle into underground aquifers.

Part of the point of the original Times piece was that most (two-thirds) of California's population get some of their water from the Delta. This critical statewide water resource is indeed in danger from levee collapse.

Unfortunately, the way Bill Stall penned the original Times piece, it was full of typical SoCal-centric thinking, which is bound to simply move the debate to what I've come to expect from California water politics; people yelling past each other and no one listening.

Potential third parties fight new transfer rules

2006-04-23T09:52:00.000-07:00

From the ChicoER, some from Sacramento Valley Environmental Caucus are questioning proposed efforts to make water transfers easier:

A regional plan for Northern California water is on the drawing board with a fast-paced schedule in hope to garner funding as soon as next year.

The plan looks to increase water supply reliability and availability, protect surface water and groundwater aquifers, make water available for transfers, improve the environment and improve the quantity and timing of flows to the Delta.

About 25 people gathered last week in Colusa to discuss the work ahead. Local environmentalists said they were there to make sure their concerns are heard.

The meeting was led by Northern California Water Association, a group that represents many agricultural irrigation districts.

Some environmentalists, most pointedly the Sacramento Valley Environmental Watershed Caucus, have been critical of the process, fearing that plans in the works to manage water are meant to benefit agriculture and speed up water transfers without proper attention to the needs of the environment.

...

Jim Brobeck, of the environmental caucus, said in order to be credible, the plan needs to take into consideration the suggestions by the caucus.

One issue at the top of the caucus' list is water transfers discussed in the plan.

Brobeck and others in the group, aren't comfortable with the idea of water being sold outside the county to benefit those who have water rights, as opposed to the community as a whole.

The caucus "is concerned about impacts and will insist that the best available scientific inquiry into the hydrodynamics of the aquifer system be an integral component" of the plan, Brobeck said.

Third parties unite to fight canal lining

2006-04-22T10:45:00.000-07:00

In their 1992 study entitled Water Transfers in the West, a National Research Council states that

[t]he impacts of transfers and the parties affected are many, diverse, and potentially substantial... [t]hird parties ... can include other water rights holders, agriculture, environment, urban interests, ethnic communities, rural communities, and federal tax payers.

The Council goes on to consider a number of case studies, ending with the 1989 Imperial Irrigation District transfer to MWD, which it hails as a win-win arrangement.

Apparently, a similar transfer between Imperial and the San Diego County Water Authority is far from a win-win situation, and is hitting road block after road block erected by irate third parties. The plan includes the lining of 23 miles of the All American Canal, to prevent the loss of an estimated 70,000 acre-feet per year.

Thursday, San Diego Union Tribune reports that:

With construction just weeks away, opponents of a plan to line the All-American Canal in Imperial County filed suit Tuesday to stop the project, alleging its design presents a peril to humans and animals.

The lawsuit in Imperial County Superior Court opens a legal front against the multimillion-dollar project, which involves replacing a leaky 23-mile stretch of the canal and transferring the saved water to San Diego County.

As the North County Times reports, this is hardly the first setback:

[R]ecently opened bids submitted by construction companies that are competing to build the largest portion of the project came in up to $40 million higher than expected.

Meanwhile, a Superior Court judge is scheduled to hold a hearing Monday on another lawsuit ---- filed last July ---- that also hopes to derail the canal lining. Officials said it could take several weeks for the court to issue a ruling in that suit.

Among the many concerns are those of Mexican farmers, who have grown to rely on water seeping out of the aqueduct; environmentalists are also concerned that the seeping water supports Mexican wetlands.

Governor to exercise more control of CALFED?

2006-04-21T21:53:00.000-07:00

From RecordNet.Com:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposes to wield more influence over a coalition criticized for coming up short of nearly everyone's expectations in its mission to balance the Delta's health with the state's water needs.

Under a 10-year plan announced Thursday, the group of state and federal agencies known as CALFED will be placed under state Secretary of Resources Michael Chrisman, while its advisory board will be replaced by a group of appointees handpicked by the governor.

As with anything involving CALFED, the move is controversial and contested by someone, as the RecordNet piece continues:

Sen. Michael Machado, a Linden Democrat who chairs a Senate subcommittee on Delta resources, was "quite disappointed" with the restructuring plan, his spokeswoman said.

"Today's announcement was just a reintroduction of old ideas using old data that are not accepted and probably will not be accepted by the Legislature," Jody Fuji said.

Dante Nomellini, an attorney for the Central Delta Water Agency, said he didn't like the idea of getting rid of CALFED's public authority, which included legislative appointees representing members of the public and environmental groups.

"It sounds to me like they're going to throw it back to the back room, out of the public eye," Nomellini said.

One of authority's 24 board members, Marc Holmes, also criticized the move. With the new structure, "we get a single perspective, the state's perspective," he said.

But Holmes, who is also a restoration manager for the San Francisco Bay Institute, an environmental group concerned about the Delta, agreed that accountability should improve under the governor's plans.

Holmes was also optimistic that the legislation for restructuring CALFED would be carried by Assemblywoman Lois Wolk, D-Davis, who is generally supported by environmental groups.

"I'm hopeful she will institute ... some meaningful reforms that will actually improve it rather than consolidate power under the governor's office," he said.

Canal proposal and backlash

2006-04-21T20:00:00.000-07:00

According to the ContraCostaTimes last week, State Senator Joe Simitian has brought the peripheral canal issue back to the public eye:

The Delta has degraded so badly that it is time to consider building a highly controversial canal to protect water supplies, a Bay Area legislator says.

State Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, has offered legislation that for the first time in more than 20 years asks state lawmakers to consider a version of the Peripheral Canal.

"It's the Peripheral Canal. It's the death knell for the Delta. It's just a water grab," said Dante John Nomellini Sr., manager and counsel for the Central Delta Water Agency.

If Simitian succeeds, there will be nothing to prevent water quality in the Delta from worsening, Nomellini said.

Simitian's canal bill would place more control in the hands of Northern Californians, biologists and environmentalists than the original canal plan.

Nevertheless, it appears bound to resurrect the bitterly divisive fight that ended when overwhelming opposition in Northern California defeated the canal in 1982.

An editorial today in the Contra Costa Times reflected some of the expected backlash in the form of polarizing rhetoric:

Sen. Joe Simitian, Democrat, of Santa Clara County, as reported by the Times, has introduced legislation promoting construction of the Peripheral Canal.

Similar legislation was defeated in the statewide referendum of 1982 by Santa Clara and 49 of the other counties of California.

The canal, sponsored by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the water export contractors of the Central Valley, has only one purpose -- to remove more and higher quality water directly from the central Delta for delivery to the export pumps.

....

If necessary, we must be prepared again to establish the foundation for a referendum to set aside any legislation promoting a peripheral canal.

First time for everything

2006-04-19T14:06:00.000-07:00

From the Central Valley Business Times:

The State Water Project now says that it will supply 100 percent of the water requested by its customers for the first time ever.

LA Weekly on Owens River dust

2006-03-22T15:43:00.000-08:00

There's a nice (though lengthy) narrative in the LA Weekly on the LA - Owens River saga... great pictures and lots of dust mitigation coverage, too.

Beyond the arid vacancy of the Mojave Desert, U.S. 395 enters the austere majesty of the Owens Valley. To the east are the reddish peaks of the Cosos. The snow-covered Sierra Nevada rise along the western side. For miles ahead, the view seems endless, except for the Inyo-White range, which curls around the northeast edge of the valley. This is one of the good days, when the air is clear and crisp.

Midway up the valley, near the town of Olancha, lie the remains of Owens Lake. Back in 1904, immigrant water baron William Mulholland arrived here with Frederick Eaton, the retired L.A. mayor and water hound. They had ambitions to solve a drought and expand the city into the San Fernando Valley. In seizing their prize they could not have pictured the destruction they would cause by diverting water to Los Angeles.

Concrete lining far from silver for Mexicans

2006-03-17T09:11:00.000-08:00

From Capital Press:

Despite its name, the All-American Canal has been leaking water to the Mexican side of the desert border for more than 60 years, nourishing alfalfa, onion and cotton crops that might otherwise wither.

Now the U.S. government is preparing to line the earthen channel with concrete. Mexican farmers’ loss will be California’s gain: Scarce water that will no longer be able to seep away instead will help flush toilets and water lawns more than 100 miles west in San Diego.

And that would affect thousands of families whose fields cover thousands of acres around Mexicali, an industrial city of 800,000 that is gobbling up farmland on its outskirts. That’s because the lining would prevent the replenishment of about 100 rural wells they use, according to critics of the project.

Nazario Ortiz, who farms 100 acres about three miles inside Mexico, worries that his hardscrabble community won’t survive.

“Everything comes from the canal, so everything is going to be ruined,” said Ortiz, 46, who lives in a village where old pickup trucks and unleashed dogs share dirt roads. “How are people going to make a living?”

It will be hard, Ortiz says, to stop his sons – ages 22, 18 and 16 – from illegally crossing the border to join relatives in Los Angeles.

...

The project to line 23 miles of the canal is slated to begin this summer and be completed in 2008. Project managers expect that the refit canal will capture enough water for 135,000 new homes, mostly in San Diego and its suburbs.

It seems that legally, Mexico has indeed been using water, so one could imagine the prior appropriation law coming into play... though of course Californians would claim that the water was never actually ever appropriated to Mexicans.

It is certainly true that water transfers are all about third party impacts.

Third parties sue over canal lining project

2006-02-21T17:10:00.000-08:00

From ENR.Com:

By the end of May, California’s Imperial Irrigation District will award contracts estimated at $136 million for construction of a 50-ft-deep, 23-mile-long canal to replace parts of a canal built in 1942. It is the largest part of a $219-million program to eliminate seepage in the transport of Colorado River water to Southern California’s Imperial and Coachella valleys. Completion of the program is set for 2008....

Not everyone is excited about the project. A consortium of Mexican and California-based environmental and economic-development groups sued for deprivation of water rights because seepage would no longer recharge the Mexicali Aquifer. Seven of the eight charges were dismissed by U.S. Chief District Judge Philip Pro on Feb. 8 for lack of standing. The judge did not set a date to hear arguments on the validity of the environmental documents.

Construction on the All-American Canal will start in June and should be complete by December 2008. The $83-million Coachella Canal will be complete in April 2007.

Water symptomatic of California crisis

2006-02-18T09:22:00.000-08:00

From Scripps Howard News Service, a big picture piece:

California's growth and ever-increasing diversity _ it's already the most complex society in the history of humankind _ dissipate social cohesion and undermine the consensus necessary for political decision-making... California faces any number of long-range political issues that stem from its rapid population growth and equally dramatic social and economic evolution, but those same factors also block responses to those issues.

How does this play out in water?

As with highways and other infrastructure systems, California is living off the decisions that earlier generations of voters and politicians made on water during the two decades that followed World War II. We have one of the planet's most extensive systems for moving water from where it originates _ in the mountains of Northern California, mostly _ to where it's needed and used. The federal government, the state government and local water agencies operate pieces of the system.

It has, for the most part, served us well, but with age, changes in the farm economy (which consumes much of the developed water), population growth and other factors, the system needs expansion and upgrading. A major problem is that the State Water Plan, first written nearly a half-century ago, has never been completed. Most of the water that's being shipped from Northern California to Southern California via the California Aqueduct is still being pulled out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which is suffering much environmental degradation as a result, rather than being routed around the Delta, as the Water Plan envisioned.

The Department of Water Resources has just unveiled a new version of the Water Plan, emphasizing regional cooperation on water-related issues, a more activist approach by the state government (including a big chunk of Schwarzenegger's infrastructure bonds) and a fresh look at the Delta's problems. It's a welcome start after decades of wheel spinning, but water, like government in general, suffers from a lack of broad consensus.

Those who want to develop more water and reservoirs to hold it have been locked in an epic, decades-long battle with those who believe that water development despoils the environment and encourages more population growth. In the 1980s, the clash derailed the Peripheral Canal that was supposed to carry water around the Delta, and later it stalled the much-trumpeted "CalFed process" that was to find cooperative solutions to the Delta's problems without a Peripheral Canal. On those and other water-related issues, the lack of consensus led directly to political stalemate.

DWR director Lester Snow, a veteran of the CalFed wars, is still hopeful that with a carrot-and-stick approach, the state can persuade local and regional water agencies to come together _ but he and Schwarzenegger must first persuade the Legislature to even try to resolve its own conflicts, as well as those of outside interest groups. Water is, indeed, symptomatic of California's larger crisis of governance.

Border canal project backlash

2006-02-16T16:26:00.000-08:00

From KPHO Phoenix:

Another rift may be developing between the U-S and Mexico.
The governor of the Mexican state of Baja California accuses the U-S of inaction on a controversial border canal project. He warns of a political backlash in Mexico if this country fails to act.

At issue are plans to line 23 miles of the 80-mile All-American Canal with concrete starting this year.

The canal directs water from the Colorado River to California farms. A lot of water is lost to seepage and the project aims to reclaim that water for American farmers. But Mexican farmers, wetlands and wildlife depend heavily on the water, leading to strong opposition.

New MWD GM

2006-02-14T17:27:00.000-08:00

From The Mercury News:

The general counsel of the giant Metropolitan Water District of Southern California was announced Tuesday as its new general manager.

Jeffrey Kightlinger, 46, is the new head of the cooperative of 26 cities and water agencies that serves 18 million people in six Southern California counties.

The MWD imports water from the Colorado River and Northern California to supplement local supplies.

Kightlinger replaces Dennis B. Underwood, who died of cancer in November at age 60.

"Assuming the duties of general manager for Jeff I think is an easy transition, there won't be any learning curve," said John V. Foley, a board director.

Kightlinger told reporters during a conference call that he wanted to focus on the Colorado River and completing a recent seven-state agreement on sharing that resource, especially in times of drought.

He said the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta also was a top priority and called moving water through the delta "a tremendous challenge" for the MWD.

The MWD also must look for growth through better management of regional supplies through conservation and recycling and, in the future, will look toward ocean desalinization, Kightlinger said.

Kightlinger, a La Canada Flintridge resident, becomes the 13th general manager in the agency's 78-year history and he will have an annual base salary of $260,000.

Los Vaqueros controversies

2006-02-13T11:59:00.000-08:00

From InsideBayArea:

NESTLED in an hilly area between Brentwood and Livermore that once was home to farmers and ranchers, Los Vaqueros took on an entirely new role when the Contra Costa Water District opened a reservoir there in 1998.

And now, eight years later, Los Vaqueros Reservoir may be poised to take on another new, expanded role — one that is touted as bigger and better.

The reservoir could be expanded by as much as five times its current capacity, potentially becoming a major player for the Bay Area water industry and resource for water needs.

However, the plan is not without its detractors, who say that what now is local water will be shipped elsewhere and that there may be significant impacts to the surrounding area, the environment and recreation opportunities.

Contra Costa County voters authorized the $450 million project in 1988, a massive undertaking that included construction of a 192-foot dam, pumping system, pipelines and renovations and improvementsto Vasco Road, which has entrances to the reservoir.

The district built the reservoir to address seasonal problems that occur when the San Francisco Bay salinity rises and affects the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta water quality, as well as to provide for water storage, flood control and recreation.

The catalyst for the expansion discussion arose after CALFED, the joint state-federal cooperation formed in 1994 to address Bay-Delta water issues, pegged the reservoir as one of five potential sites to expand water storage in the state just two years after Los Vaqueros opened.

Botched Delta decision

2006-02-10T11:14:00.000-08:00

From RecordNet, via today's BC:

State water officials botched a water rights decision six years ago that granted water exporters the right to use each other's pumps to keep California Delta waters healthy, a state appeals court ruled Thursday.

Plaintiffs in the case, which included several local water agencies and environmental groups, had argued the state water board's decision in 2000 to allow exporters to coordinate their water releases prevented enough water to be sent down the San Joaquin River to support salmon runs and dilute high salt levels in the Delta.

The Bureau of Reclamation and the state Department of Water Resources operate large pumps near Tracy that deliver Delta water to two-thirds of Californians, mostly farmers and residents in the southern part of the state. But Delta farmers say exports contribute to salty water that costs them millions of dollars per year in low crop yields.

The complex ruling involved eight lawsuits grouped together targeting the state Water Resources Control Board, which issued the water rights to the exporters in 2000. The opinion from a three-judge panel in Sacramento on Thursday reverses, in part, a 2003 lower court ruling that found in favor of the water board.

Thursday's ruling puts pressure on the state water board to enforce tighter water quality standards on water exporters, said Dante Nomellini, an attorney for the Central Delta Water Agency, one of the plaintiffs.

Nomellini said the board's water rights decision undermined its earlier water quality control plan, calling it a "back-room deal" favoring exporters.

"They can change their water quality control plan, but they have to have a proper basis for it," he said. "It's a good step toward trying to achieve adequate water supply on the San Joaquin side for both fish and farmers."

State Water Resources Board senior attorney Barbara Leidigh said she was "fairly happy" about the 285-page opinion, written by Appeals Judge Ronald Robie, a former Department of Water Resources director.

Leidigh said the panel disagreed with the trial court on only one issue - that the board's decision prevented enough water from reaching the Delta. Otherwise, she said, "it's generally positive."

The water board has not decided whether to appeal, she said

Budget cuts and California water

2006-02-10T09:55:00.000-08:00

From the LA Times:

The budget that President Bush sent to Congress on Monday contains no money to help states pay for jailing illegal immigrants and cuts funds for clean-water projects, both major concerns to California officials.

... Elsewhere in the Bush budget was a proposal to cut $200 million from an $890-million program that reduces pollution discharged into oceans, lakes and rivers. California's share of the clean water fund in fiscal 2005 was about $82 million.

"That's a big cut, and we're concerned about it," said Stephen K. Hall, the executive director of the Assn. of California Water Agencies.

However, the budget provides $38.6 million, a slight increase from this year's funding, for the CalFed Bay-Delta Program, a state-federal attempt to balance the interests of cities, farmers and the environment over the state's major watershed, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Feinstein cheered the nearly $164 million allocated for flood-control projects in the state but expressed disappointment about the lack of funding to strengthen levees in the delta to "prevent a catastrophic flood that would cut off water supply to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California."

EDIT (above posted Feb 07)

According to CapitalPress, however, there are both good and bad aspects of the budget, at least for California agriculture:

President George Bush’s federal budget, if adopted by Congress as proposed, would be a mixed blessing for California agriculture.

The budget would increase funds for flood control projects, which have become a renewed focus of concern after levee breaks in New Orleans and winter storms this year illustrated how precarious the state’s levees remain.

But that threat is never far from Californians’ minds, as every few years high water and levee breaks cause devastation here.

California’s aging levees are a concern for agriculture and the ever-growing, ever-urbanizing population of the Central Valley and other traditionally rural areas of the state.

The levees are crucial: They provide flood protection, irrigation and drinking water to much of the state.

Unfortunately, the funds allocated in the budget seem geared to protect population centers, not ag economy centers.

For example, the president’s budget would allocate $65 million for flood control projects in the Sacramento area with $47 million of that slated for projects along the American River.

Last year Congress only allocated $39 million to this project, so an increase would be beneficial to the region.

The budget also includes $25 million for the Success Dam on the Tule River just east of Porterville. The 45-year-old earthen flood-control dam does not meet modern earthquake standards and is being replaced by a concrete dam for an estimated $200 million.

Another $54 million is proposed for flood control on the Santa Ana River in the highly urbanized portion of Southern California.

Surprisingly, the president didn’t allocate any funds for levee restoration in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Perhaps he thinks Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s bond proposal is sufficient to care for what is really the federal government’s levee problem in the delta.

The budget also only provides less than a third of the $31 million requested by Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, for a flood protection project in Napa County.

This budget allocates $9 million for flood protection in the area that last month suffered more than $100 million in damage in the city of Napa alone due to winter storm flooding.

The floods caused an estimated $33 million in damage to about 200 acres of vineyards and ag equipment in addition to 1,200 homes.

However, the CalFed Bay Delta program did get some increased funding, a $1.6 million bump to $38.6 million, even though the overall Bureau of Reclamation budget has been reduced.

Self-sufficiency?

2006-02-10T09:42:00.000-08:00

From SignOnSanDiego:

Five years ago, the Olivenhain Municipal Water District was in the same predicament as some neighboring agencies are now – agencies that have asked their customers to let their lawns and gardens go dry during the current water shortage.

Today, Olivenhain is among districts that provide water to other agencies in a time of need because it built a water-treatment plant and dam over those five years.

Becoming more self-sufficient in water has become a top priority for the San Diego County Water Authority and many water districts, which recall the dire times in the early 1990s when a years-long drought forced across-the-board cuts.

“The path Olivenhain chose – to construct a dam and a treatment plant – is seeing us through,” David McCollom, Olivenhain's general manager, said yesterday.

Olivenhain serves parts of Carlsbad, San Marcos, Encinitas, San Diego and Solana Beach, as well as 4S Ranch, Fairbanks Ranch and Elfin Forest.

McCollom said the district has not had to draw water from the reservoir yet this winter, but it is there if needed. The reservoir, which the district shares with the County Water Authority, gets practically no water from its surroundings and is entirely dependent on a piped-in supply.

The district purchases untreated water from the authority and treats it at its plant in Elfin Forest.

Olivenhain's plant, which opened in 2001, can treat 34 million gallons a day. McCollom said the district is providing about 5 million gallons a day to Carlsbad and the Vallecitos Municipal Water District, which do not have their own plants.

Conflict of interest?

2006-02-10T09:40:00.000-08:00

From the LATimes:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's new chief of staff, who is spearheading a $9-billion plan to improve California's water system, was paid $120,000 last year by a Los Angeles developer seeking to build a massive water storage project under the Mojave Desert.

According to interviews and her financial disclosure statement, Susan P. Kennedy earned $10,000 per month in 2005 as a consultant to Cadiz Real Estate, operated by her longtime friend Keith Brackpool.

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For nearly a decade, the British-born Brackpool has tried unsuccessfully to put together a public-private partnership that would use the aquifers under his San Bernardino property to store water for use during droughts.

As Schwarzenegger's chief of staff, Kennedy is responsible for advancing the governor's proposals to fix the state's crumbling infrastructure through government projects and public-private partnerships. Part of that plan would raise $9 billion in bond money to improve the state's water storage and management system.

Paul S. Ryan, an attorney with the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, D.C., said Californians should be skeptical of "revolving door" arrangements that bring people from the private sector into government positions that could potentially benefit their former industries.

Such appointments, although common, "create the appearance of impropriety," he said. "It would be wise for such an individual to recuse himself or herself from any dealings that would add to the public's cynicism about the government."

A representative for Cadiz did not return calls seeking comment. Margita Thompson, a spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger, said Kennedy has no conflict of interest.

"If something on the project were to come up, she would recuse herself," Thompson said. "But under no current scenario would the project come up during state business, because it's a private project."

Cadiz came close in 2002 to finalizing a deal with the Metropolitan Water District to store Colorado River water for the agency during wet years that it would sell back in dry years. The proposal was defeated in a close vote of the MWD board over concerns about Cadiz's finances and about the environmental impact of the project.

Seven state Colorado River plan

2006-02-10T09:38:00.000-08:00

From SignOnSanDiego:

California may soon be able to store a vast emergency pool of water that could help carry the San Diego region through prolonged dry spells – without building an expensive new reservoir or damming a river.

Seven Western states have sent U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton a plan listing a range of unprecedented strategies to stretch Colorado River supplies, including banking more California water in Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam in Nevada.

“It significantly reduces the possibilities of shortages,” Jim Taylor, an attorney for the San Diego County Water Authority, said yesterday.

The Colorado management plan also would extend a deadline that requires California to quit siphoning more than its share of the river by 2015. Instead, the tentative agreement would allow the state to take more water through 2025 if it's available.

Other components of the plan include: cloud seeding to encourage snow; desalination to make seawater drinkable; idling farmland; water trading between states; a schedule of water-delivery cuts if levels at lakes Mead and Powell drop; and a modest-sized new reservoir in the Imperial Valley that would be financed by Nevada.

If Norton accepts the proposal, as expected, California would be allowed to keep reserves of up to 1.5 million acre-feet in Lake Mead, or enough to serve 3 million households a year. The San Diego County Water Authority, supplied by the Los Angeles-based Metropolitan Water District, receives about 60 percent of its water from the Colorado and serves slightly more than 1 million households.

Cardoza pushes Delta improvement program

2006-02-09T11:03:00.000-08:00

From the American Chronicle, by Congressman Dennis Cardoza:

California is facing a critical challenge: Our state needs a safe and reliable water supply for our farms, cities and businesses that will keep pace with our surging population and trillion-dollar economy. We need a vision for our state's future, and must expand our water storage capacity by building and expanding reservoirs and investing in innovative groundwater storage projects. However, because of regulatory hurdles, we must recognize that it will take years for these projects to come to fruition.

Therefore, we must have an effective strategy for the near-term. As we pursue these critical new water projects, we must also look at ways to better utilize our existing water resources and infrastructure. Two-thirds of California receives its water from the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Given its importance, we need better ways to manage the Delta's water delivery system, as well as the water itself. In essence, we need to make every drop count. That's why the South Delta Improvements Program (SDIP), a major component of the CALFED program authorized by the Congress in 2004, is so important.

The California Department of Water Resource's South Delta Improvements Program is a responsible and balanced approach to integrating our existing water management infrastructure in the Delta. It will improve our state's water supply reliability and quality. It will also improve the overall health of the Bay-Delta ecosystem, and benefit the Westside. The program will construct seasonal tidal gates to protect fish and improve water circulation and quality in the Delta, dredge select Delta channels to improve water deliveries for local farmers, and allow modest increases to the State Water Project deliveries.

Currently, the state is constrained in its ability to use surplus water supplies. We have the infrastructure to move the water, but until SDIP is approved, the state's water managers cannot fully or responsibly use the existing system. Significantly, SDIP will provide the flexibility to shift the timing of water deliveries when surplus is available and when it is environmentally safe. SDIP will help protect important Delta environmental resources. Specifically, it will help protect fish species in the Delta channels. At the same time, by providing the state greater flexibility in how and when SDIP operates its system of pumps, fish are granted greater protections.

SDIP is supported by a statewide, broad coalition of water, agriculture, business, planning organizations, and local government officials, including the San Luis-Delta Mentoda Water Authority, Agricultural Council of California, Association of California Water Agencies, California Chamber of Commerce and Western Growers Association.

Water plan discussed

2006-02-08T07:28:00.000-08:00

A piece in today's Mercury Register presents several of the myriad opinions concerning DWR's California Water Plan released last month. Two environmentalists (one the former Deputy Director of the California DWR) and the manager of an irrigation district are interviewed give their responses to the plan.

The first response was from environmentalist Jonas Minton, senior project manager for the Planning and Conservation League and former Deputy Director of DWR, who hopes the state will push for conserving water, not building new storage structures:

[Minton]said his group is hopeful that the governor will embrace [the parts of the plan calling for conservation and recycling] and make them a priority. Before joining the PCL, Minton was deputy director of the California Department of Water Resources.

"This state water plan is a marked departure from all of the previous updates," Minton said. "For the first time they looked at three different alternative futures, which they call scenarios."

"One of the scenarios, if current conservation trends continue, the actual total demand in the state of California could be less than today, even with 12 million more Californians," Minton said.

This latter opinion was discussed at length in Argus last week. But the DWR isn't exactly bent on refusing to build new storage facilities, at least not based on Lester Snow's presentation to California Congress near the end of last month; the controversial Sites Reservoir plan is one example.

Steve Evans, Conservation Director for Friends of the River, agrees that new storage projects are not the way to go.

He said the water efficiency chapter of the plan shows different levels of investment in urban water use efficiency programs. The figures show that spending money to save water is a better investment than investing in new storage, he said.

Evans said he thinks politicians who support new storage aren't distinguishing the difference between storage and yield. While a project could store a large amount of water, how much could be used in any given year is minute compared with the costs, he said.

Evans also thinks the state's approach to charge increased water fees unfairly focuses on urban water users, when agriculture should be paying more of its fair share, Evans said.

Not everyone agrees with the assumption that conservation is the entire solution, however.

Van Tenney, Water Manager of Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District is referred to as saying that the vast majority of water used to irrigate is recoverable, in that the 90% or so of water applied to the crops is not absorbed by the plant roos, but eventually seeps into underlying aquifers.

"That's why we call that kind of seepage a recoverable loss," Tenney said.

Except in coastal areas where fresh water applied to farms could end up mixing with salt water. In the Sacramento valley, "80-90 percent of it is a recoverable loss," he said.

"Water is used over and over and over again before it exits the system."

"There is no cost benefit to recovering or installing conservation measures to prevent recoverable losses," Tenney said.

Regarding the Update 2005, because it provides so many possible scenarios, it shows the state leaders "are scared to death to lead," Tenney said.

Arizona's perspective on the agreement

2006-02-07T09:23:00.000-08:00

From the AZ Republic:

Call it the most significant Colorado River agreement since the 1922 compact that set specific water allocations for Arizona and six other western states.

Pressured by a six-year-long drought and Interior Secretary Gale Norton, the seven states crafted a thoughtful and reasonable plan last week on how the river should be managed in times of drought.

This was no easy task.

Western water wars are legendary, and the fact that Arizona, California and Nevada in the Lower Basin and Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming in the Upper Basin could avoid protracted and costly litigation is a testament to their desire to work through differences.

"It truly merits the term historic to get all seven states on the same page endorsing concepts to deal with some really tough issues," said George Renner, a member of the board that oversees the Central Arizona Project.

From Arizona's standpoint, the toughest challenge in achieving an agreement has been its junior status.

Junior status was the price Arizona paid in 1968 for congressional approval of the CAP: in times of shortage, the CAP's annual supply of 1.5 million acre-feet of Colorado River water would take the first hit.

The pact doesn't change that. But it does try to ensure that any shortage declaration will have, in Renner's term, a "soft landing" and Arizona will have sufficient advance warning.

What cuts does Arizona actually take?

This measure of protection is achieved by establishing guidelines pegged to water elevation levels at Lake Mead, which stand at 1,140 feet above sea level. If the lake dips to 1,075 feet, water deliveries would drop by 400,000 acre-feet.

If the levels were to fall to 1,025 feet, the hit would be 600,000 acre-feet, the amount that about 1.5 million people use in a year. Any drop below that floor would trigger discussions with the secretary of the Interior to find more common ground.

Arizona would bear the brunt of the shortage, about 70 percent, with Nevada and Mexico shouldering the rest. It's important to keep in mind that drought modeling puts the probability of any shortage over the next 20 years at only 5 percent.

Water rights sold

2006-02-06T15:27:00.000-08:00

From the Appeal-Democrat.Com, via today's BC:

Natomas Central Mutual Water Co., which supplies water to agricultural customers in Sacramento and Sutter counties, will sell the rights to 5,000 acre-feet of water from the Sacramento River.

The deal was announced Friday by buyer San Dimas-based American States Water Co., parent company of Golden State Water Co. Natomas and Golden State are working together to supply water to the planned Measure M development in south Sutter County.

Golden State raised its profile in Sutter County in November by donating 450 turkeys to charity.

Natomas will sell to American States Utility Services Inc., a subsidiary of American States Water Co., the right to divert 5,000 acre-feet of water per year in perpetuity.

Natomas Central is a private, not-for-profit corporation representing the interests of its 280 member/shareholders. For more than 80 years, it has provided irrigation water, at cost, to its shareholders for agricultural use.

DWR and Rec must solve Delta salt problem

2006-02-02T17:59:00.000-08:00

From Record:

The governor's office is pressuring state water officials to resolve a dispute with water exporters over high salt levels in the Delta.

New salt standards were to have gone into effect April 1, 2005, but the two agencies responsible for exporting Delta water to Southern California customers say they can't meet those standards without help.

With threats of legal action being tossed about, Dan Skopec, deputy Cabinet secretary in the Schwarzenegger administration, called Tam Doduc, chairwoman of the State Water Resources Control Board, and suggested last month that the board settle the matter, Doduc said.

But the board did not act Wednesday when it met with officials from the Department of Water Resources and the Bureau of Reclamation, which operate large water pumps near Tracy. The water exporters have been negotiating with the state water control board for more time to meet the new standard.

The board was expected to crack down on the two agencies for not doing enough to solve the salt problem. Both deliver Delta water to two-thirds of California's population for drinking or irrigating crops.

What causes the saltiness?

Dams on San Joaquin River tributaries create high salt levels by preventing fresh water from diluting the Delta. State water projects that send Delta water south make the problem worse.

Delta farmers argue salty water costs them millions of dollars in lower crop yields every year. They want state officials to impose sanctions on the two agencies and warn they may sue if they don't.

Steve Verigin, an official with the Department of Water Resources, hinted his agency is pondering court action, too.

"We're continuing to work collaboratively with (water board) staff ... to avoid a litigious approach to trying to solve this problem," Verigin said.

More city, less ag, status quo water?

2006-02-02T08:57:00.000-08:00

From Argus, via today's BC:

California will add 12 million people in 25 years but will not need to increase its water supplies to match, according to a new state analysis.

That feat will happen not through any sort of magical technology or conservation but because the growth will pave over a considerable chunk of farmland, reducing irrigation demands.

"Urban users are going to need more water, and agriculture is going to need less," said Paul Dabbs, a supervising engineer in the State Department of Water Resources who worked on the study. "You come up with about the same amount of water, but we're using it differently."

The California Water Plan released Tuesday found that farmers, who currently use about 80 percent of the state's "developed water," will use less as new development reduces the amount of irrigated farmland by about 10 percent. Irrigation systems also are expected to become more efficient.

The analysis, the state's main planning tool for water use, does not consider extra water needed during emergencies such as droughts and earthquakes, said Steve Hall, who heads the Association of California Water Agencies.

The projected growth is the rough equivalent of a new Oakland — with all its shops, roads, homes and infrastructure — sprouting somewhere in California every year until 2030.

Water-efficient products and technology — such as low-flow toilets, modern shower heads and timed lawn-watering systems — have helped growing metropolitan areas use roughly the same amount of water today as they did 20 years ago, the plan showed.

Irrigation district concerned about Governor's plan

2006-02-02T08:52:00.000-08:00

From the Chico Enterprise Record, via today's BC:

The leaders of the Paradise Irrigation District voiced grave concerns about Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to sell $9 billion in bonds for flood protection and drinking water improvements.

Board Vice President Bill Kellogg said Wednesday the district's customers would see few benefits and high costs under the proposal. He said the plan is catered to Southern California and its residents.

"It's certainly not to our benefit in any way I can see," Kellogg said.

The board unanimously directed District Manager George Barber to draft a letter for its consideration.

Under the governor's proposal, the district and its customers would have to pay $400,000 in new state fees every year to pay for the bonds. Directors were dismayed by the fees, which Kellogg called a tax.

The $9 billion in bonds are part of Schwarzenegger's $35 billion plan to improve water management, the levee system and flood protection. In addition to bonds, the plan calls for $5 billion apiece from both state and federal funds, according to an overview of the governor's strategic plan. Local agencies are expected to pony up $16 billion for water supply projects.

If approved by the Legislature and voters, the state would issue $3 billion in bonds in 2006 and $6 billion in 2010.

For the first phase of the program, one-third of the $3 billion bond would go toward regional water management grants. Directors noted nearly $500 million would be earmarked for water districts in Southern California while $81 million would be set aside for the Sacramento River region.

Director John Heinke said the bill would facilitate drawing water southward from Northern California. He pointed out the district could easily make its own improvements on the Magalia Dam if it collected $400,000 more each year.

Colorado River snowpack variability

2006-02-01T11:40:00.000-08:00

From the MountainMail.Com:

Mike Gillespie has been measuring snowpack in Colorado since 1984 and has never seen as much variability within the Arkansas River basin as there is this season.

Snowpacks at the north end of the basin are as high as 172 percent of average and to the south and east they dip as low as 25 percent, Natural Resources Conservation Service records showed Tuesday.

“It’s common to see the Arkansas behave differently in the south and north be-cause the basin gets its weather from two different sources,” Gillespie, snow survey supervisor for the conservation service, said.

“This year, especially, the Arkansas is getting two ex-tremes.

“I don’t recall a year that’s been this extreme… . If this pat-tern continues, that would definitely be a first for me.”

The Arkansas River basin stretches from Fremont Pass north of Leadville to the Apishapa River headwaters near Trinidad. As a whole, snowpack in the basin is at 99 percent of the historical average.

Supreme Court sides with State Water Board

2006-02-01T08:32:00.000-08:00

From YubaNet:

The California Supreme Court today upheld the authority of the State Water Board and Regional Water Quality Control Boards to require timber companies to monitor water quality in streams or rivers that could be adversely affected by logging. The California Supreme Court's decision follows two appeals court decisions last week in San Diego and Riverside, recognizing and upholding the important role of the State and Regional Water Boards in protecting California's water quality.

The Supreme Court Case, Pacific Lumber v. California State Water Resources Control Board arose out of a challenge by Pacific Lumber Company to a State Water Board order that required monitoring of the effects of logging on water quality in the South Fork Elk River in Humboldt County. Pacific Lumber's past logging practices and associated road construction have involved logging large portions of a watershed within a few years resulting in increased erosion, landslides, and increased sediment in streams. Excess sediment can fill in streams, cause flooding and increase water temperature leading to a loss of salmon and their habitat. The North Coast Water Board ordered Pacific Lumber Company to conduct detailed monitoring of water quality in the Headwaters Forest Preserve area. Pacific Lumber appealed that order to the State Water Board contending that the California Department of Forestry had exclusive authority to regulate timber harvesting.

Colorado River agreement reached

2006-02-01T08:29:00.000-08:00

From the Salt Lake Tribune:

The Department of Interior will go ahead with an environmental study that will include the plan to allocate Colorado River Basin water in times of drought. Utah plans to pursue a pipeline to carry Lake Powell water to the St. George area.
The seven Colorado River Basin states Tuesday apparently overcame a final intramural feud and will send a letter to Interior Secretary Gale Norton this week indicating that they have reached a basic agreement on how the river will be managed under drought conditions.
Some details remain to be worked out. But Upper Basin states Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico, and California, Arizona and Nevada in the Lower Basin agreed to forward a document to Norton that will allow the Bureau of Reclamation to proceed with an ongoing environmental study of how future water shortages on the river will be dealt with. Norton had given the states a Feb. 1 deadline to have their proposal included in the study.
The seven states have been meeting regularly since December 2004 to try to reach an agreement. The absence of a deal, all sides agree, probably would lead to expensive and prolonged litigation that could endanger future water projects, such as Utah's proposed Lake Powell pipeline.

Update 2005 Released

2006-02-01T08:24:00.000-08:00

The final version of the update to the California Water Plan was released yesterday. According to the ContraCosta Times:

California faces major difficulties in supplying water to a growing population while maintaining a vibrant agricultural economy and a healthy environment.

But the latest state water plan says it can be done.

The plan, three years overdue, was released Tuesday by the California Department of Water Resources and represents a major shift from previous efforts to forecast how much water a growing population will need -- mapping out ways to increase water supplies to meet that demand.

The new plan relies less on building new reservoirs and emphasizes more environmentally friendly -- and often less expensive -- alternatives such as more efficient use of water, underground water storage, recycling and desalination.

Also for the first time, the water plan, which forecasts conditions through 2030, says global warming could have a major impact on California's water supplies.

"We have enough water to meet our needs through 2030, but it's going to require good investment decisions," said Kamyar Guivetchi, statewide water planning manager for the Department of Water Resources.

"It's not doom and gloom. We have the resources we need," he added.

The water plan is expected to serve as a blueprint for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's $11.5 billion water bond proposal, the first phase of which could face voters this year. If the bond package is approved, it could be used to finance many of the measures suggested in the plan.

Sites controversy

2006-01-31T12:55:00.000-08:00

Something new on the proposed Sites Reservoir from RecordNet via today's BC:

A hardscrabble valley 10 miles west of the Colusa County town of Maxwell has become the Promised Land for Republicans in the Legislature.

That's the proposed location for Sites Reservoir, an artificial lake three times the size of Camanche Reservoir that supporters say could supply hundreds of thousands of homes with drinking water, help salmon and steelhead populations and relieve pressure on the Delta during floods and droughts.

But creating Sites would require siphoning water from the Sacramento River into a dammed-up Antelope Valley - and California has not built any new dams in a generation.

As negotiations surrounding Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's $35billion waterworks proposal move through the Legislature, Sites is fast becoming something of a deal breaker for Republicans.

For many Republicans, the deal is simple: no Sites, no "aye" vote. And any bond proposal needs six Assembly Republicans and two GOP senators to pass.

Even the Republican sponsor of the water bill - Grass Valley Sen. Sam Aanestad, whose district includes the Antelope Valley - said he would only carry the legislation on the condition it contains money to build surface storage.

"I told the governor I need bulldozers moving things and fixing things - not planting trees - or I'm out of here," Aanestad said.

Republicans are adamant about the need for more water storage. California's population is growing and, by some estimates, will need an additional 2million acre-feet of water by 2020. An acre-foot is enough to supply a family of four for a year.

According to RecordNet, many environmentalists don't support the dam:

"It's a big nonstarter for the environmental community," [Jim] Metropoulos [of the Sierra Club] said. "We're very much opposed to spending $1billion or more on a reservoir with little or no public benefit."

Environmentalists and their Democratic allies say building the Sites Reservoir would destroy precious archaeological sites, kill threatened plants and animals and waste taxpayer dollars.

Metropoulos and other critics say groundwater storage - flooding farm fields and letting water percolate back into aquifers - conservation and desalination of seawater are all more cost-effective than building a new dam.

Antelope Valley is also near the Great Valley Fault, which Metropoulos said was the site of a magnitude 6 or 7 earthquake in neighboring Willows in 1892.

Colorado drought agreement

2006-01-30T09:17:00.000-08:00

From AZCentral via todays BC News:

Seven states share the Colorado River, but a final agreement about how to manage the waterway in times of drought may turn on a truce between just two of them: Arizona and California.

A rift between the neighboring states, which have battled over the Colorado since before Arizona joined the union, nearly derailed work on a drought plan agreeable to all seven states. Representatives from the states continue meeting today in Las Vegas to take one last shot at producing such a plan.

If they fail, the Interior Department will move ahead and impose its own water-use guidelines on the states by the end of 2007. That's a best-case situation. The worst case is the one the states fear most, a courtroom standoff that could drag on for years, putting water supplies at risk if drought returns. The original Arizona vs. California case, which began in 1931 and set the river allocations for Arizona, California and Nevada, still reverberates in water discussions.

Possible new water storage projects

2006-01-29T15:56:00.000-08:00

According to Lester Snow's presentation on Tuesday to the CA Senate, new statewide storage projects could include the Sites Reservoir and Temperance Dam on the Upper San Joaquin river.

According to the Northern California Water Association, a joint MOU has been signed between Federal, state and local agencies for the approximately $1 billion proposed Sites Reservoir in the Antelope Valley. More from NCWA:

The proposed location of the Sites off-stream storage project is approximately 10 miles west of Maxwell in Antelope Valley. The reservoir would have a storage capacity of 1.9 million acre-feet (possibly larger) and would enhance water management flexibility throughout the state. Sites reservoir can greatly increase reliability of water supplies in the Sacramento Valley and other areas of the state by reducing water diversions on the Sacramento River during critical fish migration periods. In addition, by providing additional storage and operational benefits, Sites reservoir would be a critical component of an integrated water management and water development program for the Sacramento Valley.

Sites reservoir, as an off-stream project, would be filled primarily by pumped diversions from the Sacramento River. Water would be diverted into the reservoir during peak flow periods in winter months (for example, during flood years like 1997 and 1998). To minimize potential impacts of existing diversions on Sacramento River fisheries, Sites would release water back into valley conveyance systems (such as the Glenn Colusa Irrigation District Canal and Tehama Colusa Canal) in exchange for water that would otherwise have been diverted from the Sacramento River. This undiverted summer water could become available for other downstream uses in the Bay-Delta.

Legislature balks at governor's plan

2006-01-29T14:32:00.000-08:00

The governor's proposition to invest billions in water infrastructure is essentially a plan to fund the DWR's California Water Plan.

According to the slides from Lester Snow's presentation before the Senate on Tuesday (Jan 24), $35 Billion would be invested over the next 10 years, with around 2/3 of that to be spent on "Water Management", and the balance on flood control. According to the slides, the governor's initiative is leveraging funds to implement DWR's existing California Water Plan. Approximately 2/3 of the flood control measures would be spent on the Delta. Of the funds designated for Water Management, $5.5 billion are dedicated to the Regional Program, which would be spent on such strategies as reduction of water demand, improving operational efficiency and transfers, increasing water supply, improving water quality, and practicing resource stewardship (see slide 35). $3.5 billion in bond and WRIF funding would be allocated to the Statewide Program, which is divided between water quality, storage, new technology and science, and resource stewardship (see slide 38). The idea is that the bonds and WRIF funding will "create incentive" for local investments ($17.5 billion) and obtain federal cost-sharing funds ($2 billion). No slides in the presentation explain how this $20 billion balance would be spent.

The legislature was apparently not convinced by Snow's proposal. From KTLA on Tuesday:

A power struggle is emerging over Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's $222-billion public works package. Democratic leaders say legislators and local governments would be required to cede too much influence in deciding how to remake California's roads, jails and waterways.

The only way?

2006-01-29T14:20:00.000-08:00

From the ContraCosta Times, two weeks ago:

Professor Jeff Mount, director of UC Davis' Center for Watershed Studies, outlined a half-dozen strategies to address the many problems facing the Delta and the 23 million Californians who depend on it for water supplies.

Most of Mount's ideas have been suggested in the past at one time or another. However, by placing a variety of alternatives before business leaders, Mount hoped to begin a discussion on how to preserve the Delta ecosystem, provide adequate water for users and avoid a costly and divisive water war.

Each of the six ideas had something to offer, but one stands out as the most effective way to assure adequate and reliable water supplies to both users and the Delta environment. That is Mount's suggestion that major new reservoirs be built south of the Delta.

These reservoirs would be filled during wet months, when there is more than enough water flowing into the Delta to preserve the ecosystem and provide high-quality supplies to users.

If the reservoirs are large enough, they would have enough stored water for release during the dry months and droughts.

It is the only feasible way to provide enough fresh water for environmental, agricultural and urban use throughout the year.

Wow, that's pretty strong.

Letter to Bush

2006-01-28T22:02:00.000-08:00

From YubaNet:

U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today urged President Bush to provide $92.4 million in his 2007 budget to fund "urgent flood control needs" in Sacramento and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

"A major levee breach could imperil hundreds of thousands of people and endanger most of the State's water supply," Senator Feinstein said. "We believe that the best course of action is to proceed expeditiously on the projects that will provide the most protection to population centers and infrastructure."

CALFED Diagnosis

2006-01-28T21:56:00.000-08:00

From MercuryNews a few weeks back:

The biggest[CALFED] failure, many observers and participants say, was institutional unwillingness to confront the big conflicts in California water.

When push comes to shove, who gets delta water? Farmers? Cities? Fish?

And who should pay to fix levees? The farmers protected by them? Taxpayers? Water utilities?

Are the levees even viable? Should the state build a peripheral canal around the delta? Should it build new reservoirs? Who should pay for them?

Idling alternative for fish protection

2006-01-28T21:48:00.000-08:00

From BusinessWire:

The Department of Water Resources (DWR) will host a February 7, 2006, public workshop on the "No Crop Idling Alternative," which is being considered as part of the environmental review for the Environmental Water Account (EWA).

The "No Crop Idling Alternative" will analyze the effects of other measures other than crop idling or land retirement to further protect fisheries.

The EWA is part of the long-term comprehensive plan adopted in the CALFED Bay-Delta Program Record of Decision (ROD). CALFED agencies identified a need in the ROD for fisheries protection measures above and beyond existing regulatory measures to speed the recovery of at-risk Delta species. Establishment of the EWA was a key component of this additional protection.

Agencies that participate in the EWA are DWR (lead state agency), Department of Fish and Game (responsible agency and trustee agency), United States Fish and Wildlife Service (co-lead federal agency), National Marine Fisheries Service (cooperating agency), and United States Bureau of Reclamation (co-lead federal agency).

The EIS/EIR for the Short-Term EWA Program addressed the potential use of crop idling as an alternative to other measures being considered for analysis. The Long-Term EIS/EIR will analyze a number of alternatives including the "No Crop Idling Alternative" to meet the objectives of the EWA.

CALFED EIR case

2006-01-28T21:45:00.000-08:00

From Lawfuel:

The California Supreme Court has granted review in a second important case relating to water supply planning and the analysis of water issues in environmental impact reports under the California Environmental Quality Act. On January 25, the court granted review of In re Bay-Delta Programmatic Environmental Impact Report Coordinated Proceedings (Case No. S138975).

This case involves multiple legal challenges to the extremely lengthy environmental impact report that was prepared for the "CalFed" muliti-agency program to develop a plan to protect water quality in the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta while also promoting water supply and conservation goals. The Third District Court of Appeal rejected the EIR on several grounds, including a claim that the EIR should have evaluated project alternatives that included substantially reduced water exports from the Delta to Southern California.

The court's decision to grant review is significant; it means that two cases are now before the California Supreme Court dealing with how environmental impact reports must evaluate water projects and water supply issues for other development projects. In the other case, Vineyard Area Citizens for Responsible Growth v. City of Rancho Cordova, Case No. S132972, the Supreme Court is considering whether an EIR for a large development project adequately evaluated the future availability of water and the impacts of supplying water to the project. Briefing in the Vineyard Citizens case is nearly complete.

Both of these cases should be particularly important to all stakeholders in the CEQA process, as it has been many years since the California Supreme Court has considered a CEQA case involving the substantive requirements for environmental impact reports. Also, while there have been a number of Court of Appeal decisions on the application of CEQA to water issues, the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on these important issues.

Skepticism regarding CALFED reordering

2006-01-28T21:43:00.000-08:00

From RecordNet:

Tom Graff has doubts the new guardians of California's Delta will be any improvement over the old.

"It's not like we did so well under the existing regime," said Graff, the regional director of the nonprofit group Environmental Defense.

Graff and other environmentalists are concerned about the reorganization of the California Bay-Delta Authority, the coalition of state, local and federal agencies charged with balancing the Delta's health with water needs. Two in three Californians depend on Delta water for drinking or irrigating farmland.

The authority, which runs the CALFED Bay-Delta Program, faced mounting concern in recent months that it was failing taxpayers. Board members last month adopted sweeping changes that could kill the agency and replace it with a new one run by public officials.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to announce his own plans for CALFED within the next week or two. Schwarzenegger spokesman Darrel Ng wouldn't comment on speculation that a new water czar would take charge of the CALFED mission, but environmental concerns "will be considered by the governor's office as we work on the final product," he said.

Levee maintenance money

2006-01-28T21:39:00.000-08:00

From the Tri-Valley Herald:

Big bucks are being poured the into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta levees, a topic discussed Wednesday in Stockton at a community forum with elected officials and water resource experts.

There are 1,600 miles of levees on the Delta, many of which are in need of repair.

A map of the Delta levees provided by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers shows that most do not meet basic levee standards set by CALFED, the California-Bay Delta Authority.

To amend that, the Corps will get $90 million in federal money to spend on urgent levee stability projects, said Lynn O'Leary, project manager.

The Corps is asking that local reclamation districts — responsible for maintaining levees — send in proposals for levee improvements that could include raising or making them wider.

However, O'Leary said the $90 million is only a drop in the bucket and will not make every levee meet CALFED's standards.

In addition to the Corps' money, Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, and Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., helped secure $40.9 million from the 2006 Energy and Water Conference Report to strengthen California levees and flood control. A Delta levee assessment, costing $500,000, will be paid with that money.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to push through a bond measure for either the June or November 2006 ballot for $210 billion. If approved by voters, that money would go toward erosion repairs and sediment removal. Specifically, the Central Valley would get new flood plain maps because the current maps are woefully inaccurate.

Met behind CALFED reform plan

2006-01-28T21:31:00.000-08:00

From BusinessWire:

he first step toward a sweeping overhaul of environmental restoration efforts in the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta that would provide up to $60 million for various projects and studies over the next two years was ratified today by Metropolitan Water District's Board of Directors.

A key element of a proposed agreement is the development of voluntary habitat conservation plans for the recovery of listed and endangered species in the Bay-Delta watershed that would help provide regulatory assurances for water delivery projects over the next 40 years. The largest estuary on the West Coast, the Bay-Delta is an important drinking water source for Metropolitan and 18 million Southern Californians.

Metropolitan's board endorsed the principles of an agreement that refocuses the environmental restoration efforts under CALFED, the state and federal effort charged with developing and implementing a long-term comprehensive plan to restore the Bay-Delta's ecological health and improve water reliability and quality.

"This action directly answers the widespread criticisms that CALFED's current approach toward environmental restoration is too broad and overextended," said Metropolitan board Chairman Wes Bannister. "Establishing a new process for overseeing and funding restoration efforts allows CALFED to focus directly on endangered and listed species that are of the greatest concern and cause the most conflict in the Bay-Delta."

According to CBS on January 18, the Santa Clara Water District is also behind the statement:

The Santa Clara Valley Water District Board of Directors agreed Tuesday to back a large-scale planning effort to protect fish, wildlife and water quality in the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

The Delta provides Santa Clara County with about half of its annual water supply, according to the water district.

By approving a "statement of principles" at its Tuesday meeting, the board agreed in principle to help develop environmental conservation plans for the Delta and its upstream basin. This is part of a larger state and federal effort -- the CALFED Bay-Delta Program -- to develop and implement a long-term, comprehensive restoration of the Bay-Delta environment and enhance water-supply quality and consistency, the water district reported.

Water contract negotiations

2006-01-28T21:06:00.000-08:00

From the Fresno Bee two weeks ago:

Federal officials are reopening negotiations on the renewal of some farm water contracts after hearing critical comments from environmentalists and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The comments pointed out that farmland may be taken out of production in the future, yet the contracts do not allow flexibility to change the water supply numbers.

"We want to address that issue," said Bill Luce, area manager for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which runs the Central Valley Project.

A negotiating session is scheduled for 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday [Jan 17] at the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority Board Room, 842 Sixth St., Los Banos.

The contractors include Pacheco, Panoche, San Luis and Westlands water districts as well as Westlands Water District Distribution District No. 2.

The proposed long-term water service contracts are for the delivery of up to 1.38 million acre-feet of water per year via the San Luis Reservoir in western Merced County.

The contract renewals will cover the next 25 years.

Temecula Supply Strategy

2006-01-09T09:28:00.000-08:00

From The Press-Enterprise:

Water consumption throughout much of Temecula and Murrieta -- demand that tripled over 25 years -- is expected to double again before the area's growth ebbs by about 2050, local officials predict.

To meet this new demand, Rancho California Water District directors will rely heavily on a privately-owned lake and a network of groundwater basins, key assets cited in a $300,000 strategy aimed at boosting local supplies and limiting the area's dependence on costly water that is imported from the Colorado River or Northern California and then treated at a Lake Skinner plant.

District officials say the recently adopted resources plan will allow them to meet future residential and commercial demands while providing a more reliable supply for vineyards and avocado and citrus groves.

"This gives us the road map on where we're going in the future," said Ben Drake, president of Rancho's seven-member board. "What we're trying to do is design a system that will allow us to meet that future demand."

And while the plan calls for $78.1 million to be spent on new wells, pipelines, pump stations and other projects, little of that is expected to come from current or future customers.

More demand, less supply

2006-01-05T07:31:00.000-08:00

From HeraldToday.Com:

California's thirst for Delta water is increasing at a time when the Delta's health is failing.

Two out of every three Californians get at least some drinking water from the Delta. In a state of 37 million people, one in every four gallons of water consumed by the state's farms, factories and people comes from the Delta.

And California's population is expected to climb to 48 million by 2030.

Meanwhile, the state's use of its second-largest water source, the Colorado River, is being curtailed as upstream states and the federal government begin to more strictly enforce the 1922 interstate treaty that limits California's share.

CalFed promised water agencies in the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California that they would be better able to rely on the Delta to provide the water they need.

But water managers say the CalFed program adopted five years ago has failed to deliver.

"Water supply reliability out of the Delta - I don't think you could make the case that CalFed has improved that," said Steve Hall, executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies, which represents nearly all of the state's urban and agricultural water agencies. "Ultimately, we have to be able to export water more reliably out of the Delta without necessarily increasing the amount."

That effort suffered a blow early this year when scientists confirmed a dramatic decline in Delta fish populations. Pumps that siphon water out of the Delta could be contributing to the decline, although there are other possible causes. In response, state water officials delayed plans to increase the capacity of Delta pumps until at least 2009.

California Water War Summary

2005-11-26T16:45:00.000-08:00

From Bakersfield.Com:

As farmers and developers see it, the key ingredient to California’s economic growth — water — is threatened by a whole new series of legal and environmental troubles.

The way environmentalists see it, California is snowballing toward environmental and economic collapse if greedy farmers and developers won’t curb their appetites for water.

That’s the basic debate framing a whole new set of issues that have reshaped the face of California’s traditional water wars in the last few years.

More on the pipeline proposal

2005-10-18T08:37:00.000-07:00

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

2005-10-13T12:34:00.000-07:00

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

2005-10-11T10:55:00.000-07:00

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?

2005-10-06T16:33:00.000-07:00

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

2005-10-06T16:29:00.000-07:00

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.

Climate Change, Runoff and the River

2005-09-30T16:44:00.000-07:00

From the AZ Republic:

Warmer temperatures in the West's highest elevations could reduce winter runoff into the Colorado River by as much as 30 percent over the next 50 years, leaving more people to fight over less water.

Even a subtle shift in climate could further weaken a river already overburdened by growing cities and could lead to chronic water shortages, especially in Arizona, which suffers the most if the Colorado can't meet the full demands of all seven states it serves.

Those were among the findings of a new study that argues it's not a question of if, or even when, climate changes begin to affect water supplies, but how seriously those supplies will be affected.

Prudence

2005-09-20T09:39:00.000-07:00

From SD Union Tribune, by way of today's Water News:

A wet winter has made a little more water available this year than last year to states that rely on the Colorado River, a Bureau of Reclamation official told water managers from seven states that draw from the river.

But fears of drought have the three states that rely on Lake Mead agreeing not to touch the surplus this year, said Terrence Fulp, area manager for the bureau's lower Colorado River regional operations office in Boulder City, Nev.

"The states are saying that at this time, they are not planning to take any additional water," Fulp said. "We don't know if the drought is over or not."

Balance?

2005-09-19T10:14:00.000-07:00

Mercurcy News ran a nice AP piece today talking about how the CA Water Plan is a sort of middle ground between groups like ACWA who call for intense investment of resources to build more dams and reservoirs, and groups like the Pacific Institute who say that conservation is sufficient to head off the coming crisis.

As California's population climbs from 36 million to a projected 48 million by 2030, a lack of water particularly in arid Southern California may pose the biggest limit on growth.

Water agencies say billions of dollars worth of additional storage is needed, including reservoirs and dams that are anathema to many environmental groups. One environmental group countered this week that California can meet its needs by increasing conservation in a state that already helps lead the nation in water stinginess, per capita.

The state Department of Water Resources, which is developing a new state water plan to be released later this year, says both sides are right.

Each of the previous seven state water plans developed since the first in 1957 have treated the water balance like a math equation: Demand minus supply equals a gap that must somehow be filled.

The five-volume draft plan under final review for the first time offers a smorgasbord of recommendations for how to bridge the gap that could exist by 2030 - but says solutions may vary by region.

A new reservoir that might be politically palatable in one region might never stand a chance elsewhere, for instance, said Jerry Johns, the state's deputy director for water resource planning and management.

"Rather than throwing it out entirely, we think we ought to keep all the tools in our toolbox and see what works best for each region," he said.

Canal suggestions resurface

2005-09-15T09:16:00.000-07:00

From the Ventura County Star, an article about a costly solution to the very real threat of levee failure in the Bay area. Below, a proposal for implementation was given by a Bay Area environmentalist to the Water Supply Subcommittee of the California Bay Delta Public Advisory Committee.

The most direct solution to these problems [in the event of a massive levee faliure] is to bypass the delta, shunting water from northern rivers -- which serve as natural aqueducts for water stored behind state and federal dams -- around the maze of sloughs and levees.

Such a structure was originally proposed in the 1950s as part of the State Water Project. By the time Gov. Pat Brown placed the gigantic project before voters in 1960, the delta bypass had been dropped because of cost. Political leaders planned to ask the voters later for more money to finish the project.

By the time they did, Pat Brown's son, Jerry, occupied the governor's office and the state's political culture had changed radically. The delta bypass proposal -- a "Peripheral Canal" authorized by state legislation in 1981 but subject to voter ratification in 1982 -- ignited a statewide firestorm that still influences California water politics.

One hurdle was cost: $11.6 billion in 1980 (an inflation-adjusted $29 billion today) for the canal and the giant storage facilities associated with it, which alarmed the Southland businesses and water customers who would have to pay the bill. But the project also stirred up opposition from other interests.

The canal would have made it possible to send more water from north to south, so it reactivated the state's oldest geographic political rivalry. In a bow to newly potent environmental organizations, the legislation would have protected North Coast rivers from being dammed, angering agribusiness giants that hoped someday to tap those sources.

The election campaign was expensive and bruising. Although Southern California voted 2-1 in favor, Northern California voted 9-1 against, and the canal received less than 40 percent of the statewide vote.

An article on CBS5 tells of a Bay Area environmentalist who is pushing this idea:

A Bay Area environmentalist today revived a controversial proposal that was rejected two decades ago: building a pipeline that would carry water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to Southern California.

Jerry Meral said his presentation in Sacramento to the Water Supply Subcommittee of the California Bay-Delta Public Advisory Committee "was fairly well-received but not massively attended."

Meral said the question now is whether there's enough traction for his proposal to get the attention of the state Legislature or CalFed, an environmental and water supply effort stemming from the state's severe drought in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

CalFed Criticized

2005-09-14T12:10:00.000-07:00

From the ContraCosta Times:

The $3 billion-and-counting program to restore the Delta's health and improve water supplies throughout California is plagued with weak leadership and waning interest among key stakeholders, according to a state watchdog agency.

Participants in the CalFed program, a landmark environmental and water supply effort, no longer agree how it should go forward, and some even wonder whether it's worth staying involved at all.

That dysfunction is highlighted in an interim summary by the Little Hoover Commission, which was tapped by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in June to examine CalFed following drastic cuts to the program budget by state lawmakers who were growing alarmed about CalFed's direction.

Also in the works are a financial audit and a management audit of CalFed.

Although the commission's full report is not due until November, several people closely involved with the program say its work so far is on the mark.

"In general, they have identified all the serious problems, and there are serious ones," said Greg Gartrell, assistant manager of the Contra Costa Water District and chairman of a CalFed subcommittee on drinking water quality. "It's not a pretty picture."

Next week, Gartrell's boss, CCWD general manager Walter Bishop, plans to tell the commission that CalFed has spent too much money on research and not enough on projects that will improve drinking water quality.

"The continued degradation of Delta drinking water over the past 15 years as well as the 'crash' of the endangered Delta smelt and other fish populations have occurred despite $1 billion spent since 2000 on ecosystem restoration," according to a copy of his prepared testimony.

CalFed was formed primarily to improve the Delta ecosystem, enhance water quality, strengthen Delta levees and boost water supplies, the four areas that were contributing most to the legal and bureaucratic fights over Delta water.

But today, the effort has little to show in those areas. Instead, its successes come mostly in improvements in chinook salmon runs and various projects, such as increased groundwater storage, that are scattered throughout the state.

A further note of urgency can be heard when we remember the levees that protect the Delta area water supply:

"They've done a lot of good things, but they cannot say they have reduced conflicts in the Delta," said Steve Hall, executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies.

Hall added, however, that CalFed should not be written off.

"(Hurricane) Katrina has illustrated very vividly the consequences of failing to maintain a levee system, and that's what the Delta is, a levee system," Hall said.

Indeed, a MercuryNews editorial called for this today:

Among the most important issues that must be addressed are the aging levees of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Their failure in a major earthquake is likely and would be devastating. As reporter Paul Rogers detailed in Thursday's Mercury News, the levees protect California's largest source of drinking water, providing half of Santa Clara County's and up to 60 percent of Southern California's drinking water.

The sentiment was echoed by yesterday's Ventura County Star editorial as well.

Efficiency could reduce CA use by one-fifth

2005-09-14T09:13:00.000-07:00

From the MercuryNews:

California can reduce water use a staggering 20 percent over the next 25 years -- despite adding 11 million more residents -- without harming the economy, farms or quality of life, according to a new report released Tuesday.

The answer isn't brown lawns or shorter showers.

Instead, politicians and business leaders must relentlessly spread technology that is already in place, from low-flush toilets to drip irrigation on farms, said Peter Gleick, lead author of the report and president of the Pacific Institute, a non-partisan think tank in Oakland.

``We can do the things we want to do with much less water,'' said Gleick, who has a doctorate in hydrology. ``Efficiency doesn't mean deprivation.''

For example, California has 17 million toilets. Of those, 7 million are low-flush. If they all were low-flush, 420,000 acre-feet of water a year would be saved, Gleick said, as much as all 1.8 million people in Santa Clara County use each year.

Similarly, by using drip irrigation, farmers can cut vineyard water use up to 48 percent, and 23 percent on average for vegetables -- without reducing crop yields.

The piece also reminds us of the water use breakdown:

Farms account for 80 percent of California's water use. Residents and industry use the other 20 percent. By 2030, with more efficiency, farms can cut use 23 percent, and urban users can cut 5 percent, despite population growth, and without reducing acres farmed, Gleick said.

How will this be financed:

The Department of Water Resources hopes to create a new fund to pay for rebates for Californians who buy efficient appliances, offer incentives to farmers to purchase more efficient irrigation equipment and set up water education programs, said Deputy Director Jerry Johns.

Funding would come from future bond acts and user fees on farmers and cities, he said.

Claremont GW Storage Project

2005-09-14T09:09:00.000-07:00

From Businesswire:

Sept. 13, 2005--A groundwater project that ultimately will store nearly 1 billion gallons for eastern Los Angeles County cities and communities to use during dry years today became the latest in a series of Southland projects to receive statewide bond funds granted to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

Following the Metropolitan Board of Directors' approval, Chairman Wes Bannister and Chief Executive Officer Dennis Underwood joined officials from Claremont-based Three Valleys Municipal Water District in signing a 25-year agreement to store water in an aquifer underlying the north Claremont area.

Very interesting! Friends and professors have discussed this idea for some years...

The project will receive nearly $1.23 million of the $45 million Metropolitan was given by the state from 2000's Proposition 13 to help develop groundwater storage in Southern California. Three Valleys, which serves an area spanning the Pomona and Walnut valleys and the eastern portion of the San Gabriel Valley, will provide another $1.45 million to the $2.68 million project.

"This partnership demonstrates a fundamental enhancement in Metropolitan's resource management strategy by focusing on projects that store water when supplies are plentiful for times when they are not," Bannister said. "Every drop of water stored by this project frees up an additional drop of water for the rest of the region during dry times."

Underwood said groundwater storage plays an essential role in helping the region maintain dependable water supplies, particularly during dry years, and helps provide continued reliability over the next 20 years.

Hetch-Hetchy restoration resisted

2005-09-11T10:53:00.000-07:00

From Boston.Com/News, more on the Hetch-Hetchy controversy:

When the naturalist John Muir came upon this valley of meadows, waterfalls, and granite peaks a century ago, he beheld a grand landscape he described as ''one of nature's rarest and most precious mountain temples." Muir, a founder of the Sierra Club, declared the Hetch Hetchy Valley as Yosemite's twin.

For generations, the floor of this narrow canyon has been submerged under 300 feet of water, behind a dam that stores the drinking supply of hundreds of thousands of San Francisco Bay Area residents and helps generate the electricity that powers San Francisco's famed cable cars, buses, street lights, schools, and one of the country's busiest airports.

Until his death in 1914, a year after Congress approved the dam's construction, Muir crusaded against flooding the Hetch Hetchy Valley, located within the wilderness of Yosemite National Park and 20 miles north of the heavily visited Yosemite Valley.

But a century after the first debates arose, another push has emerged seeking to drain the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, returning the valley floor to its natural state and allowing the upper Tuolomne River to again meander.

''All these rocks, everything John Muir saw, are just holding their breath, waiting to come back up to the surface, waiting to come back up for air. It was a beautiful valley, and it will be again," said Ron Good, a former staff counsel of the Sierra Club and now the executive director of Restore Hetch Hetchy, one of several groups seeking to bring back the valley.

Once considered a radical notion, the campaign to restore the Hetch Hetchy Valley gained further legitimacy last fall when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered the state's Resources Agency to review the issue, after being prompted by requests from two Northern California legislators and a series of editorials by the Sacramento Bee on reclaiming the valley. The editorials later won the Pulitzer Prize.

Tough time to ask for the dismantling of a dam, given the recent call for more water development by ACWA.

With San Francisco poised to undertake a $4.3 billion overhaul of an antiquated water-delivery system that stretches 160 miles from the Sierra Nevada to the Silicon Valley, advocates for restoring the Hetch Hetchy argue that now is the perfect time for San Francisco to broach the topic of possibly breaching the dam.

City officials, however, have expressed little interest. Giving up the reservoir could mean the loss of the vital resources and valuable commodities, namely water and electricity, that helped transform San Francisco into one of the world's most robust economies.

Another assessment, another plan...

2005-09-11T10:47:00.000-07:00

... regarding the future of the Golden State's water resources. From the North County Times:

California is perched on the brink of a water-supply disaster, state water agency leaders say, unless Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger puts his political muscle behind a 12-step plan created by water agencies across the state.

Leaders of the Association of California Water Agencies said since former Gov. Pat Brown spearheaded building the massive State Water Project more than 30 years ago, the state has abandoned its responsibility to help find, pay for and deliver water ---- leaving it instead to water agencies, ratepayers and voters.

Today, they said, the state's two main water supplies ---- the Colorado River and the State Water Project, which delivers water from water-rich Northern California to rain-poor Southern California and is threatened by eroding levees like the ones that flooded devastated New Orleans ---- are under siege and could suffer catastrophic cutbacks at any time.

And, they said, the state's regulatory roadblocks delay the development of alternative water supplies, such as using recycled wastewater for irrigation and building plants to turn seawater into drinking water.

Southern California's main water supplier, the massive Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, says it has enough water-supply storage to make sure the region has plenty of water.

But its stores still must be replenished by the Colorado River and State Water Project. If their supplies are slashed, Southern California could find itself facing mandatory water cutbacks and shortages that could threaten its economy.

What does the plan actually call for?

1) Build more storage, not only underground by way of injection wells, but more dams, pipelines and reservoirs.

2) Create an independent state commission to oversee how to fix the fragile Bay-Delta. Hall and others said the commission should look at all answers, even resurrecting the touchy peripheral canal idea.

3) Keep and politically support the state's Colorado River Board, which represents California's interests on the river and is fighting to make sure other Western states do not further cut California's already-diminished supply of river water.

4) End what Hall called "schizophrenic" mixed messages about whether local and regional water agencies should chase recycled water projects and building seawater desalination plants. Hall and Arant said state water officials provide grants to create recycling projects, but the state health department too tightly restricts where recycled water can be used.

I'm left wondering whether or to what extent ACWA agrees with the assessment of the future of CA water resources by DWR's Water Plan?

CalFed Takes it on the Chin

2005-08-26T08:24:00.001-07:00

From the SacBee.Com:

It's an authority with no authority, with a governmental structure that "only perhaps a mother could love," said Mary Nichols, the state's former resources secretary.

But the California Bay-Delta Authority is still the only operation in the state with a full-time charge to coordinate the backbone of a water system that delivers the elixir of life to millions of people, the growers of more than 40 major crops and an untold number of fish.

How well it works is a matter of debate, and the discussion at this point is being won by the forces that say the authority isn't faring so well - as evidenced by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's call to the state's Little Hoover Commission two months ago to come up with a plan to fix it.

The history and the issues at stake:

The state's government watchdog agency began its public work Thursday with a hearing at the Capitol. A former California governor and a former secretary of the federal Interior Department recalled the good old days when a state-federal water policy process called CalFed brought more than two dozen, at times competing, governmental water agencies into multijurisdictional harmony.

What worked well a decade ago, however, has since slipped into "a substantial degree of uncertainty," according to keynote testimony provided by Bruce Babbitt, the Democratic one-time chief of the Interior Department. Former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson concurred, characterizing federal-state water policy as one where "process has replaced leadership."

The two recommended that California and the federal government get a fix on the problems as soon as possible. At stake is a multibillion-dollar system of pipelines, pumps, levees, aqueducts and other conveyances that channel Northern California water southward through the Delta and onward to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California.

"Otherwise, we're going to be pumping salt water into the California Aqueduct sometime this century," Babbitt said.

New DWP Board Members Appointed

2005-08-16T11:06:00.000-07:00

From the LA Times:

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Monday appointed a five-member board for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power that is packed with environmental advocates who vowed to accelerate the agency's move toward cleaner sources of energy, including solar and wind power.

Villaraigosa said the appointments, announced at a Griffith Park nursery that provides free trees to DWP customers, reflect his commitment to a "cleaner and greener" city.

The appointees, who must be approved by the City Council, include Mary Nichols, director of the UCLA Institute of the Environment; David Nahai, a member of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board; and William Burke, chairman of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

Villaraigosa also appointed Nick Patsaouras, the owner of an engineering company, and Edith Ramirez, a business attorney, to the water and power board, which oversees the largest municipal utility in the nation.

The LA Business Journal Online adds this historical comment:

Under the administration of former Mayor James Hahn, the DWP escaped fallout of the state’s disastrous electricity deregulation law, but became the focal point for ethics and contracting investigations, including repeated extensions of a multi-million dollar public relations contract with Fleishman-Hillard International.

Another Water Plan

2005-08-11T08:49:00.000-07:00

According to this Opinion piece in the Ventura County Star, the Association of California Water Agencies has "devoted a year to developing an action plan that, if implemented, will secure our state's water future." Reminds me of the DWR water plan; I wonder how the two differ?

From the Star:

The recently released plan, titled "No Time to Waste: A Blueprint for California Water," recommends an array of actions and investments to improve water supplies, water use efficiency, water quality and environmental health.

Developed by a task force representing local public water agencies from throughout the state, the ACWA blueprint is intended draw attention to our water supply challenges and provide to state and federal leaders the specific recommendations needed to ensure California has the water supply system it will need to support people, jobs and ecosystems in the future.

Some of the most critical recommendations involve the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the heart of our water supply system and home to a number of at-risk fish species. Recent data showing a decline in some Delta fish populations underscore the need for actions to address ecosystem and water supply reliability problems and allow the Delta to function better for both fish and people.

Other recommendations call for evaluating long-term threats to Delta levees and pursuing actions to reduce risks to the state's water supply and the environment; developing additional groundwater and surface-water storage; and supporting and funding local efforts to expand recycled water use, water use efficiency and desalination of seawater and brackish groundwater.

Big Bear Investigates Supply Options

2005-08-02T08:25:00.000-07:00

From Bear Valley News:

[A]t the Big Bear Area Regional Wastewater Agency (BBARWA) meeting held on Wednesday, July 27th, Scott Heule of the Big Bear Lake Department of Water and Power (DWP) gave a presentation about the estimated costs of buying water from other agencies. The BBARWA board asked the DWP to do the research, to see a general comparison of the purchase of water to the Recharge Project that they are investigating. Past BBARWA research has confirmed that the Greenspot recharge site could hold 1000 acre feet per year, so that amount was used as the amount of water that would be purchased within a year.

Getting the water up to Big Bear proved quite expensive.

There were three sources for the Bear Valley to import water; CLAWA (Crestline Lake Arrowhead Water Agency), the State Water Project (Water from Northern California), and water located in Lucerne Valley. Heule broke down the conceptual costs into acre feet, though he was quick to remind people that these are not exact figures. The members of CLAWA have been building on their system for years. If the Bear Valley were to join their group, the valley would have to buy into the system for the approximate costs that the current CLAWA members have spent. Heule was unable to get an estimate of the buy-in cost and was only told that the “amount would be an enormous cost”. After the initial buy-in cost, there would have to be a pipeline built to get the potable (drinkable) water to the valley and since the pipes would have to come from the lower elevation of Crestline and Arrowhead, booster stations would have to be installed to push the water up hill. The final cost per acre foot would be $1150 of potable water.

The State Water Project water could be purchased from three possible water groups; Silverwood Lake and San Bernardino/Highland, and the Lucerne Valley Water Agency. The water from all three of these agencies would be untreated water, which would mean that the Valley would have to have a treatment plant here so that the water could be consumed by humans. Pipelines and booster stations would need to be built to get the water to the valley. The Silverwood and San Bernardino/Highland sties would have 5,200 feet of lift needed and the Lucerne Valley would have 4,000 to 5,100 feet lift needed. The added costs of building a treatment plant and the pipeline system makes any of these projects cost prohibited, though no figure was given. As this water is from Northern California, should there be a drought in the north, they could interrupt the delivery of water to the valley to supply their Northern California customers first.

Water purchased from the Lucerne Valley could be purchased from two potential sources; State Project water via the Morongo Valley pipeline and the private well owners. The problems with using are stated above, which leaves only the private well owners. There are three possible ways of laying pipeline from the source to the valley; however the lease expensive would be from south of Highway 18, through Cactus Flats and along North Shore. The pipeline route crosses 8 different agencies; US Bureau of Land Management (BLM), US Forest Service, San Bernardino Municipal Water, California Department of Water Resources, Mojave Water Agency, Morongo Valley Pipeline, Caltrans, and San Bernardino County. The most difficult of these eight agencies is the BLM, as Bear Valley Electric tried for years to get permission to install larger utility lines to deliver electricity and could not get permission. This leaves the purchase of water from the private well owners. The primary costs would be for the 350 psi pipeline, pumping stations, a water treatment plant near Stanfield Cutoff and North Shore Drive, loan and financing fees, plus the cost of the water. Costs not included in this option are the California Environmental Quality Agency (CEQA), the wheeling of aqueduct carrying capacity charge, capital facilities depreciation and replacement costs. Once pipeline, treatment plant, and operation and maintenance costs are added, the cost per acre foot would be $4,945.

DWP's Comeuppance

2005-08-01T13:23:00.000-07:00

An editorial from Saturday's LA Times:

An Owens Valley judge socked the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power right where it hurts the most — the agency's money and its water. Finally, someone may have found a way to get the mighty DWP to obey the law.

Inyo County Superior Court Judge Lee E. Cooper seemed to share valley residents' years of frustration at being Los Angeles' water colony, noting that the department had since 1973 been in violation of the California Environmental Quality Act in its overall treatment of the Owens Valley. "It's been more than 30 years," he exclaimed Monday. "That's incredible." It is. But it's also the long, sorry history of the department to drag its heels legally until it is absolutely forced to do the right thing.

This case stems from the DWP's failure to live up to a 1990s promise and legal order to restore water to a 62-mile stretch of the lower Owens River, from a point between Big Pine and Independence to south of Lone Pine. Cooper ordered the DWP to act now or face a $5,000-a-day fine and, much more seriously, the loss of supply from part of Los Angeles' aqueduct system. The DWP said it would comply with the ruling, though it threatens a rate increase.

LA Aqueduct Development

2005-07-28T08:04:00.000-07:00

From the LA Times, via today's Water News:

A court order requiring the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to restore the parched Lower Owens River shows that even powerful public agencies must abide by rules intended to protect the environment, state Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer said Tuesday.

"Even the mighty DWP has to obey the law," Lockyer said. "This department has a reckless history of stepping on others' property rights and environmental considerations while trying to stick straws in every available water supply in the region to feed growth in Los Angeles."

The saga of lawsuits and angst between LA and the Owens River and Mono Lake people continues.

Fed up with the DWP's delays in acting on court orders to bring a 62-mile stretch of the river back to life, Inyo County Superior Court Judge Lee E. Cooper on Monday barred the agency from using a key aqueduct unless it met certain conditions.

Among the conditions is that the DWP reduce its groundwater pumping in the Owens Valley by a third. Cooper also imposed fines of $5,000 a day until water is flowing again in the river. The fines will begin accruing Sept. 5.

Failure to comply with those conditions would result in a permanent ban against using the so-called Second Los Angeles Aqueduct. The Lower Owens River was sucked dry in 1913 when the Owens River Aqueduct began delivering water to Los Angeles. The Second Los Angeles Aqueduct opened in 1970.

This is just one step in a battle that has continued for over 100 years. It was 1904 when representatives from Los Angeles began buying up the water rights of Owens River valley farmers. There have been lawsuits ever since.

In previous long legal battles in the eastern Sierra, the DWP has been forced to give up significant amounts of water to steady water levels in Mono Lake, and to re-water parts of the dry Owens Lake to prevent dust storms.

Los Angeles Councilman Tony Cardenas said Tuesday that the loss of any water by the city was notable because most other Western cities are trying to find additional water sources or firm up the sources they have.

New Azusa Pipeline

2005-07-28T07:59:00.000-07:00

From the Pasadena Star, via today's Water News:

After three years of negotiations, the cities of Pasadena and Azusa, along with Los Angeles County, have reached an agreement to allow the completion of a $1 million pipeline to provide water to thirsty customers in the East San Gabriel Valley.

The final piece of the complicated, multi-jurisdictional puzzle fell into place Monday night when the Pasadena City Council granted Azusa Light and Water the right to build the last 300 feet of the pipe through Pasadena-owned land.

Pasadena will be paid $13,415 for its part in the deal.

Meeting Planned to Discuss Co. River's Future

2005-07-27T10:41:00.000-07:00

From The Review Journal, via today's Water News:

The Bureau of Reclamation will hold a public meeting in Henderson today on the future of the Colorado River, and a Utah environmental group plans to be there to call for an end to North America's second largest man-made reservoir.

Moab-based Living Rivers wants the federal government to tear down Glen Canyon Dam and allow Lake Powell to drain downstream, a move the group argues would save water and revitalize the Grand Canyon.

"We've got to do something because it's obvious the Colorado River doesn't have any more to give," said John Weisheit, Living Rivers conservation director.

But state and federal water officials insist the dam and the reservoir behind it are far too important to simply dismantle.

Future Water Needs

2005-07-27T10:39:00.000-07:00

From SacUnion.com, via today's Water News:

California’s thirst for water will jump by 40 percent over the next 25 years at current rates, with much of the water going for landscaping in the hot, dry inland valleys that will see the bulk of the population growth, a new study warns.

The nonprofit Public Policy Institute of California plotted future use from current water consumption, population growth estimates and demographic projections in the study released Wednesday. Fourteen million more people will each be using 232 gallons each day by 2030, at the current pace.

But the institute says conservation, water planning and recycling can help meet the demand as the West struggles with continuous water shortages.

Hetch Hetchy Briefing and Workshop

2005-07-13T09:53:00.000-07:00

From the Daily Business News:

The Department of Water Resources (DWR) and the Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) will conduct a media briefing and public workshop on Thursday, July 14, 2005, regarding the State's Hetch Hetchy Valley Restoration Study.

Beginning at 9 a.m., the press briefing will take place in the first floor media room of the Joe Serna Jr.-Cal/EPA Building at 1001 "I" Street, Sacramento.

Some background on the Hetch Hetchy Restoration:

Following a fierce nationwide debate led by John Muir, the City of San Francisco was authorized by the U.S. Congress, in the Raker Act of 1913, to construct a dam and reservoir on the Tuolumne River in Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park. Construction of the O'Shaughnessy Dam was finished in 1923 and, ten years later after the necessary pipelines were completed, San Francisco began using water from the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir for its public water supply. Electrical power had already been generated prior to the completion of the dam itself.

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan's Secretary of the Interior, Donald Hodel, proposed the restoration of Hetch Hetchy Valley. At the time, he stated: "Restoration of Hetch Hetchy Valley to its natural state may be a dream, but it is our obligation as concerned Americans to discover if this dream can become a reality. It is for our generation to decide that this is an investment for future generations . . . If we succeed, America can once again boast its position as a world leader in the care, improvement, and restoration of our National Parks."

In 1988, under Secretary Hodel's direction, the Bureau of Reclamation (administratively within the Department of Interior) completed a preliminary study for the National Park Service, "Hetch Hetchy Water and Power Replacement Concepts" that outlined several possible scenarios for restoring Hetch Hetchy and allowing the Bay Area continued reliance on the Tuolumne River for water and power.

Management Integration in San Diego

2005-07-08T06:44:00.000-07:00

From The Village News:

The San Diego County Water Authority approved a resolution for an Integrated Regional Water Management Plan grant application during the CWA’s June 23 board meeting. The application, which seeks Proposition 50 funding from the California Department of Water Resources, includes a $2.5 million request for land acquisition along the Santa Margarita Corridor. “They will award us money based upon the quality of our plan and how all the projects work together,” explained CWA principal water resources specialist Vickie Driver. “It’s not just the bottom line rating evaluation for any single given project but how it fits in.” The elements of the Integrated Regional Water Management Plan include land acquisition, land restoration (most prominently removal of invasive species), facilitation, infrastructure, local supply and water quality.

Integrated regional water management was a major thrust of the recently published Update to the California Water Plan, as well as in Prop 50:

Proposition 50 was passed by the state’s voters in November 2002 and includes several chapters under which funding is provided for water-related projects. Chapter 8 allots $380 million to promote integrated water management to protect communities from drought, improve water quality and reduce dependence on imported water.

San Joaquin and Los Angeles

2005-06-28T23:19:00.000-07:00

An LATimes editorial makes a case that Angelinos should be more concerned with the frequent dry times in the San Joaquin River:

As it descends from the Sierra, the river effectively dies for much of the year when it backs up behind Friant Dam north of Fresno. The water is diverted north and south along the east side of the San Joaquin Valley via irrigation canals. About 60 miles of the river go dry. It does pick up some flow from tributaries to the north, but that water is overwhelmed by polluted irrigation runoff. Victims of this shallow, foul stew include the historic salmon run up the San Joaquin. Ultimately, it flows into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and out to San Francisco Bay.

In the delta, the huge pumps of the State Water Project send enough water to Kern County farms and urban users in Southern California to meet the household needs of 2 million families for a year. Pollution in the delta has been a major concern of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which wholesales water to urban districts serving 18 million people from Ventura to San Diego.

A U.S. district judge ruled last year that the federal Bureau of Reclamation had violated a state fish and game law by allowing the river to go dry. A 1937 law requires dam operators to release enough water downstream to maintain the existing fisheries. The case is set for full trial next spring. A major unanswered question is how to find replacement water for the farmers if some of their supply has to remain in the stream.

A solution will take years to work out. But proposed legislation by state Sen. Michael Machado (D-Linden), due for a key committee test today, is one place to start. It would create a "San Joaquin River Fund" with $9 million remaining from a voter-approved state water bond issue. The money would help restore habitat along the river and pay for replacement water.

Polluted beaches, scarce funds

2005-06-23T09:01:00.000-07:00

From the LA Times:

A divided Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has voted to continue fighting strict rules on cleaning up storm water runoff, opening a new chapter in the long-running legal battle over beach pollution.

The vote was met with dismay by environmentalists who have backed efforts by California's regional water boards to impose tough requirements on local governments to clean up storm water pollution, the primary cause of beach closures.... The plan requires the county to conduct more rigorous inspections of construction sites and industrial facilities that are likely to produce polluted runoff when it rains. In addition, the new rules hold the county and cities that own and operate storm drains accountable for ensuring that runoff pollution is dramatically reduced.

The issue, of course, is really how much money to spend?

The Los Angeles-area runoff plan requires government agencies and builders to clean up tainted water before it trickles into waterways and makes its way to the ocean. But the county, along with many cities and business groups, has fought the plan, arguing that the rules could prove unreasonably costly.

In some ways, it comes down to ideology.

"It's an outrageous waste of scarce public dollars," said David Beckman, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which had fought the county's suit against the state. "The county is effectively asking for permission to continue to deliver huge quantities of polluted water to local beaches.".... Michael Lauffer, an attorney for the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, acknowledged the costs but said beachgoers deserved cleaner water. "It's going to be a long-term expensive problem to solve," he said. "That said, it's worth it. They are world-class beaches."

California Water Strategy

2005-06-17T17:18:00.000-07:00

Having read the LA Times summary of the Cali Water Strategy, I have just begun digging through the document myself, and decided to begin with the Highlights, a tasteful document with more pictures than words.

The document begins with the year 2030 water demand predictions. Instead of true predictions, several scenarios are laid out based on how much water users are willing to conserve and how fast population grows. The demand is broken out by region and by sector. In all three scenarios, for instance, significant water demand increases are forseen for the Sacramento River Area, while significant decreases are expected in the Tulare Lake Area. One question that came to mind was why water demand patterns in these areas are expected to change so much. Here in the South Coast, demand increases significantly in two of the three scenarios. The predictions by sector were equally interesting, with a significant reduction in water demand from Agriculture; the urban demand increases significantly in all three scenarios.

The rest of the document summarizes the Water Plan's recommendations for the next twenty-five years. The goals are organized based on sustainability and reliability.

Toward a more sustainable water supply, three "foundational actions" are laid out:

- Use water efficiently
- Protect water quality
- Manage water in ways that protect and restore the environment

Toward a more reliable water supply, two "initiatives" are suggested, which together look both to top-down solutions such as maintenance of state facilities and bottom-up solutions such as local agencies working together.

- Implement integrated regional water management
- Improve statewide water management systems

These ideas are sketched without many details in the Highlights document, and are supposedly laid out more fully in the "Implementation Plan". I look forward to digging into that soon, as well as investigating why the above-mentioned demand changes are predicted.

A reporter's notes from the Redding public hearing makes me look forward to the Los Angeles one on Wednesday.

Water Noncrisis?

2005-06-15T09:53:00.000-07:00

From the LATimes, via Water News,

Having enough water has been a California obsession for nearly a century, pushing the state to build dams, reservoirs and canal systems. Massive quantities of water were shifted from one part of the state to another — primarily from north to south.

But you can't keep building dams forever; eventually you run out of good places to put them, which happened some time ago in California. Built-from-scratch reservoirs that can hold surplus water in wet years for use during dry years are costly and hard to site.

The article then goes on to discuss a list of conservation and management plans that are discussed the proposed California Water Plan. The LA hearing is only a week away! The article concludes:

It would be too much to expect a problem-free future when it comes to water in this thirsty state. But for a change, most of the news is encouraging.

I'm not sure I share this optimism! But I do hope to study the Water Plan and attend the hearing with my friend H-.

Fresno grand jury recommends develpoment moratorium

2005-06-14T16:19:00.000-07:00

From the FresnoBee, via B&C:

In a sharply worded report, the Fresno County grand jury is recommending "an immediate moratorium" on development in Fresno County and placement of double water meters in all new developments.

In the report issued last week, grand jurors said "the rapid growth in Fresno County is a potential disaster."

In case you were wondering:

A grand jury can make recommendations to public agencies, but agencies are under no obligation to follow them.

Overdevelopment has been a concern in Fresno, and a current water supply study is in the works:

The county has put $200,000 into a study that is due out in December, and it may recommend halting development in certain areas, [Supervisor Bob Waterston] said.

"I guess I was really disappointed in the fact that they would make any statement about water at all until the county's water study is done," said ... Waterston, whose district covers water-short eastern Fresno County.

Preparation for levee breaks

2005-06-14T16:10:00.000-07:00

From Cal Farm Bureau Federation:

Experts say the next big levee break could be right around the corner. So, one year after a Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta levee unexpectedly gave way and caused millions of gallons of water to flood San Joaquin County farmland, people interested in preventing a similar incident gathered in Stockton to find solutions.

A variety of people‎including water agency officials, water district attorneys, farmers, geologists, engineers, ecologists, legislators and others‎gathered at the University of the Pacific in Stockton last week for the "Delta Levees Workshop" to share information and find answers to avoiding future levee breaks.

"If we were to have picked on June 2 of a year ago which levee might fail, no one in this room would have ever picked the levee that failed, which gives us an indication of the risk and uncertainty we are dealing with," said California Department of Water Resources Director Lester Snow.

Not surprisingly, a major point of discussion was funding.

...[S]peakers cautioned that there is very little funding available for levee improvements or to prepare for future disasters.

State money to aid the repair of delta levees runs out in a year, and federal money that was approved by Congress has not arrived.

"Getting anything done depends on being able to get a funding stream that isn't subject to the whims of appropriations by either the state or federal legislators. Without the funding, you can't do anything," said Alex Hildebrand, a South Delta farmer in Manteca. "I, in principal, agree that you have to come up with something of the beneficiary-pay point of view so that it doesn't depend on appropriations, but that is extremely difficult to do."

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger included some funding for levees in his budget proposal, but it would only put a small dent in a much bigger problem. The Department of Water Resources estimates that fixing all 1,100 miles of levees along delta islands would cost more than $1.3 billion.

The article also provided a quick rundown on last year's levee break:

On the morning of June 3, 2004, a 65-foot breach in a private levee that protects the delta's Upper Jones Tract flooded lower-elevation farmland. The breach expanded to 500 feet and the Middle River, a tributary of the San Joaquin River, flooded an estimated 12,000 acres of farmland. The levee breach caused 160,000 acre-feet of water to flow from farmland of Upper Jones Tract to Lower Jones Tract. Approximately $15 million worth of crops was lost, and the Department of Water Resources reported that the disaster brought an overall price tag of $90 million in damages.

Met announces spending plan

2005-06-14T16:07:00.000-07:00

From BusinessWire:

Expanding water conservation and recycling programs as well as improvements in the vast water delivery system serving Southern California are fundamental elements of a $1.69 billion spending plan approved today by Metropolitan Water District's Board of Directors.

"This budget reflects our commitment to improve the reliability and quality of the Southland's water supplies and delivery capabilities to ensure that the region's water needs are met," said Metropolitan board Chairman Wes Bannister.

What will the money be spent on?

Metropolitan's key system improvements will include the construction of the Inland Feeder and two other new major imported water lines; expansion of a water treatment plant serving southwest Riverside and San Diego counties; and the addition of ozone treatment facilities at two district filtration plants, which are needed to meet increasingly rigorous water quality regulations.

LADWP Groundwater Pumping Plan

2005-06-14T16:00:00.000-07:00

From the Inyo Register:

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has announced it plans to pump 90,000 acre-feet of groundwater from Inyo County in 2005-06.

The final pumping figure is 5,000 a.f. less than LADWP first proposed earlier this month. That that figure is still a far cry from the "minimal pumping" of 60,325 a.f., suggested by the Inyo County Water Department, which would help depleted aquifers soak up a good charge of recharge water.

The Water Department reasoned that the above-average runoff coming off the Sierra this year would enable LADWP to reduce its groundwater pumping to the minimal levels and still send plenty of water south in the L.A. Aqueduct.

The big winter snowfall has created a financial windfall for LADWP. With runoff expected to hit 128 percent of average in the Owens Valley and produce 527,200 a.f. of surface water, twice as much water will travel to L.A. in the aqueduct this year than last. For 2005-06, LADWP predicts that the aqueduct will deliver just under 400,000 a.f. of water to Los Angeles, which is about twice as much water as was sent to the city from the Owens Valley last year.

With the cost of buying an acre-foot of water from the Metro Water District running about $400 per a.f., LADWP stands to reap a savings of close to $8 million in 2004-05, thanks to not having to buy 200,000 a.f. of water from the Metro District.

The article reflects an understandably frustrated view of LADWP:

[Inyo county water department] called on LADWP to use the "conservative pumping" mandate in the Drought Recovery Policy to lower the amount of groundwater it will pump in the coming year.

However, the final "Annual Owens Valley Operations Plan for Runoff Year 2005-06" states the LADWP operations and pumping program was developed "based on the goals and principles of the" the Inyo-L.A. Long Term Water Agreement.

The Drought Recovery Policy is not mentioned in the Operations Plan. At a recent Inyo-L.A. Technical Group Meeting, Gene Coufal, manager of LADWP's aqueduct business group, made it clear that LADWP does not consider the Drought Recovery Policy to be in effect, thus it would not base its pumping and operations plan on the policy's goal to achieve "substantial recovery" of of soil moisture conditions and underground aquifers.

Alameda Creek Request

2005-06-13T22:47:00.000-07:00

From InsideBayArea.Com:

Environmental groups are warning that plans to restore steelhead trout to Alameda Creek could end up high and dry without firm guarantees for water releases from two East Bay reservoirs.

Members of 65 environmental groups have asked the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to commit to releasing enough water from Calaveras and San Antonio reservoirs to support runs of ocean-going steelhead by 2007.

Alameda Creek has recently undergone some environmentally-motivated improvements:

The San Francisco PUC and other local water agencies are making progress in identifying and removing man-made barriers to fish migration in Alameda Creek and its tributaries, said Jeff Miller of the Alameda Creek Alliance.

As barriers such as check dams and culverts are removed, the dream of restoring historic steelhead runs is closer to reality. That increases the urgency of getting local agencies to agree on exactly how much water will be required to sustain fish runs, Miller said.

I suppose what everyone wants is security or at least legal guarantees that there will be enough water in the future...

"Wring some use from every drop of water"

2005-06-10T10:47:00.000-07:00

From Redding.com, via today's Water News:

Californians would be wise to wring some use from every drop of water, stretching supplies to meet an expected population surge in the next 25 years.

That's the message in a state Department of Water Resources report that will be the subject of a public workshop in Redding on Monday.

I know I have some friends who are frustrated at the timing of these workshops, since they won't be able to get time off to attend. I'm lucky that a good friend has agreed to come to the Los Angeles workshop on my birthday a couple weeks from now. A bit of background on the report:

Water needs have changed since [the first California water report in 1957], officials said. The idea now is to develop a road map for meeting water demands in 2030, when the population in the Sacramento River watershed alone is expected to have jumped to about 4.5 million people -- up from 2.5 million in 2000.

The report is a collaborative effort involving a 65-member advisory committee and 2,000 citizens, said water resources Director Lester Snow. It includes "the very best" ideas for meeting water challenges, he said.

More Colorado River Talks

2005-06-10T10:35:00.000-07:00

From RockyMountainNews:

Arizona's top water officials are planning a diplomatic mission to Colorado next month, taking another shot at water diplomacy in what's been a rough year for the two states.

Herb Guenther, director of Arizona's Department of Water Resources, said he plans a series of meetings with Colorado's water utilities to see if the two states can achieve at least a higher comfort level with one another. Both states depend heavily on the Colorado River.

Under the 1922 Colorado River Compact, the river's supplies are divided between the Upper Basin - Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico - and the Lower Basin - Arizona, Nevada and California.

But the regions have routinely warred over how to interpret the historic compact. The recent past is no exception.

You can check out that the text of that agreement here. The fateful Article III indicates that both upper basin and lower basin states are entitled to 7.5 million acre-feet. As this article from Arizona's Ag department points out, there is rarely 15 million acre-feet to be divided up:

Data from three centuries indicate an average flow of about 13.5 maf. Also, flows are highly erratic, ranging from 4.4 maf to over 22 maf.

A bit more from RockyMountain:

For much of the past 12 months, Upper and Lower Basin states - particularly Colorado and Arizona - have battled over how to set up a drought plan that would allow the states to share the river's supplies equitably even in times of shortage.

In April, the two basins failed to reach agreement, which means U.S. Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton and the Bureau of Reclamation will create a federal drought plan for the states - a two-year process that is to be finished by December 2007.

In the meantime - because both regions face water shortages - officials on each side hope they can break the impasse that has developed in recent months.

Guenther said if Arizona and Colorado could resolve their differences, it would help move all seven states closer to a drought-plan consensus.

Colorado, for example, has been sharply critical of Arizona's underground storage of Colorado River water during the drought. And Arizona, along with California and Nevada, successfully fought Colorado's request to hold more water in Lake Powell this year so it could begin refilling faster.

Tomales Bay Water Quality Ruling

2005-06-08T09:19:00.000-07:00

The California Regional Water Quality Control Board is considering lowering some stringent requirements on farmers whose cattle contribute to the fecal coliform problem in the Bay. From Marin Independent Journal:

Ranchers concerned that water quality rules for Tomales Bay could wipe out their businesses will get a short reprieve pending more research on the issue.

The California Regional Water Quality Control Board was set to approve new water quality standards for Tomales Bay next week, but the final decision will not come until July, officials said yesterday.

"We have researchers at UC Berkeley and I have asked them to rerun a model simulation of the bay," said Dyan Whyte, engineering geologist with the water board, who spoke to the county Board of Supervisors yesterday. "What we are doing with that model simulation is trying to justify some higher numbers that are more feasible and achievable (for ranchers)."

Tomales Bay is described as "a coastal estuary located on the central California coast approximately 40 miles northwest of San Francisco". According to Marin Independent:

Tomales Bay has been plagued by high fecal coliform counts - which may indicate the presence of pathogens that can make humans sick - and force closure of bay oyster-harvesting operations.

In March, the water board issued a 10-year plan on how to remedy the problem: require a probable fecal coliform count of no more than 43 per 100 milliliters for both the bay and its tributaries over a 30-day period. While the 43 count will likely remain for the bay, the number for the tributaries could be massaged up to 200 as more research is now done.

A count of 14 is considered safe for shellfish harvesting, 200 is safe for swimming and 2,000 is safe for recreation on the bay, such as boating.

Cattle have been identified as a main source of the problem, as rain forces feces into creeks. Ranchers worry they could be forced out of business if they have to spend thousands of dollars to remedy the problem by building fences and taking other steps to keep cattle away from waterways.

Though I've done little with water quality modeling myself, I am quite curious what models the Berekely guys are using. I wonder how precise these models are and whether they have been used as decision making tools in the past, and if so, what their track record is?

Brown and Caldwell Newsletters

2005-06-07T11:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was very surprised to get an email from Richard Hellman, editor of Brown and Caldwell's Water News, who told me that they are featuring this blog in their newsletters today. This was very exciting to me, as I regularly read their California Water News. In any case, thanks to Richard for choosing to feature the blog, and thanks to Matt Clark at Urban Water Institute for reading and for recommending the blog.

As you may know, one of the more interesting facets of blogging is the ability to interact through comments on any of the blog entries. So, please feel free to add a comment to any of the entries; I would love to get some good discussion on current water issues.

MD

Disappearing Arctic Lakes

2005-06-06T11:24:00.000-07:00

From a ScienceDaily news release:

Continued arctic warming may be causing a decrease in the number and size of Arctic lakes. The issue is the subject of a paper published in the June 3 issue of the journal "Science." The paper, titled, "Disappearing Arctic Lakes" is the result of a comparison of satellite data taken of Siberia in the early 1970s to data from 1997-2004. Researchers, including Larry Hinzman with the Water and Environmental Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, tracked changes of more than 10,000 large lakes over 200,000 square miles.

The full Science article, which has my old remote sensing professor Larry Smith as the lead author, is available here. This article suggests that the lakes are actually draining, not evaporating. From the abstract:

The spatial pattern of lake disappearance suggests ... that thaw and "breaching" of permafrost is driving the observed losses, by enabling rapid lake draining into the subsurface...

The original news release points to possible changes resulting from the decreased lake surface area:

"The changing lakes are a consistent, measurable indication of the overall changes to hydrology in the Arctic," said Hinzman. "The loss of surface water will inevitably impact local ecosystems, which will have a cascading effect. Changes could include loss of migratory bird habitat resulting in an effect on subsistence activities as well as changes to local and regional atmospheric conditions, including more localized wind and more frequent and more severe wildland fires."

Seventeen years of discord

2005-06-05T19:24:00.000-07:00

From Appeal-Democrat.Com:

The proposed Lower Yuba River Accord was supposed to end 17 years of controversy, but the battle isn't over for the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.

CSPA's lawyer said Wednesday his group opposes the accord, announced in April, and wants to continue the legal fight in court.

"We just don't see that the accord, which has been ballyhooed all over everywhere as fixing everything, including my wife's dishwasher, will necessarily be the end-all and be-all that improves things," said attorney Michael Jackson.

In 1988, Jackson, representing CSPA, filed a complaint with the State Water Resources Control Board, alleging the Yuba River fishery was in bad shape.

The complaint spawned years of hearings before the board, which ultimately directed higher flows in the river. That order sparked a court battle.

The parties, including the Yuba County Water Agency, environmental groups and state and federal agencies, eventually negotiated the accord, which increases rivers flows while assuring the Water Agency a steady flow of income - at least $35 million - for water sold through 2015.

Desert water meeting

2005-06-01T10:21:00.000-07:00

From the Hidsert Star:

Water supplies being so comparatively limited in the desert, and yet ever more people arriving all the time to claim a share in them, it's helpful for the water managers now and again to meet with the public for delivery of a state-of-the-water address.

May 28's Morongo Basin Water Symposium was just such an occasion. Executives from state, regional and local water interests appeared, each with a statement to make about water from his or her agency's perspective. Yet, for all the fire power they represented, and the insights they must have into SoCal's water issues, most of the speakers limited their presentations to a very superficial excursus on the need for every agency to have a plan, and the promise to everyone present that their agency did, indeed, have one, or even many.

Future sea water intrusion in Monterrey

2005-05-31T09:15:00.000-07:00

If things continue as they are, drinking wells will soon be pumping sea water in Monterrey:

A recent study conducted for the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District concluded that the Seaside Basin aquifer has been drawn down much farther than previously believed. At current pumping rates, the study's authors found, it is only a matter of time before seawater intrudes on drinking-water wells that pump from the aquifer.

The results mean the district and California American Water Co. can rely on the basin less as they search for a water source to replace pumping on the Carmel River. The study also adds more urgency to proposals to build a desalination plant in Moss Landing.

How exactly does sea water intrustion work?

For millions of years, Yates said, offshore flows pushed fresh water under the ocean floor. But increased pumping in the basin has reversed that flow in recent years, sucking fresh water from the ocean floor into the basin. And saltwater is not too far behind.

The only way to prevent the saltwater from intruding on municipal wells, Yates said, is to "balance" the take from the basin by either reducing pumping or injecting more fresh water into the aquifer during wet winter months.

"It's like a checking account," Yates said. "Either you can make more deposits or write fewer checks."

Cal Am and the water district have been operating an aquifer storage and recovery program to refill the underground supply of water with excess winter water from the Carmel River for several years.

Both Cal Am and the water district want to expand that program, and it is an element of Cal Am's proposed Coastal Water Project, which also includes a desalination plant in Moss Landing.

Water transfer on the rocks

2005-05-23T09:29:00.000-07:00

From North County Times:

Less than two years after signing a contract to sell billions of gallons of water to San Diego County residents, angry Imperial Valley water leaders say the groundbreaking deal could be in danger because the San Diego County Water Authority is undermining their efforts.

Imperial Irrigation District board members say the Water Authority ---- which opened an office in Imperial Valley earlier this year ---- has:

1) Suggested to valley farmers that the Irrigation District has cheated them by not passing money from the water transfer on to them.

2) Told farmers that the controversial "fallowing" program ---- taking farmland out of production to create water to sell to San Diego County ---- could be "run better."

3) Spread information about how much money it has paid the Irrigation District for water so far to "sway" public opinion to favor a study that says the transfer has "benefited" the valley ---- a study the Irrigation District has challenged. Irrigation District officials say if the study is upheld, the Water Authority wouldn't have to pay the Irrigation District and valley residents millions of dollars in "extra" costs under the deal's terms.

The problem seems to be in a sum of $10 million which will be paid to Imperial only under certain conditions:

the Water Authority agreed to pay the Irrigation District $10 million that would only be spent if an independent group of economists ruled that the deal caused economic harm in the valley.

The group of three economists ---- one chosen by the Water Authority, one chosen by the Irrigation District, and the last chosen by the other two ---- would render judgment once a year. Fallowing would put farmworkers and others who rely upon the farm industry for their livelihood out of work.

This year, two of the three economists ---- the Water Authority representative and the "at large" member ---- ruled that the water transfer has financially benefited the valley.

The Irrigation District is challenging that finding, saying that it knows of at least 100 people who have been harmed by the deal and that it believes the two economists misused information to reach their conclusion.

Meanwhile, the Water Authority has said publicly, and written in "fact sheets," that it has paid the Irrigation District $9.3 million for fallowed water so far and that $2.3 million of that has been paid by the Irrigation District to farmers.

The Water Authority has said that the Irrigation District has "retained" the remaining $7 million, and repeated that assertion in meetings with the Imperial Valley Farm Bureau.

That has enraged the Irrigation District board. Horne said the Water Authority was telling local farmers that the Irrigation District was "gypping them" by pocketing the lion's share of the payments.

Horne said that's not true. He said the district has spent the $7 million to mitigate environmental effects caused by the transfer and to pay off some of the $26 million it had to borrow to make the transfer deal happen.

In addition, Horne said, the Water Authority's suggestion that the Irrigation District is keeping $7 million incorrectly buttresses the independent panel's ruling that the water transfer has actually benefited the valley ---- and that the Irrigation District is simply not sharing the wealth.

Supporting the panel's finding, Horne said, directly benefits the Water Authority.

The future of water supply

2005-05-20T16:31:00.000-07:00

Many articles I post on this site I find from California Water News. In today's issue, they had a number of interesting articles on where water will come from in the future.

It looks like desalination is on Congress' mind:

Legislation to increase the federal government’s role in developing desalination plants as part of a solution to America’s growing water supply crisis has been introduced for the first time in the U.S. Senate by Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL), it was announced. Identical legislation has been re-introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Representatives Jim Davis (D-FL) and Jim Gibbons (R-NV).

A south bay water district received an award for water recycling:

The El Segundo City Council presented West Basin Municipal Water
District with a proclamation on Tuesday for its commitment to ensuring a safe and reliable water supply for the South Bay through its innovative water recycling program. For the past ten years, the West Basin Water Recycling Facility (WBWRF) in El Segundo has been providing the region with high-quality recycled water to conserve drinking water and diversify the water supply. Since its construction in 1995, the WBWRF has saved more than 91.2 billion gallons of drinking water by using recycled water for non-potable applications.

A similar reuse plan could benefit cities a few miles up the coast:

Morro Bay and Cayucos could save millions of gallons of water if the communities' shared sewer plant boosted treatment levels and recycled the wastewater, according to the county grand jury's latest report. Such an undertaking would take about 10 years and $15 million to fulfill, according to the plant's manager. It would cost ratepayers up to $265 a year. They pay about $160 annually now. The plant discharges more than 1 million gallons of treated wastewater into the ocean every day.

The city of Santa Monica is urging conservation:

Despite this year’s near-record rainfall in the southwestern U.S., it turns out that the rain fell in the wrong place. All the watersheds relied upon by several major metropolitan areas -- Los Angeles , San Diego , Las Vegas and Phoenix -- experienced significantly lower than normal levels of rainfall and snow pack. The Colorado River is below its average, and northern California water supplies -- Santa Monica ’s primary source -- are also lower than normal this year. The entire region is under increasing pressure to promote water-efficiency and conservation measures. Despite the City of Santa Monica ’s goal to cut water waste 20 percent by the year 2010, local usage is up. Daily water use is more than 13 million gallons per day, significantly higher than expected for a city that is just 8.3 square miles. Reaching the 20 percent target will require cutting that use to 10 million gallons per day.
In an effort to reach the goal, the city is offering residents and businesses several incentive programs, including rebates for water-efficient fixtures that range from $50 to $2,000.

User fees, water transport and electricity

2005-05-20T10:55:00.000-07:00

From Capital Press' Agriculture Weekly:

User fees could very well be part of any plan to expand and improve the state’s water delivery infrastructure, state Secretary of Resources Mike Chrisman said.

The government may be unable to rely solely on general obligation bonds and will have to borrow for what may be billion-dollar investments, Chrisman told an agricultural group.

“We are going to have to develop new ways of paying for these things,” said Chrisman, who was appointed in 2003 by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to head an agency that has 15,000 employees and annual budget of more than $4 billion.

Chrisman pointed out a tremendous potential benefit of desalination plants, related to an absolutely astounding figure:

Desalination plants conceivably could free more water, or at least allow the agriculture industry to retain some of its current uses.

There would be another benefit, too, he said.

“Forty percent of the cost of electricity (in the state) is spent on pumping water to Southern California,” said Chrisman.

The question of the social, economic and environmental costs of shipping so much water around the state – and what fees should be assessed for that – is being asked more and more.

Groundwater storage rules

2005-05-19T09:26:00.000-07:00

New rules for underground water storage were voted on yesterday. From the Whittier Daily News:

The Water Replenishment District of Southern California on Wednesday -- on a 4-1 vote -- adopted rules for storing water in natural underground aquifers to ensure there's enough water to meet demands during the next drought.

But officials from area cities and other water utilities are objecting to the rules the WRD adopted.

Jim Glancy, president of the Central Basin Water Association that represents water producers in the Southeast area of Los Angeles County, said the rules favor the larger water users -- such as Long Beach, Los Angeles and Metropolitan Water District over smaller cities such as Downey, Pico Rivera and Santa Fe Springs.

The rules call for applications to be made to the replenishment district followed by another review by the Project Review Committee for feasibility, impact on the basin and benefit to the region. The committee would then make a recommendation to the WRD board.

This committee would be divided equally between the Central and West basin water associations, which represent the smaller cities and water utilities and Metropolitan Water District members, including the two municipal water districts, Long Beach and Los Angeles.