[Water_news] 2. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: SUPPLY - 5/8/07

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment 

 

May 8, 2007

 

2. Supply

 

Big, new water project under way

Diversion to supply Sacramento area and the East Bay -

San Francisco Chronicle

 

Drought a drain on flora, fauna -

Los Angeles Times

 

____________________________________________________

 

SACRAMENTO COUNTY
Big, new water project under way

Diversion to supply Sacramento area and the East Bay

San Francisco Chronicle – 5/8/07

Glen Martin, Staff Writer

 

Freeport, Sacramento County -- Government officials and environmentalists broke ground Monday on a new Sacramento River water diversion system, deeming it a historic project that sets a precedent for state water distribution in an era of global warming and drought.

 

The Freeport Regional Water Project ends a 35-year legal and political battle. When finished in 2010, it will provide 85 million gallons of water a day to Sacramento County Water Agency (SCWA). Additionally, during drought years, 100 million gallons a day will be delivered to the East Bay Municipal Utility District.

 

"This is the moment we've been waiting for," said Douglas Wallace, the environmental affairs officer for EBMUD. "It's a good deal all around."

Lt. Gov. John Garamendi said the project ends one of the longest battles in California's water wars.

 

The project "only happened because ... communities decided to work together instead of fighting it out in court," he said.

 

Plenty of contentious legal skirmishing preceded the project, however. The original dispute grew out of a 1970 contract between EBMUD and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation that would have permitted the utility to divert 150,000 acre feet of water a year from the American River, a relatively pristine tributary of the Sacramento.

Two years later, two environmental groups, Environmental Defense and the Save the American River Association, sued the utility to block the deal.

 

The county of Sacramento later joined the environmentalists' suit. Years of litigation followed, with rulings by both the state and U.S. supreme courts. Ultimately, an Alameda Superior Court decision significantly limited EBMUD's options. Negotiations then ensued, with the Freeport project representing a compromise agreement.

The project essentially "takes the straw out of the American and puts it in the Sacramento, where the environmental impacts are fewer," said Tom Graff, the regional director for Environmental Defense.

 

Graff said the project accomplishes two main goals of the environmental community: protection of the lower American River and the promotion of water conservation and wastewater recycling.

 

Ron Stork, the senior policy advocate for Friends of the River, said the project could also help restore salmon runs on the nearby Cosumnes River.

Sacramento County and the Nature Conservancy have agreed in principle to pipe water to the Cosumnes so fall-run Chinook salmon can get up the river in October when water levels typically are low, Stork said. The Freeport project should provide the county with enough water to meet that goal, he said.

The spirit of cooperation that drove the project worked right down to the neighborhood level.

 

Sacramento City Councilwoman Bonnie Pannell said residents near the Freeport construction site were originally opposed to the project because they were worried about noise, chemical contamination and falling property values. But an outreach program and community feedback resulted in commitments to move the site farther downstream than originally proposed and reduce operational noise, Pannell said.

 

"It's a much better project now, and the community is happy," she said.

 

Stork said the project largely succeeded because SCWA and EBMUD "became infected with the notion of radical common sense. I believe they feel they have stewardship over California's water, and the obligation to use it responsibly."

 

The biggest benefit to EBMUD is protection from water shortages during drought or low-water years. The utility provides water to more than 1.2 million East Bay customers.

 

Garamendi said the project points to new methods for equitably distributing the state's water during a period of shifting global climates.

"Climate change is real," he said, "and it will change everything we know of water in California. The snowpack will be 30 to 70 percent less. Our snow melt today is two weeks earlier than it was 10 years ago. We'll also have greater floods (from precipitation falling as rain rather than snow at high elevations)."

 

Garamendi predicted that climate change ultimately will force a vast retooling of California's water storage and delivery system, costing taxpayers billions. The Freeport project, he said, sets the precedent for that inevitable revamping.#

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/08/BAGO4PMVVF1.DTL

 

Drought a drain on flora, fauna

Los Angeles Times – 5/8/07

By Rong-Gong Lin II, Times Staff Writer

Around this time each year, thousands make the pilgrimage to the Antelope Valley to see California poppies shining in the fields around Anne Aldrich's Lancaster home.

"There are fields of orange, just like in 'The Wizard of Oz' when you first spot the Emerald City," Aldrich said.

But not in 2007, as Southern California is poised to experience its driest year on record.

"We don't have poppies this year. This is about the worst we've seen," she said. "It's desert-brown."

The relentlessly dry weather has made this a spring like no other across the region, wreaking havoc on the ecosystem.

Downtown Los Angeles has recorded less than 4 inches of rain since July 1 — less than a quarter of normal. The region was hit Monday with another round of high heat, low humidity and dry winds, prompting officials to issue a red flag warning for brush fires. (It will continue through tonight.)

The effects of the prolonged dryness can be seen and felt all around. Seasonal ponds are cracked dry, leaving no haven for some frog eggs or fairy shrimp to hatch. Some flower-dependent butterflies are staying dormant for another season.

Plants aren't bearing berries; some oak trees aren't sprouting acorns. Bees are behaving strangely.

The problem is apparent in Ventura County, where ranchers are selling their cattle early or thinking about moving them to other states. Ranchers' lands, starved of rainwater, have not grown the natural grasses key to feeding cattle through the spring and summer.

John Harvey, a Ventura County ranch owner for 30 years, said he will have to sell half his herd of 350 mother cows by summer.

"This is the worst year I can ever remember," said Harvey, president of the Ventura County Cattlemen's Assn.

A nature hike through the parched hills of Griffith Park offers few of the usual spring blooms.

"Look at how miserable they are, these seeds," said longtime ranger Giuseppe Pira, pointing to the shriveled berries of a California toyon shrub, which normally should be plump and green in the spring.

Many of the plants in the park show signs of stress. Leaves droop and seed pods are wilted. Even if a shrub's leaves are green, they are brittle to the touch.

Because there has been so little rain, Pira said, dust is sticking to the leaves, giving them a sickly look and making plants more susceptible to disease.

"This is entirely different in my years of experience, no flowers, no nothing," Pira said. "Even the bees — they don't have much to eat."

Fewer flowers means a poor honey season for California beekeepers, who rely on wildflower nectar to feed their bees.

"It looks like we're going to have one of the worst years for honey production in Southern California," said Red Bennett, owner of Bennett's Honey Farm in Fillmore. "Wildflowers represent about 90% of our honey production."

During the near-record rainy season two years ago, Bennett's farm produced 2.3 million pounds of honey. He said he expects to produce "40,000 to 50,000 pounds this year, if that."

"I think that's optimistic," said Bennett, who is buying expensive sugar syrup to keep his bee population alive this year. #

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-dry8may08,1,7529724.story?coll=la-headlines-california