A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
May 10, 2007
2. Supply
State OKs lower flow for Russian River; Water board’s decision expected to keep Lake Mendocino from nearly drying up by October - Santa Rosa Press Democrat
IMPERIAL IRRIGATION DISTRICT:
IID 5-0 on water savings effort -
WATER SUPPLY CONDITIONS:
Dry year worries officials - Bakersfield Californian
Experts: Too soon for 'D' word; Situation not a doom-and-gloom proposal yet -
State OKs lower flow for
Santa Rosa Press Democrat – 5/10/07
By Guy Kovner, staff writer
Citing an “urgent need” to preserve the water supply in
Without lowered river flows, the Sonoma County Water Agency had warned that Lake Mendocino, one of the North Coast’s two major reservoirs, would drop so low by fall that it might not be able to discharge any water into the river, jeopardizing water supplies, recreation and endangered fish.
The reservoir near Ukiah, now only 70 percent full, could run nearly bone dry by October, officials said, well below its all-time low mark of 12,000 acre feet, set in 1977 at the peak of the region’s two-year drought.
With the lowered river flows,
The reservoir was built to hold about 90,000 acre-feet, a year’s supply of water for about 360,000 people.
Scant spring rainfall and new limits on the amount of water diverted from the
Seeking relief, the Water Agency — which provides water to 600,000 customers in
The National Marine Fisheries Service and the state Department of Fish and Game supported the county’s request, both citing the need for sufficient cool water from Lake Mendocino to support the Chinook salmon fall migration in the river.
Lower summertime flows will enable the water agency to “bank” water in
Wednesday’s order allows the water agency to:
Reduce the flow in the river above Healdsburg from 185 cubic feet per second to 75 cfs. One cubic foot is about 7.5 gallons.
Reduce the flow downstream from Healdsburg from 125 cfs to 85 cfs.
The lower flows “may impair instream beneficial uses, including recreation,” the state board said in its decision.
But it concluded that the impairment is “not unreasonable considering the potential impacts to fisheries, water supply and recreation in
http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070510/NEWS/70510004/1033/NEWS01
IMPERIAL IRRIGATION DISTRICT:
IID 5-0 on water savings effort
By Darren Simon, staff writer
Deciding how to conserve water — enough to serve hundreds of thousands of homes — for transfer to
Faced with a conservation project that will cost at least $100 million, the board split 3-2 this week — just as it did last week — on a motion by Director John Pierre Menvielle to launch two aspects of the project.
The board then voted unanimously on a motion by Director James Hanks to begin one aspect of the conservation effort, which has become known as the Definite Plan.
But the vote still leaves open a question — can the district move fast enough to develop a conservation program that must be in place, in large part, by 2013 and fully in place by 2017, to comply with a water transfer pact with
While John Eckhardt, who is heading IID’s effort to draft a conservation plan, has voiced urgency in moving forward as quickly as possible with pilot projects, some on the board have said they need more time to consider the issue.
Last week Eckhardt asked the board to allow him to move forward with a water seepage recovery program where pumps would be installed on canals to catch water that seeps through the system.
That effort, he said, could save 40,000 acre-feet per year and could be constructed by the mid-2008.
He also asked the board to allow him to begin a pilot project to test the impact of adding more automation to IID’s water delivery system. That effort could eventually lead to meters being placed on all 6,000 canal head gates to measure water flows.
That program could conserve an additional 60,000 acre-feet of water.
“To me the whole world is looking at the IID and we have to have a better measurement at the head gates,” Eckhardt said.
Last week the board voted 3-2 not to move forward with his request, stating it needed more time to study the issue. At that time, Menvielle and Director Anthony Sanchez voted to support Eckhardt’s proposal.
This week Eckhardt made the same request with the same outcome.
Menvielle made a motion to accept the proposal and Sanchez backed the motion. Board President Stella Mendoza and directors Mike Abatti and James Hanks cast the dissenting votes.
That vote came as Hanks said he wants to see if it is possible to move forward with another element of the proposed Definite Plan — on-farm conservation — on a faster clip than Eckhardt has proposed.
The vote also came as local farmer Alex Jack told the board he already is doing on-farm conservation and he knows what will work. He invited the board to come to his farm to see the programs he has started.
Local farmer Mike Morgan, who is head of the Imperial Group, an organization of farmers that has a water lawsuit against the district, told the board its vote last week showed integrity and he challenged the plan Eckhardt was proposing.
He said farmers have offered and will continue to offer to help the district come up with a conservation plan
“It’s important this board keeps your integrity,” Morgan said.
Of Eckhardt’s request to move forward with a pilot project to test water system automation upgrades, Abatti said he was going to vote no.
“I’m going to go with our experts, which is our farmers. That’s my vote,” Abatti said.
Immediately following the 3-2 vote, the board voted on Hanks’ motion to move forward solely with the water seepage recovery program. His motion also called on staff to organize a workshop with the farming community to discuss water conservation.
The board voted 5-0 on that motion.
No date has been given for a workshop between the district board and farmers. #
http://www.ivpressonline.com/articles/2007/05/10/news/news03.txt
WATER SUPPLY CONDITIONS:
Dry year worries officials
By Vic Pollard, staff writer
Global warming has already begun to affect water supplies in the
It's just a plain old dry year, the kind that happens every so often in
But that doesn't mean that local officials aren't worried about the potential long-term effects of global warming.
It's likely to mean greater extremes of water supplies, said Jim Beck, manager of the Kern County Water Agency. That means bigger gully-washing storms some years, with a lot of that water flowing out to sea because it can't be captured and used, and more dry years like this one that will deplete supplies stored above ground in reservoirs and underground in water banks.
But that's only part of the problem.
"The big impact of warming temperatures is that there'll be less snowpack over the long term," Beck said.
The Sierra snowpack is vital to
Farmers and workers who depend on both projects are facing sharp cutbacks in supplies this year because of a snowpack that is thinner than usual.
The state project, which fills the California Aqueduct with water from the Feather River in northern
An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, the average amount used by two households in a year.
The shortage means many farmers will have to use more-expensive water pumped from wells than they would otherwise.
East-side farmers face an even sharper cutback from the federal project.
They are expected to get 400,000 acre-feet. That's just 32 percent of the 1.25 million acre-feet that they have averaged over the last five years.
The Kern River, which feeds
http://www.bakersfield.com/102/story/138162.html
Experts: Too soon for 'D' word; Situation not a doom-and-gloom proposal yet
By Ansel Oliver, staff writer
One dry winter doesn't mean a drought.
But Northern Sierra snow water equivalents at 27 percent of normal for this date, according to the California Department of Water Resour-ces, could mean a greater need for a wetter winter this year.
"To use the big 'D' word, we usually look for a prolonged dry period and a well below normal reservoir situation," said Steve Goldstein, forecaster for the National Weather Service in
Fortunately, reservoirs are full thanks to two consecutive wet years, including last year's winter as the fifth wettest in
Though the big snowstorms that build up water supply in the Sierras were absent this year, state officials say the region is in fine shape.
"We're going into this year very healthy water-wise," said Arthur Hinojosa, chief of hydrology for the California Department of Water Resources.
"We wouldn't call it (a drought)," Hinojosa said.
"We've been saying for a while that one year doesn't cause a drought."
Problems don't start cropping up until the second or third year. State and city water authorities say they aren't planning any extraordinary conservation measures this summer.
"Even though we aren't in mandatory conservation mode we do ask people to do what they can to minimize their water use," said Ed Kriz, water utility manager for the city of
Folsom lake was at 101 percent of normal for this time of year and at 75 percent of capacity as of April 30. Single dry years mostly impact water systems dependant on annual rainfall, such as rural fire protection agencies, ranchers conducting dry land grazing and rural residents relying on wells in low-yield rock formations.
"This is
Weather experts say the Sierra doesn't build much snowpack this time of year because it melts so quickly.
"During the winter what you want is a big snowpack that melts nice and slow in the spring so it feeds the reservoirs," Goldstein said. "We'll probably have to tap into the reservoirs a little bit, but we should be fine.
"We'll probably get concerned if we have a second winter that resembles this one." #
http://www.thepresstribune.com/articles/2007/05/09/news/community/01drought.txt
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