A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
May 10, 2007
3. Watersheds
ALL
Lawsuit Filed to
States’ shares of water at stake with proposed Colorado River guidelines; Interior Department considering usage deal signed by seven states - Associated Press
Editorial: Agreement promising for region -
LA RIVER RESTORATION:
Plan for
Council OKs master plan for L.A. River; Aim is to clean up water, help areas along its banks - Los Angeles Daily News
Editorial: Silver lining to Buffett's cloud -
LAKE
State doubles trout limit at Lake Davis for summer - Sacramento Bee
ALL
Lawsuit Filed to
KBPS (
There's a new lawsuit challenging a plan to line part of the
Water officials want to line a 23-mile stretch of the irrigation canal with concrete to block leaks and save water. The San Diego County Water Authority says lining the canal will save enough water to meet the needs of half-a-million people each year for more than a century. Lawsuits challenging the plan were dismissed last month. But a new lawsuit now seeks to stop the project.
Kevin Kelley is with the Imperial Irrigation District, which operates the canal.
Kelley: The briefing that we, that our board received yesterday, is: this is a new challenge, but we don't expect it to delay the project further.
Kelley says construction is expected to start next month. Several groups claim the project could harm a fragile wetland area and leave many villages in the
http://www.kpbs.org/news/local?id=8262
States’ shares of water at stake with proposed
Associated Press – 5/9/07
By Judith Kohler, staff writer
The upper basin states _ Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico _ are already struggling with drought and could face cutbacks if they and other users of the river water in Arizona, California and Nevada fight rather than cooperate, said Jim Lochhead, an attorney representing several Colorado water districts and communities.
The seven states hope that an agreement they signed last week after months of negotiations will be adopted by the Interior Department to help manage the
The Interior Department is considering guidelines for dealing with water shortages. The guidelines would update a 1922 compact laying out the states' shares of water from the river that starts in the
The proposal would allow the upper basin to deliver less water during droughts and includes incentives for conservation, improved efficiency and ways for users to bank water in the reservoirs.
The Interior Department expects to issue a final environmental impact statement on the guidelines by year's end. The agency had encouraged states to come up with their own solution or face one imposed by the government.
"Colorado has a huge amount at stake in these negotiations primarily because if we are in a situation where we don't meet our compact obligations and are required to curtail uses, the first users in Colorado potentially affected are the whole Denver, Front Range municipal area," said Lochhead, one of the main negotiators.
The area's population is more than 3.6 million and growing. At least 30 million people in one of the country's fastest-growing regions depend on the
But rising demands and more than six years of drought are straining the system. Water managers are also grappling with the potential impacts of climate change, which could mean less moisture and unpredictable weather.
Under the compact, the upper basin states must deliver 75 million acre feet every 10 years to the lower basin states. In practice, at least 8.2 million acre feet of water have been released annually from
An acre foot of water is about 326,000 gallons, or enough for two households for one year.
The rest of the water is split with
The thought was that the upper basin would get about 7.5 million acre feet a year. Ostler said the area can expect at least 6 million acre feet most of the time.
"The upper basin deals with shortages routinely. They occur because a lot of upper basin uses occur on upper tributaries above the reservoirs," Ostler said.
The lower basin is feeling the pinch as the drought continues. Snowpack in the mountains, the major source of
Ostler said this year's flow likely will be abut 70 percent of average.
The states' plan sent to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne is a significant step forward in dealing with the drought and rising demands, said Patrick Tyrrell,
"For the first time now, we have on record at least a way to approach shortages in the lower basin," Tyrrell said.
The proposal would also establish a process to head off lawsuits, said attorney Lochhead, the former head of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources.
"A lawsuit would kind of be like nuclear war. It would be the mother of all water lawsuits," Lochhead said. The fight would end up in the
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/61486.html
Editorial: Agreement promising for region
When leaders from seven Western states met in 1922 to hammer out an agreement regarding the
It was in that context the leaders signed the Colorado River Compact, a document that portioned out the water in the river between the Upper Basin states of Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and Utah and the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada.
As the region has grown, however, the stains of the compact and water law have meant that sometimes the best long-term policies have been forsaken because “use-it-or-lose-it” doctrine has taken precedence.
It is heartening then, that leaders of the seven states have come to agreement on policies that could ensure a better use of
The agreement, signed April 23, would allow the upper basin states to reduce the amount of water they’re required to deliver to
Even more important, the agreement shows a spirit of cooperation among the leaders of the states in which the
This month’s water agreement is a good first step.#
http://www.canoncitydailyrecord.com/Opinion-story.asp?ID=6924
LA RIVER RESTORATION:
Plan for
By Steve Hymon, staff writer
Embracing an ambitious and expensive vision, the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday approved a long-awaited blueprint for revitalizing the much-maligned
The plan — which itself cost $3 million — calls for spending as much as $2 billion over the next half a century on more than 200 projects along the 31 miles of riverbed within city limits.
It took five years to frame the details, but the roots of the proposed river restoration go back to a fledgling group of environmentalists who in the late 1980s began insisting that the river was more than just a concrete-lined flood-control channel.
"This is a great step," said Lewis MacAdams, founder of the activist group Friends of the
Echoing that thought was an ebullient Councilman Ed Reyes, who represents parts of northeast
"This is now a real mandate that declares the river is a real river, and we're going to give it life and support the way it supported us when
Among the proposed projects are dozens of parks, pedestrian walkways and bridges. The plan also calls for some river-adjacent areas to be rezoned to allow for more housing near the stream.
At its most extreme and perhaps far-fetched, the plan also proposes knocking down one of the concrete walls that contain the river to expand the channel and make it look more natural. The Army Corps of Engineers is studying those issues.
"It's incredibly visionary, and I think they've set the bar high," said Nancy Steele, executive director of the
Steele noted that the city and region have a rich history of putting together plans for rivers and then never following through. She noted that the river plan doesn't include upstream tributaries.
Hitting on that point, Councilman Richard Alarcon voted for the plan, but threatened to withhold support unless studies were conducted to include parks in his northeast
The council also committed to begin creating a three-tiered management structure to oversee implementation of the river plan.
A joint-powers authority between the city and county would manage projects within the river channel, a nonprofit appointed by elected officials would manage and construct parks along the banks, and a philanthropic organization would help raise private funds.
Other thorny issues remain, among them finding money for projects — state and federal help will be required — and improving water quality.
The city is in the early stages of a federally ordered cleanup of several pollutants in the waterway, including trash and bacteria.
Those details were touched on during Wednesday's hourlong council discussion, but much of the talk also was of members' fanciful ambitions for the river.
Council President Eric Garcetti — who has also been a chief proponent of the river — said he could imagine the day that rubber dams are installed in the river to create lakes large enough to hold rowing events downtown in a future Summer Olympics.
He too said the plan would continue to evolve. "The doing has already begun," Garcetti said, "and the thinking continues."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-council10may10,1,7344679.story?coll=la-headlines-california
Council OKs master plan for
By Kerry Cavanaugh, staff writer
The Los Angeles City Council approved a master plan Wednesday that calls for new development, parks and recreation facilities along 32 miles of riverfront property from
Designed as a 25- to 50-year blueprint that could cost $2 billion to complete, the L.A. River Revitalization Master Plan aims to clean up the water inside the river and redevelop the communities on its banks.
"With this master plan, we're giving the city a full face-lift with improved natural habitat, water quality, recreation and economic development. All those communities that historically have been neglected will have an opportunity to be rejuvenated," said Councilman Ed Reyes, who heads the council's Los Angeles River Ad Hoc Committee.
Reyes led the effort to develop the master plan at a cost of about $3 million.
City Engineer Gary Lee Moore said he is now developing a one-year implementation plan to carry out the most immediate recommendations.
City planners will begin holding public workshops in July to create a new district along the river that would require new residential and commercial projects to incorporate the river and public walkways into their plans.
For example, projects may have more native landscaping, grassy patches to filter urban runoff before it hits the river, and doors or entrances that face the waterway.
In addition,
Meanwhile, the city is waiting for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to complete a $7.3 million study on how to return the river to a more natural environment without compromising flood control.
The city covered some of the cost of that study with its master plan, which addresses some of those questions.
The master plan was expected to be approved by the City Council with nothing but accolades. But at the last minute, Councilman Richard Alarc n threatened to vote against it because it did not address tributaries in Pacoima and Sun Valley that flow into the
"In the
But other council members said the city would have needed millions more dollars and many more years to include all tributaries in the
"The proper way to do this is for you to come forward with your vision of what you want us to do," Smith said to Alarc, "rather than try and impede what Mr. Reyes has been trying to do for the last six years here." #
http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_5859043
Editorial: Silver lining to Buffett's cloud
So mega-billionaire Warren Buffett thinks that relicensing of the
PacifiCorp owns the dams, and wants to keep them. Pretty much everyone who depends upon the river opposes the dams and wants them to come down, since they have caused serious environmental damage to the river and to its salmon-breeding capability.
But Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway holding company owns PacifiCorp, and he told a Klamath advocacy group at his stockholders meeting in
When it comes to profits, Buffett is going to hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil about the Klamath. How do you think he became a mega-billionaire?
But there is a bright side to this gloomy scenario. The movement to bring down the Klamath dams has broken out of our remote corner of the world and has taken the first step to becoming a major political issue, just as the next campaign season is shaping up to be of historical significance.
Look at what's going on in addition to the
* Led by environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Yurok and Karuk tribes and their supporters just filed suit in federal court over toxic algae blooms caused by two of the dams.
* Two hundred gourmet chefs from 33 states, led by Alice Waters of Berkeley's Chez Panisse, kicked off a national consumer campaign this week -- Vote With Your Fork! -- to tear down the dams and restore the wild salmon fisheries.
It's a puzzlement why dam removal is not a “slam dunk,” to quote a certain former CIA director in the news recently. We wonder if the fate of the Klamath is tied into the politicization of federal regulation that we're seeing elsewhere in
If so, keeping a national spotlight on the issue can only help. #
http://www.times-standard.com/allopinion/ci_5862298
LAKE
State doubles trout limit at
By Jane Braxton Little, staff writer
PORTOLA -- It's a trout heyday at
Beginning today, the California Fish and Game Commission doubled the daily bag limit to 10 trout per day at the
Raising the daily limit will give anglers better opportunities before the chemical treatment begins, said Ed Pert, the pike eradication project manager.
It will also maximize the trout resource, which would otherwise be lost during the eradication project, he said.
California Department of Fish and Game Director Ryan Broddrick announced plans in January to lower the Plumas County reservoir to around 45,000 acre-feet and apply liquid rotenone to kill all fish in the lake, including pike, a Midwestern native species.
The project is scheduled to begin after Labor Day weekend. #
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/174224.html
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