A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment
July 30, 2007
1. Top Item
Water solutions begin to flow from
Contra Costa Times – 7/29/07
By Mike Taugher, staff writer
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger may or may not have the right prescription for the state's water troubles.
But his two-week blitz to promote a fix was the act of a good medic who made a credible initial diagnosis and got his patient to the ER.
Schwarzenegger ordered $120 million worth of emergency medicine to stabilize the patient, laid out a long-term, $5.9 billion plan to restore it to health and flushed out a competing strategy from Senate Democrats.
The result:
And that's a good thing because, for the first time in a decade, the state's water policy is about to be revamped -- although this time not everyone will be a winner.
Farmers could lose access to water. Anglers could lose sportfish. The water supply for a half-million Contra Costa residents might be threatened. Delta farmers could find a higher risk of flooding. And the tiny Delta smelt, a distinctively unsympathetic little fish, could pay the ultimate price -- extinction.
The Delta -- the largest estuary on the West Coast and the hub of a sprawling system that delivers water to millions of acres of farmland and 25 million people -- is in critical condition.
Consider:
An entire swath of fish species, including Delta smelt, longfin smelt, threadfin shad and young striped bass, have been in severe decline since 2002, and the most imperiled of those fish, Delta smelt, could be in imminent danger of extinction.
In June, the fish crisis became a water supply crisis when state officials took the unprecedented step of stopping water deliveries out of the Delta for nine days to protect the fish.
Notoriously rickety Delta levees are weak and likely to fail, causing flooding that could jeopardize people, roads and pipelines, and maybe the state's water supply.
Two judges this spring ruled in separate cases that the pumps near
A warming climate's rising sea level will push more salt through the
Kicking off his statewide water tour July 16 on the bank of San Luis Reservoir in the farm country around Los Banos, the governor noted that no reservoirs have been added to the state or federal water systems since New Melones Dam was completed in 1979. None are in the works even though the state's population is expected to grow from 37 million today to 60 million by 2050.
In the governor's view, much of the problem could be solved with more dams to store water in wet years for use in dry ones and to serve the growing population. His $5.9 billion plan features a pair of major new state reservoirs.
But what the governor neglects to mention is that a lot of water storage capacity has been added in recent years.
Increasingly, water is being stored underground. And some water agencies are building their own reservoirs. The Contra Costa Water District completed Los Vaqueros Reservoir in 1997, and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California finished Diamond Valley Reservoir a few years later.
In both cases, the water districts committed money from their own ratepayers to build the dams themselves.
For urban water districts, it sometimes makes sense to undertake a project like a dam without a government subsidy if they can afford it.
But that's harder to do in sprawling agricultural districts, which helps explain why the strongest support for the governor's plan comes from the
Still, it's a tough sell.
The same day the Republican governor launched his latest water infrastructure campaign, state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata announced his own plan.
At $5 billion, the Oakland Democrat's proposal is nearly as ambitious as Schwarzenegger's.
But instead of massive centrally planned reservoirs, Perata and other Democrats would rely on regional decision making.
Different regions of the state could use money to invest in a big reservoir if needed, or in smaller dams, water conservation, cleaning up polluted aquifers or other projects.
Supporters of big, government-built dams say they could increase flexibility in water management, which could be good for people, farms and the environment.
Detractors say they damage the environment and are primarily meant to subsidize the operations of big water users, especially farms.
The more controversial element in the governor's $5.9 billion water plan is his call to fix Delta "conveyance," a term used to describe how to send Sacramento River water from Northern California to the East Bay, San Joaquin Valley and Southern California.
Today, that water flows through the Delta to pumps near
So when people talk about improving conveyance, they mean
And that is where the conversation touches what in the past has been described as a third rail of
The original canal, which voters rejected in 1982, would have diverted Sacramento River water around the Delta to the pumps at
Had it been built, the canal would have been large enough to carry the entire flow of the
An alliance that included
The canal was seen as a
But the idea has re-emerged. An influential study released in February by the Public Policy Institute of California and UC Davis researchers made a strong case that
The best hope for restoring the Delta's health, the study said, would be to take fresh drinking water upstream from the Delta.
But the study assumed the Delta was historically a saltier environment, an assumption that has been contradicted by the Contra Costa Water District.
And concerns linger that depriving the Delta of freshwater inflows from upstream could cause the estuary to fill up with polluted farm runoff and stagnate, jeopardizing fisheries and the Contra Costa Water District's supply.
Delta farmers also worry the Delta levees will crumble as a result of neglect and poor funding when the state no longer depends on them to channel water to the pumps.
Still, evidence is growing that the Delta will not survive if nothing changes.
Researchers last year, for example, found a strong connection between the number of Delta smelt killed at the pumps and the degree to which those pumps reverse the flow of two key Delta channels --
The more water pumped out of the Delta, the more those rivers run backward. That is why the pumps were shut down for nine days this spring -- smelt were in the area, and pumping would suck the fish into the pumps.
"The only way to get that water to the economy of this state is through Old and Middle rivers," said Tim Quinn, executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies, which represents 450 water agencies that deliver 90 percent of the water used in the state.
The alternative to running the existing pumps is a new form of conveyance, and Quinn said water agencies -- and their customers -- are willing to pay for a
Still, without a proposal detailing the size, cost and operation of the new aqueduct, it is too early even for most critics to render a verdict.
Even if proponents can build consensus that a canal is a good idea, some big practical impediments might stand in the way.
For one thing, houses have been built in the path of the original alignment.
And pulling fresh water out of the river before it reaches the Delta means salt water could rush upstream, threatening the quality of water for the 500,000 customers of the Contra Costa Water District.
Department of Water Resources Director Lester Snow said water districts that might be affected could tie in to the canal, giving them the same access to better water. And, at first glance, that appears to be an easy solution for Contra Costa.
But when the water district's voters approved construction of Los Vaqueros Reservoir in 1988, the ballot language specified that the district's lone reservoir could not be operated in conjunction with such a canal without voter approval.
Meanwhile, a task force convened last year by Schwarzenegger is still laboring to devise a "Delta vision." Recommendations are due by the end of the year and are likely to address the Delta environment, conveyance and storage.
Water agencies also are meeting with regulators to develop a conservation plan for the Delta that would include environmental protections and eliminate the need for endangered species permits. They are angling to get a canal included as part of that plan.
All of these efforts are likely to come to a head in December, when the state faces a deadline, set seven years ago, to decide whether to build a new aqueduct or continue conveying water through the Delta. #
http://www.contracostatimes.com/environment/ci_6493803
####
No comments:
Post a Comment