A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment
September 24, 2007
1. Top Items
Canal plan is floated for Delta woes - Sacramento Bee
Rush put on water debate; Governor wants voters to borrow billions to help increase supply - Stockton Record
Supervisors ready to oppose Delta canal - Stockton Record
Canal plan is floated for Delta woes
By Matt Weiser, staff writer
Most people have heard of the peripheral canal. Now it's time to meet the canal's new stepchild.
Amid a drought year and declining fish populations,
The last attempt -- the infamous peripheral canal -- was pilloried by
A generation ago, critics feared the canal was a south state water grab, though scientists now seem to agree that separating exported fresh water from the Delta's environment may be a good idea.
The new canal on the scene aims for something similar, but without actually taking water out of the Delta.
Instead of a self-contained canal that skirts the Delta, the new proposal diverts a portion of
Called "through-Delta conveyance," it also includes gates across some side channels to keep out salt water during high tides.
Bolstered levees would be built to withstand earthquakes, floods and a predicted sea-level rise caused by global warming.
Scientists estimate it is likely that multiple Delta islands will flood by 2050 in a natural disaster. This would contaminate fresh water, now drawn from the Delta at large, which serves more than 23 million people and millions of acres of farmland.
That's why Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger kept some form of Delta canal in his latest water bond proposal, announced Tuesday.
But his new plan contains no money for the project. Instead, it directs the Department of Water Resources to work with any other agency that wants to build and pay for a canal.
The plan provides $1.9 billion for Delta ecosystem restoration programs, but only if there's progress on a canal in some form, said Mark Cowin, DWR deputy director. Without conveyance, he said, that $1.9 billion disappears.
"We need a comprehensive approach that addresses both ecosystem improvements and conveyance of water through the Delta.
This provides a package to move both of those issues forward together," Cowin said.
This approach may give some breathing room to Delta residents and advocates who fear politicians are outrunning pragmatism on the canal question.
"We are 100 percent against this through-Delta armored conveyance," said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, campaign director of Restore the Delta, a Stockton-based coalition of local agencies and environmental groups. "We do not believe that rerouting our last major freshwater source -- the
The proposals outlined so far call for wider, taller levees along the entire route. To ensure that these levees are quake-tolerant, their foundations first must be excavated to remove unstable soils.
"That's going to be a huge undertaking," said Gil Labrie, a Walnut Grove engineer who works with Delta levee districts. "You're talking major engineering."
The plan also would take out potentially hundreds of acres of farmland along the 48-mile route, and may alter existing habitat along the way.
Surrounding areas are slated for massive restoration programs, but parts of the canal route already hold some of the richest habitat in the Delta.
The
When asked recently about how a through-Delta canal would affect
"I don't know what the plans look like," said Zeleke, the group's regional director. "There are going to be tradeoffs, and we don't know what those are yet."
That was a common response among experts, because various proposals to fix the Delta have lately been emerging.
In addition to a Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force appointed by the governor, the Department of Water Resources is preparing a Delta Risk Management Strategy to assess and prevent various threats to the estuary. Numerous agencies are also working on habitat conservation for the region.
When scientists convened last week to discuss a through-Delta conveyance, they said it's impossible now to know how such a facility would affect fish or water quality. But they said the sorry state of the estuary demands action.
While big changes could be harmful, they suggested that science has learned enough to experiment with small changes in water flows -- as long as policymakers are ready to reverse course if those steps don't work.
"We are a 600-pound gorilla in an egg store," said Bruce Herbold, a fisheries biologist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "That doesn't mean we can't walk through the egg store safely." #
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/395331.html
Rush put on water debate; Governor wants voters to borrow billions to help increase supply
By Hank Shaw, Capitol Bureau Chief
It is unclear at this stage whether any of that money would add a drop to the water supply in San Joaquin County or the Mother Lode, but Schwarzenegger's plan already includes as much as $1.9 billion for a peripheral canal around the Delta - a project vehemently opposed by area water agencies as well as the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors.
Schwarzenegger has called the Legislature into special session to deal with water supply issues in the hopes of crafting a compromise proposal that could appear on the February presidential primary ballot.
But that prospect appears to be dimming.
The deadline for any deal technically falls on Thursday, but even with the wiggle room lawmakers can afford themselves, a hard deadline appears to be mid-October. Dozens of lawmakers are overseas right now, visiting locales as far-flung as
Schwarzenegger and Senate Leader Don Perata, D-Oakland, want the water bond on the February ballot because a federal judge has ordered sizable cuts in the amount of water pumped out of the Delta to begin in December. They argue that voters need to approve the new round of borrowing sooner rather than later so the state can begin work on the projects.
In addition, the governor's panel tasked with developing a strategy to fix the Delta is expected to release its findings in November; crafting a bond that can accommodate those recommendations quickly could help the proposal's success.
But Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez says he sees no rush, especially given the enormity of the matter: Water-supply debates have raged with varying degrees of heat for decades in the Capitol, and the proposals under discussion now represent the most expensive state-funded water supply efforts in a generation.
Schwarzenegger's plan would allocate $5.1 billion toward three large new dams: one on the
Republicans like this idea, but Democrats do not. They argue that the state has historically only paid a tiny portion of dam projects because the water they trap typically is used by local entities, not the state as a whole.
Many critics of dams also note that all the "good" spots for reservoirs have long been taken, so the amount of usable water these new projects would provide isn't worth the cost. Indeed, state studies show recharging underground water supplies, which are dangerously low in
Another option that Perata favors is money to build smaller regional dams, such as the one proposed for Duck Creek in eastern
As for the Delta, critics note that including money to implement the recommendations the task force Schwarzenegger appointed comes up with puts the cart before the horse. Worse, they argue, it could all be part of an orchestrated effort to build the peripheral canal. The administration denies this.
The idea of a canal shunting water from the Sacramento River around the Delta and into the giant pumps near Tracy led to one of California's fiercest ballot campaigns in 1982; Northern California viewed the move as a water grab by Southern California, and the measure was soundly defeated.
Schwarzenegger says times have changed and the state should spend money on some sort of "conveyance" system in the Delta to ensure the safety of the water supply for more than 25 million Californians, mostly in
Assemblyman John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, is Núñez's point person on water issues, and he says including anything resembling a peripheral canal on a water supply bond could bring the whole proposal crashing down at the ballot box.
Staffers from the Assembly, Senate and governor's office are expected to work on a compromise proposal over the next few weeks. A preliminary hearing on what emerges is tentatively scheduled for Oct. 4. #
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070924/A_NEWS/709240314
Supervisors ready to oppose Delta canal
By Zachary Johnson, staff writer
Water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta eventually runs through taps of millions of water users across the state, but a federal court has ordered the pumps that provide that water to limit their operation. This, along with the Delta's inherent instability, has led a growing number of officials - including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger - to support some kind of a canal to bypass the Delta and divert water directly to Southern California and the Bay Area.
In its past two meetings, the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors endorsed an alternative plan to provide the state's water needs and approved a resolution opposing a peripheral canal.
Now they are hoping to persuade other agencies surrounding the Delta to do the same. County officials are reaching out to their counterparts among a host of nearby counties:
"If there's a hill to die on, this is the one," Supervisor Steve Gutierrez said.
Local opposition to such a canal is not new; in 1982, the board passed a similar resolution opposing a state referendum to build a peripheral canal that ultimately failed. In later years, the board reasserted its disapproval for such a canal in 1992 and 1998.
This year's resolution argues that building the canal would swallow up agricultural land and could increase flood danger and threaten endangered species in the estuary.
Water exporters in the southern
Formal opposition by the county is important, Zuckerman said. If the supervisors are joined by other
"It will be back to 1982 again," he said.
This week, the governor's office released a proposal for a $9 billion ballot measure covering water supply. It includes $1.9 billion that could be used toward building the canal, although it is not specifically earmarked as such.
Local water watchers said it could result in a plan to build a peripheral canal.
Zuckerman was also one of the authors of a paper on water plans the supervisors endorsed at their meeting Sept. 11. The paper argues that drier regions can become less reliant on Delta water by conserving more water, storing more run-off from rains and by building desalinization plants to remove salt from brackish or ocean water.
In discussions at board meetings, supervisors said the rest of
And the Delta needs protection, said Victor Mow, chairman of the board. "We recognize the Delta is a vulnerable and fragile environment that needs special attention," Mow said.
It is the West's largest estuary. #
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070922/A_NEWS/709220312
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