[Water_news] 1. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS - Top Items for 10/26/07

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment

 

October 26, 2007

 

1.  Top Items

 

The Delta's Endgame; Are we going to continue sacrificing the delta to state water demands? - San Francisco Chronicle

 

Editorial: Promising Delta vision - Contra Costa Times

 

Suit threatened over striped bass - Stockton Record

 

 

The Delta's Endgame; Are we going to continue sacrificing the delta to state water demands?

San Francisco Chronicle – 10/26/07

By Glen Martin, staff writer

 

The delta - that labyrinthine confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, the biggest and most biologically significant wetland on the West Coast - is going belly-up like a sick carp.

 

True, it has been moribund for a long time, but that doesn't make its imminent demise any more tolerable. When the first white explorers entered the Central Valley, they found a horizon-to-horizon marshland of tules, sedges and willows where the two great rivers conjoined before debouching into San Francisco Bay. The waters teemed with chinook salmon, steelhead, green and white sturgeon and lesser fish, such as Sacramento perch, Sacramento blackfish, starry flounder and Pacific lamprey. The sloughs were choked with ducks and geese, vast flocks that blackened the dawn sky when they rose en masse to feed. Tule elk, beaver, grizzly bears, river otters - they were all here, in numbers unimaginable in our now populous and altered world.

 

Things began changing in the 19th century, when farmers reclaimed much of the region with an ambitious - if fragile - system of levees. The great marshes were drained, and the rich peat soils planted with everything from grains to orchard fruits. The tule elk and grizzlies were extirpated.

 

But the waterfowl still swarmed down from the north during the winter migration, and salmon still churned up the Sacramento and San Joaquin; in many years the fish were so plentiful they were pitch-forked out of the spawning redds and used as hog feed.

 

But as California grew, so did demands on the delta. Large-scale appropriations of water began in the 1950s, with the completion of the major dams anchoring the federal Central Valley Project, a mammoth system of reservoirs, aqueducts and pumps. The State Water Project, largely finished in the 1970s, diverted roughly equal amounts. Today, the two projects annually extract as much as 6 million acre-feet of water from two massive pumping stations located in the delta near Tracy.

 

The freshwater yield of the Sierra's snowmelt once surged through the delta and out the Golden Gate, creating a fluctuating brackish zone that sustained a vast food web, from plankton to the once-ubiquitous, now nearly extinct delta smelt, to salmon and steelhead. But with the completion of the government projects, the water went through home taps and San Joaquin Valley irrigation canals instead; the essential biological productivity of the delta wavered, and then dipped.

 

Through the years, the decline steepened, ultimately becoming a free fall. Adding to the stress of fresh water diversions were other factors: the maceration of fish by the huge pumps that send water south from Tracy; the introduction of exotic fish, mollusks, crustaceans and plants that competed with native species; and toxic runoff from agricultural operations.

 

The delta is now in its endgame. It is no longer, in fact, a true delta. Two great rivers still meet east of Suisun Bay, but the phenomenally rich wetland they created is, for the most part, gone. A maze of "islands" bordered by stagnant sloughs and canals exists in its stead. Buttressed by frangible earthen levees, these agricultural tracts have subsided from decades of compaction and soil oxidation; on some of the islands, tractors churn the peat soils 20 feet below houseboats and water skiers plying the sloughs just beyond the levees. One good quake on the nearby Hayward Fault and the levees would liquefy, during the region into a great inland bay.

 

The delta smelt - a tiny fish that smells like cucumbers and was once the most plentiful fish in the delta - is at record lows, and may disappear in the next two years. The crash of this crucial indicator species speaks only too eloquently about the state of the region as a whole. As goes the smelt, so goes the delta.

 

Over the past two decades, a number of legislative initiatives and court rulings have been hailed as saviors of the delta. These include CalFed, a ponderous state and federal cooperative effort that was empowered to pursue habitat restoration programs and divide water equitably among agriculture, cities and the environment. But at this point, CalFed is more or less dead in the water. It did fund some impressive wetland-restoration programs, but the hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of water environmentalists had hoped the agency would earmark for the delta never materialized.

 

So any talk of "saving" the delta must be taken in context. At this point, the only thing that can be saved is the remnant still with us. In the best case, a portion of what has disappeared may be revived.

 

Environmentalists insist that the essential component of a delta resurrection can be found on the back of any package of instant noodles: Just add water. It is the lack of major freshwater flows through the system - and the fish-killing pumping stations - that are the primary culprits, they say. And any attempted fixes that don't address the two big issues are wasted time and effort.

 

Bill Jennings has spent most of his adult life fishing the delta and fighting for it. He bears an almost disturbing resemblance to Santa Claus: rotund belly; long, silky white beard; rubicund complexion; and omnipresent pipe wafting smoke. He also has an avuncular, positively jolly disposition - unless he's crossing swords with irrigation districts or water agency bureaucrats.

 

Jennings' group, the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, specializes in suing delta water diverters. He's had some success - most recently a decision by Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch ordering the California Department of Water Resources to obtain formal authority from the California Department of Fish and Game to continue grinding up delta smelt, an endangered species, at the state pumping station. The case resulted in a two-week shutdown of the state pumps earlier this year.

 

But the pumps started up again, and Roesch's decision is on appeal. That's typical for delta water lawsuits and government initiatives. With court cases, the decisions often lean the environmentalists' way, but the appeal process and countersuits ensure that little, if anything, actually changes. During the past 15 years, legislation and agency agreements raised hopes that as much as 1 million extra acre-feet of water would be sent through the delta and San Francisco Bay - releases that never materialized.

 

Water exports from the delta have gone from about 2.5 million acre-feet in the 1970s to 6 million today.

 

In August, a ruling by Fresno U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger once again piqued hopes for a delta resurrection.

 

The decision decreed protective measures for the beleaguered delta smelt that some analysts think could slash water deliveries to farms and cities by more than a third from January through June each year, sending the flows instead through the delta and out the Golden Gate.

 

But even if more water goes through the delta under Wanger's ruling, there is no guarantee it will be enough to resuscitate its fisheries. Experience shows that the amount of water that flows through the delta from court orders and legislative initiatives always ends up being much less than originally anticipated.

 

As Jennings sees it, the delta would get the enhanced freshwater flows it needs if state and federal agencies enforced existing regulations, most specifically the U.S. and California Endangered Species Acts, the U.S. Clean Water Act and the state Porter-Cologne Act (which addresses water quality).

 

Instead, he said, government regulators seem to be doing their utmost to ignore or undermine the statutes they are mandated to uphold.

 

Jennings cites the so-called Napa Agreement as an example. Seven years ago, the California Department of Water Resources, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and water contractors met to hammer out a plan to increase diversions from the delta by pumping more water during high winter flows.

 

"That was done in the name of increasing flexibility in water delivery schedules," Jennings said. "But no wildlife or fisheries agencies - the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the state department of Fish and Game, the fisheries arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - were invited to the talks. Neither were environmental organizations. The deal was made behind closed doors by the agencies that delivered water and the irrigation and metro water districts that received it. It was utterly illegal."

 

The Napa Agreement foundered from a flurry of environmental lawsuits. But the threats to the delta and its contributory rivers keep on coming, with the complicity of government authorities, said Jennings.

 

"What we have is a total failure by the agencies to follow the law," he said. "We would never have been forced to sue over the smelt (in Roesch's court) if the California Department of Fish and Game had done its job and protected the smelt from excessive pumping by the Department of Water Resources. But Fish and Game and Water Resources are on the same page because both are controlled by the Resources Agency. And apparently, the word in Resources - and the Schwarzenegger administration - is this: Don't stop the pumps."

 

Certainly, the question of the delta smelt's status could become moot in the next year or two. That's because it may be extinct.

 

Smelt were conspicuously absent during Fish and Game surveys of the delta this year - but 1,509 were noted in the "salvage buckets" at the pumping stations. The smelt typically congregate in the south delta in the general vicinity of the pumps during the spring and early summer.

 

"You can figure 20 to 30 times more smelt are sucked in and killed than are recorded in the salvage buckets," said Jennings.

 

"The pumps were taking so much water this year that the natural flows of Old and Middle Rivers (major arms of the San Joaquin River) were reversed. At certain times, the San Joaquin River at Stockton was flowing uphill at 700 cubic feet a second.

 

The smelt can't escape that kind of suction. It's very likely that not enough smelt are left for successful reproduction."

 

Ryan Broddrick, who retired as the director of Fish and Game on Sept. 1, was with the agency for many years, working his way up through the ranks from the position of game warden. Broddrick was known by his peers as an impeccable "duck cop" - tough, relentless, an implacable foe of poachers and a dedicated champion of wildlife resources.

 

Environmentalists generally cheered when he was tapped by Gov. Schwarzenegger to head Fish and Game. Over the years, the directorship had become a patronage post, typically going to people who were in good odor with the sitting governor, but whose credentials were less than stellar. The new acting director, John McCamman, seems to mark a return to that tradition. A former chief of staff to U.S. Rep. George Radanovich, R-Mariposa, he was also a county administrator with Mariposa and Shasta counties, but has no extensive grounding in wildlife resource issues.

 

Broddrick had been seen as a welcome exception to the trend. But many fisheries advocates - including Jennings - were disappointed with Broddrick, feeling he rolled over on the delta.

 

Broddrick seems unperturbed by the harsh evaluations. The delta, he notes, has suffered from serious health issues for more than five decades, and quick and easy cures are not possible. He acknowledges that water diversions are part of the problem, as are the mechanical effects of the big pumps.

 

"But there also are other issues," he said. "Exotic species are exacting a huge toll. We have 3,000 small, unscreened pumps in the delta, and they kill a lot of fish. Also, the areas which the smelt historically have favored - south of the North Fork of the Mokelumne to Vernalis - are, frankly, no longer decent smelt habitat. You have housing tracts and farmland, with major urban and agricultural runoff problems. So how do we reintroduce the mosaic of habitats there that will support the smelt? We probably don't."

 

Instead, said Broddick, it may make sense to introduce the smelt to portions of the delta where they could still thrive - most particularly in the north near the Yolo Bypass, where ambitious habitat restoration programs are in progress.

 

"This is the first year we found smelt in the Sacramento River Deep Water Channel (in the north delta)," so there are indications they will move to find better habitat," Broddrick said.

 

The environmentalists agree with Broddrick on one thing - the pumps and diversions aren't the only problems. They, too, say invasive species threaten the indigenous fish and mollusks that are left. But more to the point, they think the delta's water quality has tanked - and again, they say, authorities are doing little more than twiddling their thumbs. They note that the delta is contaminated with a witch's brew of agricultural chemicals, street runoff laced with petroleum products and selenium and salt from drain water originating from irrigated croplands.

 

Michael Jackson, an attorney who aids environmentalists in delta litigation, said the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board has not obeyed court rulings requiring the board to identify toxic hot spots and revise contaminant discharge plans in Central Valley watersheds.

 

The board also has been remiss in establishing total maximum daily loads for major pollutants in the Central Valley's waterways, as it is required to do under the federal Clean Water Act, Jackson said.

 

"What we have here is a total failure to follow the law," he said.

 

That's not how Central Valley Water Quality Control Board authorities see it. Kenneth Landau, the board's assistant executive officer, said the agency has been diligent in coming to grips with the toxics issues.

 

"We believe we've fully complied with (court) orders," Landau said. "We're going through the process of identifying toxic hot spots, and we're writing discharge permits in a much more comprehensive fashion."

 

As for TMDLs, Landau says, the board is making progress.

 

"What we're doing is selecting the (waterways) of greatest importance, identifying the critical pollutants and working our way down the system," he said. "We're moving as fast as we can with the resources available to us."

 

But Jackson claims the board's actions are too slight, yielding precious few results where it counts - in the delta's waterways.

 

"We're processing the delta to death," he says. "This administration is baffling people with bull-. They want to enforce laws 30 years down the road - meanwhile, the delta is dying today."

 

The nut of the problem, of course, is people: about 36 million of them, with more coming. Failing draconian - and highly unlikely - constraints on births and immigration, California's population will continue to grow. But its water resources will remain finite; about 30 million acre-feet sluices down the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers during an average year, and that figure won't increase.

 

And it is becoming increasingly clear that global warming must figure into state water projections. While the freshwater yield is expected to remain more or less stable under most computer models, the way that water is delivered probably will change: Less precipitation will fall as snow, more as warm, heavy rain. State reservoirs will not be able to store this water, but will have to pass it quickly downstream to avoid catastrophic flooding. In such scenarios, disastrous summer and autumn water and hydropower shortages are all too likely for cities and farms. Few citizens and fewer politicians will be paying much attention to the delta then.

 

"When the air conditioners don't work and there's no water in the taps, people will demand solutions that are unlikely to be good for the delta and its fisheries," said Broddrick. "That's why we need to start building some flexibility into our water delivery systems today."

 

Broddrick said that means retrofitting reservoirs so they can store more water. And ultimately, he said, there must be a new way to deliver water to southern cities and farms from northern sources. In the water wonk world, that's shorthand for a peripheral canal - a big pipe that shunts water from the north around the delta to isolated pumping stations. In an ideal world, that would avoid the existing death zone in the south delta, where the smelt and other fish are sucked into the pumps to their doom.

 

Broddrick said a peripheral canal would be a great improvement over the current south delta water transportation system, provided that the intakes are effectively screened and sound operating rules are put in place.

 

"There will be real constraints, but I think things will have to go that way," Broddrick said. "The north state has water, and the south state needs it. We have to deal with that."

 

But environmentalists claim that view enforces the sense the delta must be a sacrificial goat to state water demand. And recent court rulings, most notably Judge Wanger's decision ordering greater protections for the delta smelt, means the fight is by no means over, they say. They insist it is still possible to restore some of the delta, provided existing laws are enforced.

 

William Kier, a fisheries consultant who has been a combatant in California's water wars for 30 years, says the peripheral canal is a bankrupt idea trotted out by water diverters and their allies anytime the state flirts with drought - as it is doing now.

 

"There is nothing new on the drawing boards, no breakthroughs in technology - specifically, for fish screening - that would make a canal conforming to existing law possible," Kier says. "(Canal proponents) are talking through their hats."

 

Though he has been disappointed by the way past court rulings have played out, Kier is heartened by Wanger's decision, primarily because it has the real possibility of imposing deep cuts in water exports from the delta.

 

"Until now, we've seen a government culture that has arrogantly assumed water use transcends the law," Kier said. "But I think we're finally seeing recognition that nothing transcends the law - California's water, land and people are all covered by it. That makes me hold out some hope for the delta." #

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/26/CM5KRVK8U.DTL&hw=water&sn=001&sc=1000

 

 

Editorial: Promising Delta vision

Contra Costa Times – 10/26/07

 

A NEW AND QUITE promising vision of the Delta's future is taking shape thanks to a panel of experts appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Delta Vision task force has developed a draft plan that promotes many of the ideas the Times has been advocating for many years.

 

First and foremost, the task force strongly urges protection of the Delta ecosystem. The panel also says California must ensure critical water supplies that the state's economy relies on, but not at the expense of the Delta environment.

 

However, to both protect the threatened Delta and still supply enough water for urban and agricultural use, some significant changes in water policy must be made.

 

No longer can increasing supplies of water be sent to the Central Valley and Southern California. In fact, there could be less water pumped southward in the future, but enough if farmers increase conservation efforts.

 

The panel understands that if the state is to reduce its reliance on the Delta, greater regional self-sufficiency will be needed throughout California. That means more local water projects, which state Senate leader Don Perata, D-Oakland, has proposed.

 

But the task force also recognizes that sufficient and dependable supplies of fresh water cannot be made available without new storage. The panel favors both in-ground aquifers and above-ground reservoirs, which the governor advocates.

 

The purpose of the new reservoirs would be to capture water during the wet months, when there is the least damage to the environment. Then the water must be efficiently moved to areas where it is needed.

 

The panel believes that improved conveyance must be constructed, such as an aqueduct. However, building an aqueduct alone without new storage capacity would threaten the Delta environment, according to the draft report.

 

That was the chief argument against the controversial Peripheral Canal, which voters rejected in 1982. The legitimate fear then was that water diverted around the Delta would threaten the estuary's ecology by diminishing fresh water flows, thereby allowing salinity levels to rise to dangerous levels.

 

If the Delta environment received top priority and there were greater storage capacity, a modest-sized aqueduct to send water southward would not pose a threat to the estuary.

 

Additionally, the task force said that housing should be sharply restricted in the Delta. That makes sense for a number of reasons. Building homes in floodplains is a risky business that increases the state's liability. New superlevees built to protect developments put pressure on older ones protecting current neighborhoods.

 

The Delta task force will fine-tune its draft report and make major recommendations to the governor by the end of the year.

 

Then the hard part begins in 2008, when the panel devises an implementation plan.

 

The draft plan is on the right course in many key and controversial areas, and it presents the best opportunity so far for protecting the Delta and assuring dependable supplies of fresh water for urban, industrial and agricultural use. #

http://www.contracostatimes.com/opinion/ci_7286959

 

 

Suit threatened over striped bass

Stockton Record – 10/26/07

 

SACRAMENTO - A coalition of water users threatened to sue the state on Thursday for legal restrictions that protect striped bass, a non-native fish.

 

The Coalition for a Sustainable Delta says protecting the bass doesn't make sense because the fish eat native species, including Delta smelt. A judge in August ordered water exports from the Delta to be reduced up to one-third to protect smelt.

 

Though not native, some experts consider striped bass to be a favorable species. The bass depend on the same type of conditions as smelt and have thus also have declined in population and habitat, according to a report issued earlier this year by the Public Policy Institute of California.

 

Striped bass also have recreational value among fishermen.

 

The coalition's notice of intent to sue, filed Thursday, comes less than a month after it similarly threatened legal action over power plants in Antioch and Pittsburgh that allegedly harm smelt. #

http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071026/A_NEWS/71025104

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