[Water_news] 5. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: AGENCIES, PROGRAMS, PEOPLE - 12/7/07

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

December 7, 2007

 

5. Agencies, Programs, People

 

NATOMAS LEVEE PROJECT:

Natomas levee improvement plan enters first stages of development; Construction projected to be complete by 2010 - The California Aggie (U.C. Davis)

 

CALIFORNIA WATER POLICY:

Editorial: California on course for another water debacle; Dueling initiatives on water projects set stage for a rerun of 1982 electoral follies - Sacramento Bee (This editorial also appeared in today’s Fresno Bee)

 

Guest Column: Time for a New Look at the Monterey Agreements; Environmentally Speaking - Santa Clarita Signal

 

ALLUVIAL FAN TASK FORCE MEETING:

DWR Announces Appointment of 33 Public Members to Alluvial Fan Task Force First Public Meeting Dec. 7 in Riverside - News Release – Department of Water Resources

 

 

NATOMAS LEVEE PROJECT:

Natomas levee improvement plan enters first stages of development; Construction projected to be complete by 2010

The California Aggie (U.C. Davis) – 12/6/07

By Caitlin Cobb, staff writer

 

With the final environmental impact report approved as of Nov. 29, the Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency is beginning work on the improvement of the levee in the Natomas Basin area.

SAFCA would like to get work on the levees started as soon as possible, said Jay Davis, media representative for SAFCA.

SAFCA anticipates that the bulk of the work being done on the levee will be done during the years of 2009 and 2010, although work on the Natomas Basin cross canal has already begun, Davis said. By 2010, SAFCA would like to have the levee improved from the Sacramento County line all the way down to Interstate 5, he said.

The projected levee improvement totals approximately 23 miles.

The project plans to add onto the land side of the current levee, creating an adjacent levee, Davis said.

"It is like building another levee right up against it," he said.

The focus of the project at the moment is to finish up work on the Natomas cross canal which is approximately 5 miles long, before continuing to work on the rest of the Sacramento River. The improvement along the rest of the Sacramento River will be the majority of the project, Davis said.

In the Natomas Basin area, this improvement project will make the levees stronger, ensuring 100-year flood protection for the residents, Davis said. If all goes according to plan, SAFCA and the people associated with this project anticipate 100-year flood protection by 2010 and 200-year flood protection by 2012.

People who live in and around the Natomas Basin may be affected by the construction. SAFCA would like to minimize the impact on the local residents, and plans to meet with residents one-on-one to see how drastically they are affected, Davis said.

People living on the water side of the levee will experience dust and construction noises, he said.

SAFCA and everyone else working on the project want to expedite the process in order to minimize discomfort for the 70,000-plus people inhabiting the Natomas Basin area, Davis said.

The levee improvement plan is one that fully involves the public, and thus tension is surfacing - an inevitable consequence of any major construction project, said Scot Mende, new growth and infill manager with the Sacramento Planning Department.

The reason for undertaking the project is to boost the current flood protection from less than 100 years to 200 years in the Natomas Basin area. The project serves the best interests of the Natomas area residents, Mende said.

After the disaster of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, the Natomas levee went from being a theoretical problem to a very real problem, Mende said. After seeing the devastating consequences that Hurricane Katrina wrought, a sense of urgency was brought to the project, he said.

"It is a fast-track and urgent effort," Mende added.

It is the job of the reclamation district 1000 to maintain and operate the levees once the improvement plans take full effect, said Paul Devereux, general manager of reclamation district 1000. The district is supportive of the proposed improvements, and they are highly involved with the details of the levee plans and design, Devereux said.

The engineers in reclamation district 1000 are tasked with reviewing the plans for the levee improvement and providing feedback. Without this improvement, the Natomas Basin area will flood, he said.

The people of the Natomas Basin area will not have to evacuate their homes during construction time, although it will be an inconvenience, Devereux said. For those who find it unbearable, SAFCA is offering to relocate people temporarily while construction is in process.

Despite the efforts of SAFCA and this plan for improvement of the levees, there is no guarantee that the Natomas area will never flood, Devereux said.

"Any time you live behind a levee there is always risk of flooding," he said.

Work on the Natomas levee is effective immediately, and will continue through 2010.

http://media.www.californiaaggie.com/media/storage/paper981/news/2007/12/06/CampusNews/Natomas.Levee.Improvement.Plan.Enters.First.Stages.Of.Development-3136155-page2.shtml

 

 

CALIFORNIA WATER POLICY:

Editorial: California on course for another water debacle; Dueling initiatives on water projects set stage for a rerun of 1982 electoral follies

Sacramento Bee (This editorial also appeared in today’s Fresno Bee) – 12/7/07

 

California's "water community" – the term often used to describe the agencies, environmental groups, agribusinesses and other industries with an interest in the state's water – is one of the silliest misnomers in common parlance.

 

A community, like a functional family, shares certain attributes: It communicates. It recognizes shared interests. It doesn't put the needs of an individual over that of the group.

 

California's water community is anything but. At its worst, it is an assemblage of medieval hill towns, heavily fortified and prone toward lobbing fire balls at each other. For several months, the governor's office and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata have been trying to intercept those bombs. They are failing. California's water wars now appear to be heading to the ballot.

 

Again.

 

On Wednesday, the California Chamber of Commerce filed four initiatives that could lead to a November bond measure of $10 billion or more for dams and other projects. If the Chamber ends up qualifying one of these initiatives, Perata and his environmental allies are prepared to file a countermeasure. In all likelihood, voters will reject both, partly because the state's fiscal crisis is likely to deepen by November.

 

We've seen such a ballot war before. Back in 1982, a divided water community fought over Proposition 9, which would have built a peripheral canal, various reservoirs and other projects to the tune of more than $3 billion ($5.6 billion in today's dollars).

 

It was a classic Christmas tree, with many of the projects thrown in to buy off opposition. Voters rejected it, and the acrimonious fight led to the go-it-alone approach of recent years.

 

The results have been mixed. Over the last 25 years, urban water agencies have financed their own water projects and invested in conservation. That's a big reason why California's population has been able to grow without major state investments in water storage.

 

At the same time, irrigators and urban water districts have become increasingly reliant on supplies from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. That estuary is now on the brink of collapse. To protect fish, a federal judge has called for cutbacks in water pumping from the Delta. A separate judge has called for flows to be restored to the San Joaquin River.

 

Because of those twin decisions, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger faces enormous pressure from farm interests and members of his own party. He hasn't handled it well. As the price for keeping his GOP flank from revolting, Schwarzenegger keeps insisting on a pair of dams, one above Fresno, that won't get built for years and will likely saddle taxpayers with debts that should be borne by the beneficiaries of the water. Neither dam will address the immediate Delta crisis – a crisis of obvious concern to the state's major employers in Southern California and the Silicon Valley.

 

For their part, the state's major environmental groups also haven't shown much chutzpah. Few have stepped forward to acknowledge the obvious: Pumping drinking water from an increasingly saline Delta is both unhealthy and unsustainable. An engineering fix is in order.

 

The dynamics are different. So are the people in power. Yet unless cooler heads can prevail, the state is set to repeat the mistakes of 1982. #

http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/549515.html

 

 

Guest Column: Time for a New Look at the Monterey Agreements; Environmentally Speaking

Santa Clarita Signal – 12/6/07

By Lynne Plambeck, president of Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and the Environment, now celebrating its 20th year

 

Ancient Rome had 11 major aqueducts, built between 312 B.C. (AquaAppia) and 226 A.D. (Aqua Alexandrina). The longest (Anio Novus), was 59 miles long. It has been calculated that in imperial times, when the city's population was well over a million, the distribution system was able to provide over one cubic meter of water per day for each inhabitant, more than we are accustomed to use nowadays.

 

Today, much of Southern California is supplied by one aqueduct comprised of 662 miles of canals and pipes. Santa Clarita now depends on Northern California from this system for about 50 percent of its water supply. Like the ancient Roman aqueduct, the water is fed for the most part by gravity, but 17 lift stations pump the water over higher ground. These pumps are the biggest single users of electricity in the entire state. The largest of these stations is the Edmonston pumping station that brings the northern California water over the Tehachepis.

 

The fall of Rome had many causes, corrupt politicians and invasions by the Gauls among them. But the collapse of the aqueduct system also had to be a major cause. By 600 A.D. only one aqueduct was functioning, and the population of Rome had dropped to a mere 10,000 people. The water system did not approach its former glory again until Pope Sixtus restored it during the Renaissance.

 

Today, our reliance on an even more intricate water delivery system has given many people cause for concern.

 

How does the State Water Project work? Snowfall from the Sierra Nevada Mountains moves through a system of natural rivers and dams into the Sacramento Delta. >From there, huge pumps lift the water into the California Aqueduct for delivery south.

 

So to the first problem: If it doesn’t snow in the Sierra, there is no water to deliver to the south. With increasing concerns over global warming, this scenario appears more and more likely. Planners have tried to address it by building reservoirs and groundwater-banking facilities, but also by urging Southern Californians to realize they live in a desert and must conserve water.

 

The state also requires local agencies to calculate how much water they receive based on a model of past deliveries. While the current model is based on the last 72 years of weather patterns, there is evidence that far greater periods of prolonged drought have occurred in the past. However, this evidence is not considered in the model, causing some experts to worry about the future accuracy of the model projections.

 

The model provides various delivery scenarios based on the probability of delivering a particular amount of water. For instance, a community can rely on being reasonably sure to receive 50 percent or more of its state water allotment about 80 percent of the time. Or, if that community wants more reliability, it should use only 30 percent of its state water entitlement for planning purposes to ensure 90 percent water supply reliability to the community. Most Urban Water Management Plans are based on a goal of 90 percent reliability.

 

There are other ways to increase reliability, such as storing water underground or building huge dams like Metropolitan’s Eastside Reservoir. Since our local Saugus Aquifer is polluted with ammonium perchlorate (rocket fuel), we cannot store water underground in the Santa Clarita Valley, and we currently have only very small storage rights in Castaic Lake (water in the lake belongs to the Metropolitan Water District). But local agencies have arranged for storage of water in Kern County.

 

Hopefully, the ground water storage facilities in Kern County will take up some of the slack, but a series of drought years would quickly eliminate this supply in the same way drought has caused the severe drop in water levels in Lake Mead and elsewhere throughout the nation.

 

Another option is to rethink the Monterey Amendments to the State Water Project contracts. In 1995, several of the State Water Project contractors got together in a closed-door meeting in Monterey to negotiate changes to their contracts. The required environmental review document for this agreement was set aside by a court in 2000 in a landmark water case, Planning and Conservation League vs. Deptment of Water Resources. Now the Deptment of Water Resources has finally completed the required new Environmental Impact Report, just as many of the environmental effects that conservation groups feared for the Delta have indeed come to pass.

 

Perhaps it is time to take another look at this agreement, especially the “Urban Preference” clause. Prior to the Monterey Amendments, the Department of Water Resources was required to allocate water to urban areas first, forcing farmers to fallow their fields. Since most fields that depended then on state water were planted with annual row crops that could easily be delayed for a year, this clause was an important way to get more water to cities in times of severe drought such as we experienced in 1991.

 

But that clause was eliminated behind closed doors in Monterey, without public input, making the division of state water 50 percent to farmers and 50 percent to cities. Our own Castaic Lake Water Agency was one of the chief supporters and signatories to this agreement.

 

Hearings on the Monterey Agreement are now being conducted throughout the state, with one just held in Ventura last Tuesday.

 

There is also an opportunity to comment on the new environmental documents through Jan. 13. If you want more information on the Monterey Agreement, just visit the Deptment of Water Resources Web site at www.water.ca.gov. There you will find all the information, including the EIR on line for the public. No closed doors this time!  #

http://www.the-signal.com/?module=displaystory&story_id=52087&format=html

 

 

ALLUVIAL FAN TASK FORCE MEETING:

DWR Announces Appointment of 33 Public Members to Alluvial Fan Task Force First Public Meeting Dec. 7 in Riverside

News Release – Department of Water Resources – 12/6/07

Contacts: Ricardo Pineda, Chief, Floodplain Management Branch (916) 574-1475; Ted Thomas, DWR Public Information Officer, (916) 653-9712

 

SACRAMENTO -- The Department of Water Resources (DWR) today announced the appointment of 33 public members, including five county supervisors, to the Alluvial Fan Task Force.  Members of the task force are charged with reviewing alluvial fan flood history to develop a model ordinance that will reduce long-term flood damages and with creating land use guidelines for development on alluvial fans. 

 

County Supervisors representing five regions of Southern California that will be affected by rapid growth projected on alluvial fans have accepted appointments from DWR Director Lester Snow.  Members of the Elected Officials category include Marion Ashley from Riverside County, Michael Antonovich from Los Angeles County, Paul Biane from San Bernardino County, Bill Horn from San Diego County and Jon McQuiston from Kern County.

 

The remaining 27 members of the task force represent four categories of interest: the Development Community, Sustainable Land Use Advocates including Native Americans and the Environmental Community, Flood Managers/Public Works and At Large Concerns including the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and the State Office of the Insurance Commissioner. A list of appointed members is attached.

 

Alluvial fans are prevalent throughout Southern California and are most common in San Bernardino, Riverside, Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Kern, Orange, Imperial and San Diego counties. An alluvial fan is a fan-shaped deposit formed where fast flowing water flattens, slows, and spreads – typically at the exit of a canyon or mountain pass onto a flatter plain. Principal hazards associated with alluvial fan flooding are high-velocity, debris-laden flows resulting from a series of storms, particularly following wildfires in semi-arid regions.

 

In March of 2007, DWR announced a partnership with the California State University, San Bernardino Water Resources Institute to coordinate task force activities. Seven plenary meetings are planned in communities most affected by rapid growth on alluvial fans.

 

The task force’s first public meeting will be from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m on Friday, Dec. 7, at the Riverside County Flood Control and Water Conservation District, 1995 Market Street, Riverside.

 

FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, funds 75 percent of the task force’s activities under the Pre-Mitigation Disaster Planning Grant Program, with a matching cost share from the State of California.

The Department of Water Resources operates and maintains the State Water Project, provides dam safety and flood control and inspection services, assists local water districts in water management and water conservation planning, and plans for future statewide water needs.

www.water.ca.gov

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