[Water_news] 3. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: WATERSHEDS - 3/26/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

March 26, 2008

 

3. Watersheds

 

QUAGGA MUSSELS:

County will inspect boats before launching at Lake Cachuma - Associated Press

 

SALMON RUNS:

Editorial: Long-overdue pact could restore flows, salmon in San Joaquin River - Stockton Record

 

Editorial: Saving salmon; Relief for fishing industry needs to come more quickly this year - Santa Rosa Press Democrat

 

DELTA ISSUES:

Guest Column: The Delta needs all Californians - San Diego Union Tribune

 

The delta blues: A number of ailments threaten a vital estuary; A test of leadership and trust - San Diego Union Tribune

 

KLAMATH COMPACT:

Guest Column: County's OK of Klamath settlement is misguided - Eureka Times Standard

 

 

QUAGGA MUSSELS:

County will inspect boats before launching at Lake Cachuma

Associated Press – 3/26/08

 

SANTA MARIA, Calif.—Boats must go through vigorous inspection before being launched at Lake Cachuma as part of Santa Barbara County's effort to avoid an invasive mussel infestation.

 

The Board of Supervisors stopped short of an outright ban as a preventive measure against the highly invasive and destructive quagga mussel. Lake Casitas in Ventura County has banned boaters from launching vessels there.

 

Supervisors, meeting Tuesday in Santa Maria, unanimously approved a series of boat inspection measures, including a quarantine period, designed to prevent introduction of the fresh water mollusks into the lake. The new rules take effect Friday.

 

The mussel has been found in San Diego and Riverside counties, but they have yet to be detected in Santa Barbara County. #

http://www.contracostatimes.com/search/ci_8702059?IADID=Search-www.contracostatimes.com-www.contracostatimes.com

 

 

SALMON RUNS:

Editorial: Long-overdue pact could restore flows, salmon in San Joaquin River

Stockton Record – 3/26/08

 

A powerful group of Central Valley water users has come together - finally - to support legislation that could restore the San Joaquin River.

 

The settlement, if it holds, could sweep aside self-interest and eventually result in the restoration of salmon runs in the river.

 

The Friant Water Users Authority, a band of Valley water districts representing farmers, recently voted to support changes in legislation pending in Congress needed to begin the restoration.

 

How to pay for the restoration remains a sticking point in Congress, but without acquiescence by the water users group, the legislation was going nowhere.

 

A legal settlement for restoration was reached in 2006 with water supposed to return to a dry 60-mile stretch of the river by next year. That seems wishful thinking, but not quite as wishful as a plan to have chinook salmon returning the river no later than the end of 2012.

 

The West Coast salmon population has fallen - some say collapsed - so far that the Pacific Fishery Management Council this month banned commercial and sport salmon fishing along the coast. Salmon are in the midst of a "major disaster," according to one council member.

 

Right now, of course, in the San Joaquin River it wouldn't matter if salmon were abundant.

 

The water users' agreement caps 18 years of legal fights over how much water should be released from Friant Dam, near Fresno, a dam that when built in 1949 turned the river into a riverbed and destroyed what had been a thick annual salmon run.

 

It's not a perfect deal, according to the general manager of Friant Dam, Ronald Jacobsma, but in the end it was decided it was better to work out something among the water users and the environmentalists than have it decided by a federal judge.

 

But that the parties had started from that common-sense premise 18 years ago. #

http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080326/A_OPINION01/803260307/-1/A_OPINION

 

 

Editorial: Saving salmon; Relief for fishing industry needs to come more quickly this year

Santa Rosa Press Democrat – 3/25/08

 

As Rep. Mike Thompson put it, “The numbers are staggering.”

In 2002, 800,000 wild chinook salmon returned to the Sacramento River and its tributaries.

In 2006, the number was down to 277,000, triggering the most restrictive salmon fishing season on record for Oregon and California. The commercial catch ended up being 12 percent of normal that year.

But those numbers pale in comparison to what is happening this year.

Only about 90,000 adult spawning salmon returned to the Sacramento River area last fall. It’s the secondlowest number on record and well below the government’s

worst projections. As a result, the Pacific Fishery Management Council is on the verge of canceling the salmon season entirely this year. A final decision will come next month.

If the council does so, it would be a significant blow to the commercial fishing industry as well as charter boat skippers and others who benefit from or make their living off sport fishing.

Last year, Thompson, D-St. Helena, led the way in securing $60.4 million in relief for salmon fishermen as a way to cushion the blow from the shortened 2006 season. But that came only after a prolonged battle in Washington, D.C. and extensive delays.

Given the extent of the problem this year and the shortage of federal funds, “It’s going to be harder this time” to secure relief, Thompson told The Press Democrat

Editorial Board Monday. Fortunately, Thompson has a number of allies working with him and they are off to a good start.

A major obstacle in helping fishing families is that Congress is prohibited from authorizing disaster funds until the secretary of commerce officially declares the season a failure. This year, Thompson, Rep. Lynn Woolsey, Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and 40 other West Coast representatives are urging the commerce secretary not to wait to the last minute to start the process.

It makes sense. Whether the drop in salmon populations is the result of climate change, delta water diversions, poor logging practices, over-fishing or some combination of all the above, this much we know is true. The fishing season this year will be a disaster. #

http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/article/20080325/NEWS/376291558/1043/OPINION03&template=kart

 

 

DELTA ISSUES:

Guest Column: The Delta needs all Californians

San Diego Union Tribune – 3/23/08

By Lois Wolk. chair for the Assembly Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife

 

You may have heard something about “the delta.”

 

Perhaps you heard about the federal judge who reduced water exports from the delta to farms in the San Joaquin Valley and your drinking water taps in Southern California. Or perhaps you heard about the precipitous decline of salmon returning to the delta and upstream to Central Valley rivers. Or perhaps you heard about failing levees, the threat of an earthquake destroying levees and inundating delta islands, deteriorating water quality from urban and agricultural discharges, influx of invasive species.

 

In short, you may have heard that the delta faces a serious risk of total collapse. Why is this delta risk so important to San Diegans and, indeed, all Californians?

 

The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta provides you a major source of your drinking water. It is the heart of California's water system – for Southern California, the Central Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. Direct delta diversions supply about a third of the drinking water for both Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area. Other urban and agricultural areas take water upstream, before it reaches the delta.

 

But, just as important as the water supply it provides, the delta is one of California's environmental jewels – the most valuable coastal estuary on the west coast of North or South America. It supports hundreds of species of fish and wildlife. It offers critical habitat as a stop on the Pacific Coast Flyway for migrating birds.

 

It provides a home for about 400,000 Californians, with the urban population on the delta's edge growing every year, from the Bay Area to Stockton and Sacramento. Delta farms produce food for a growing world, though global competition has weakened the delta's agricultural economy. The delta also offers a unique rural, recreational retreat for the millions of Californians living nearby.

 

Because we rely on the delta for so much, the delta is in crisis. Its ecosystem is collapsing, as several fish species teeter on the brink of extinction and their food web shrinks.

 

The delta's levees, which are mostly private and built originally in the 1800s, protect islands where the peat soils continue to disappear, dropping in land elevation as much as 1.5 feet every decade due to plowing and the resulting oxidation. With more water pressing on those levees all day every day of the year and the levees deteriorating with age, risk of levee failure grows each day. As a result, the delta risks complete collapse if an earthquake on a nearby fault causes multiple levees to collapse, transforming the delta into a deep-water, inland stew of urban/agricultural discharges and dead fish. That delta of the future would not be an attractive fount of drinking water for Southern California.

 

We have arrived at this perilous position for our delta after decades of conflicts. You probably heard about some of these conflicts – north vs. south, rural vs. urban, delta farmers vs. water exporters, Sacramento Valley vs. San Joaquin Valley, environmentalists vs. water exporters. With all these conflicts, no one is in charge. No one has the ultimate responsibility to ensure effective stewardship of the delta's valuable resources.

 

Most of the last decade, California has concentrated on resolving some of those conflicts. After achieving the 1994 federal-state “Accord” on delta water quality, we have worked toward consensus on how to protect the delta, or at least the status quo in the delta. The state and the federal government adopted a long-term delta plan in 2000, through the CALFED Bay-Delta Program.

 

CALFED focused on maintaining the status quo in the delta. But, like all living things, the delta changed. The ecosystem started collapsing. Delta water exports reached record-high levels. A 2004 levee collapse took out a railroad line and water lapped up against state Route 4. Fixing that levee cost the state $45 million.

 

Hurricane Katrina brought new attention to the increased risks of delta levee failure, as islands subsided farther below sea level. Urbanization on the delta's edges led to more urban storm water pollution – flowing right toward the pumps diverting delta water to San Diego. The only consensus that has emerged is that the status quo in the delta is not sustainable. But the conflicts over how to “fix the delta” continue.

 

California can no longer afford these conflicts. As these conflicts have continued, the delta has suffered. At one point, there was hope that CALFED would stop the stalemate of competing proposals for using the delta's resources. A consensus on investing in both water supply reliability and ecosystem restoration in the delta emerged, and continued for a decade. But, as the delta's resources were stretched to the limit and the ecosystem showed signs of collapse, conflicts and court litigation resumed, leading to state and federal court decisions cutting delta water exports. But the delta has continued to deteriorate, despite – or, more likely, because of – all the conflicts on how to save it.

 

Last year, Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger – responding to legislation passed in 2006 – appointed a blue ribbon task force to develop a new long-term “Delta Vision.” This task force has accepted as a given that the delta is going to change, with climate change and sea-level rise substantially contributing to that change. We learned our lesson the hard way that the delta changes whether we like it or not. Now the question is: How do we prepare for that change and make the delta resilient in the face of that change? The task force's first principle for its vision is that water supply and the ecosystem share the status of “primary, coequal goals for sustainable management of the delta.”

 

All Californians have a stake in achieving that resilient delta, with water supply and the ecosystem as coequal goals. We need to move beyond our history of delta conflict. The delta needs a comprehensive fix. That's more than just balancing incremental tinkering for both water supply and the ecosystem. The changes and risks to the delta are too fundamental for tinkering with the status quo. Our vision for the delta must be bold and our efforts dynamic. When the California economy and California's cherished environment both stand at risk of collapse, we can do no less.

 

So, what can you do?

 

The delta may be 400 miles away, but its water flows through your tap. If you want to help, do everything you can to conserve water. Southern California has done a pretty good job of conserving water in recent decades. Your population has grown by about a third, but your total water use has remained stable. Conserving water, diversifying your water supplies and reducing dependence on the delta can prevent a regional water crisis if you lose some of your delta water supplies.

 

In addition to changing the way we use water, get involved. The delta needs your help. Start by taking the time to learn more about the delta. (You are always welcome to visit my delta district in Yolo and Solano counties.) Communicate your concern for the delta to your legislators and water districts, and emphasize that it's not just about taking water from the delta. When my Southern California colleagues in the Legislature know that you care, they will engage in the delta dialogue about how to proceed in the delta.

 

We may have differences of opinion and perspective. Differences are healthy. But if we all start with a basic concern for the health of the delta, then we can resolve those differences and forge a long-term solution for the delta on which we all depend.

 

Wolk is chair for the Assembly Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife. Her district encompasses most of Yolo and Solano counties, northeast of San Francisco Bay. #

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080323/news_lz1e23wolk.html

 

 

The delta blues: A number of ailments threaten a vital estuary; A test of leadership and trust

San Diego Union Tribune – 3/23/08

By Mary Salas, represents the 79th Assembly District in San Diego County

 

A San Diego County resident should have precisely the same water worries as someone living in San Jose, yet too few of us appreciate how connected – and how troubled – our statewide water system has become. It has a single hub, in Northern California's magnificent Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. And the delta is suffering from a growing list of ailments that threaten the fish that live in it and threaten our ability to reliably draw water to help sustain the urban centers in the Bay Area and Southern California, as well as California's agricultural economy.

 

When delta solutions are debated in the halls of Sacramento, forces sometime portray it as a north-south issue.

 

That's wrong. The delta is a California issue. It will take a common sense of purpose and a sense of shared responsibility to heal the state's most important estuary and maintain our single most important water source.

 

We are heading toward a historic decision point in the delta. Fortunately, there is reason to believe that we can nurture this ecosystem back to sustainability, while creating a better, smarter water system.

 

The change won't be small. Nor will change in the delta be easy. Yet, if the Legislature approaches the delta from a statewide perspective, we can and will succeed.

 

The delta is where the rivers of the Sierra Nevada merge before heading west toward San Francisco Bay. It is a stopover for thousands of migratory birds on the Pacific Flyway and a key passage for salmon heading to and from the Pacific Ocean. It was a complex labyrinth of marshes and wetlands before the Gold Rush, when settlers and immigrants began constructing levees and digging channels. Now the delta is one of the world's most altered estuaries, with 1,600 miles of levees and hundreds of non-native species that consume much of the natural food supply. Natural flow patterns at times can be altered by the pumps of the delta's two major water systems – the federal Central Valley Project (source for much of the state's agriculture) and the State Water Project (a source of approximately a third of San Diego's water supply).

 

For the wildlife that depends on the delta, the situation is dire – too little food, too much pollution and too much disruption of natural flow patterns. The situation is just as perilous for California's economy.

 

Environmental problems are translating into cutbacks in water deliveries. Although this year's Sierra snowpack is somewhere in the average range, water deliveries for San Jose and San Diego are now standing at roughly a third of a full supply because of federal court-ordered pumping restrictions.

 

Then there is the “Katrina” scenario that looms all too real. Delta islands are actually more like bowls, with the levees serving as the sides of the bowls. While the levees are above sea level, the islands themselves dip 20 to 30 feet below sea level. Why? Their soils consist of peat that has oxidized as farmers have tilled the land over the years. And the levees are prone to failing in a major earthquake that is predicted to happen in the coming decades. Were that to happen, salt water from San Francisco Bay would rush eastward and engulf the delta, rendering it unusable as a water supply. This is a real risk we live with every day.

 

So how do we take a step back and find a comprehensive solution? Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger created a blue ribbon panel known as “Delta Vision” that is bringing outside expertise and an independent voice to the process. Also, wildlife agencies, water districts and environmental groups are working on ways to combine a new delta restoration strategy with a better water system.

 

The Delta Vision process has debunked the old mindset that the delta is a north-south issue and correctly framed the challenge as one for a growing state that values its environment. Delta Vision, for example, has calculated who uses the supplies of the delta watershed in an average year: About 24 percent is used in the San Joaquin Valley, mostly for agriculture. The Sacramento Valley and its agriculture use 10 percent. The Sacramento metropolitan area uses 2 percent; the Bay Area, 3 percent; farmers and other uses in the delta, 5 percent; Southern California, about 4 percent. More than half of the water flows out to sea. The bottom line: Most residents in this state rely on this watershed and need to worry about its health.

 

The more that those who depend on the delta conserve water, the more water there is for the delta ecosystem. That is one of the lessons of Delta Vision. The governor recently took that advice by announcing a goal of reducing the state's per capita use of water by 20 percent by 2020. Although the details of how to achieve this goal are not yet defined, the resulting political conversation will be enlightening and important.

 

According to the California Department of Water Resources, statewide per capita water use is about 220 gallons per day. In the six-county service area of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, however, per capita water use is 185 gallons per day. Put another way: If the rest of the state were as efficient at water use as Southern California, the governor's goal could already be within reach.

 

All regions will undoubtedly have a role in becoming more water efficient. This region has more it can do in terms of water recycling, demand management and curtailing water use outdoors, where up to 70 percent of water is applied to lawns and gardens. The bottom line is that conservation is vital everywhere and is a piece of the solution, not the single silver bullet.

 

For the delta, the emerging message is we must figure out a way to manage the ecosystem separate from the movement of water in the system. They flow to different rhythms that cannot be synchronized.

 

The delta needs more habitat along its rivers and sloughs to create more food, a more natural flow pattern and fewer toxins from agriculture and sewage treatment plants. To advance the discussion of how to govern the future delta, the Legislature needs to establish the framework to accomplish those goals – which will be a vocal point of my work this year. The state's water system, meanwhile, needs protection now from a Katrina-style levee disaster and assurances of a high-quality supply, even in the face of climate change and sea-level rise.

 

The state has begun the environmental review process to look at a range of solutions. An option gaining considerable attention is a new water supply canal that would move high-quality supplies from the Sacramento River to the existing aqueducts in the southern delta. This approach is called a dual conveyance system because it adds a canal to the existing water delivery system so there would be two systems for flexibility purposes. In its routing, it may be similar to the so-called Peripheral Canal that voters rejected in 1982.

 

But that idea was about water supply, which created north-south tensions. The new idea is equally about the environment, to isolate the effects of water deliveries from a recovering ecosystem. Wildlife agencies are interested in studying this canal for wildlife reasons.

 

Times have changed. The delta faces huge new challenges. From San Jose to San Diego, we share a common purpose in the delta and a common motivation to fix its many problems.

 

Salas represents the 79th Assembly District in San Diego County. She is a member of the Committee on Water, Parks and Wild.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080323/news_lz1e23salas.html

 

 

KLAMATH COMPACT:

Guest Column: County's OK of Klamath settlement is misguided

Eureka Times Standard – 3/26/08

By Felice Pace, advocate for Pacific salmon, water reform and the restoration of the Klamath River

 

Why would Humboldt County supervisors, lead by Supervisor Jill Geist, endorse a Klamath River water deal which a growing number of top fisheries scientists and hydrologists say will not lead to recovery of salmon?

 

Why would the Humboldt supervisors rush to endorse something when key elements of the deal are still being drafted?

 

Unfortunately, the answer has more to do with “bonding” than with “biology.” Supervisor Geist told fellow supervisors last month that she had “bonded” with the Upper Klamath Basin's irrigators and that she knew this Klamath water agreement -- full of expensive special interest goodies -- represents a new era of cooperation on the river. And Jimmy Smith, John Woolley, Bonnie Neely and Roger Rodoni bought it!

 

In the weeks ahead, it will become clear just how out of touch the supervisors are with what good science and common sense tell us is needed to fix the Klamath River and recover Klamath salmon.

 

Not only does the agreement not provide enough water for fish, it locks in industrial agricultural operations in the Lost River and on Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuges for 50 years. This will result in such a high rate of pollution in the Keno Reservoir (a PacifiCorp dam that those promoting dam removal want left in place) that it will continue to be without oxygen or life for five weeks a year.

 

The ripple impacts on salmon downstream will be disastrous even if the dams are removed.

 

Those promoting the water deal want us to believe that it is necessary in order to convince PacifiCorp to remove four Klamath River dams. This is not the case. In fact, tying what Hoopa Tribal Chairman Lyle Marshall has called “an Old West water deal” to dam removal makes removal of the dams less rather than more likely.

 

Why were the supervisors in such a rush? The Klamath water agreement insures flows for Klamath irrigators who are strongly allied with the Bush administration, and the rush is to get a bill that George Bush can sign as his term expires.

 

This is a 50-year sweetheart deal for this special interest group at the expense of salmon and the river. Would not a new administration do more for the Klamath River, Klamath salmon and Klamath Basin wildlife refuges?

 

Humboldt County gets nothing from the deal while neighboring Siskiyou County would receive $23 million. In the event of future serious disagreements and need for legal action, Humboldt County would be prevented from joining in to defend the Klamath River, its communities and salmon stocks.

 

A supervisor's job is to take care of home, not irrigators in southern Oregon. Guaranteeing water for a small group of wealthy “irrigators” over salmon is a terrible precedent, and not the way we should manage our rivers.

 

Deals crafted in back rooms, with participants sworn to secrecy, rarely spawn good public policy. The Klamath settlement is too flawed to salvage. Look for a public forum on this complex settlement soon so you can find out for yourself “the rest of the story.”

 

Meanwhile, Jill Geist and the other supervisors have some questions to answer: How is this water deal going to impact your constituents? Why have you abandoned what good science tells us salmon need to recover?

 

Humboldt citizens and this newspaper should demand answers. You can find the Humboldt County supervisors' e-mail addresses and phone numbers at: http://co.humboldt.ca.us/board/

 

Felice Pace has been advocating for Pacific salmon, water reform and the restoration of the Klamath River since 1986. For 15 years he led these efforts for the Klamath Forest Alliance. Felice presently resides at Klamath Glen near the mouth of the Klamath River and writes KlamBlog, about Klamath River issues (http://klamblog.blogspot.com/).The views here are his own.
http://www.times-standard.com//ci_8700522?IADID=Search-www.times-standard.com-www.times-standard.com

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