Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
April 1, 2008
5. Agencies, Programs, People
Eden on the levee; Walking out on Hallwood Spur is expedition to peace and quiet - Marysville Appeal Democrat
FLOOD CONTROL PROJECT:
St. Helena flood project stopped by property owner - Napa Valley Register
IMPERIAL IRRIGATION DISTRICT ISSUES:
Garcia spars with IID reps - Imperial Valley Press
WATER POLICY:
Editorial: Prayer won't fix water problems -
Column: Budget, water top Capitol issues; But legislators see little need to compromise - Marysville Appeal Democrat
Column:
Marysville Appeal Democrat – 3/30/08
By Nancy Pasternack, staff writer
It's an escape route for city dwellers.
In a serious flood, they could flee Marysville via the Hallwood Spur Levee toward higher ground.
And in a rash of urbanitis, some have relocated beyond the Hallwood Spur Levee to enjoy some peace and quiet.
Walking northeast along the spur is an aural progression away from traffic noise and toward sounds of cows lowing, roosters calling, goats bleating and songbirds singing.
"It's as close as you're gonna get to the country," says Frank Miller, manager of the Marysville Levee District.
That's what Victor Chernyetsky thought when he first looked over a former hog farm on
The Ukraine-born administrator of the
"It is kind of like a Russian dacha (rural vacation retreat)," he said. The property features a 60-year-old house, swimming pool, recently constructed pond, ball field and basketball court.
In this church's sanctuary between the Hallwood Spur Levee and the
"There are not too many people here," Chernyetsky said of the retreat's surroundings, "kind of like in
Chivo
People may indeed be scarce. But animals are plentiful.
From the top of the levee, orchards and a handful of new resi-dential construction sites spread eastward.
To the west, the region's agricultural history — one chapter after another of it — layers the landscape into the shadow of Sutter Buttes.
But on the berm itself, about a dozen Nubian and pygmy goats graze along the edge of the crown and on the sloped sides, oblivious to the view.
"They mow. That's their only purpose," says Jeremiah Morrell, who gave up doing the job himself after his mower rolled over on him a third time.
"I said, 'Forget it. I'm gonna go buy goats,'" he says.
It wasn't a novel idea.
About a decade ago, the levee district considered buying its own goats to maintain the whole of this mile-plus stretch to
In the end, government goats were deemed impractical.
A tall, red-haired Nubian, Chivo ('goat' in Spanish) leads Morrell's herd on its feeding expeditions around the property, which includes 350 feet of levee.
Chivo was acquired from a friend who was having trouble keeping the goat out of traffic. "He was raised with a dog and he thought he was a dog," says Morrell's wife, Jessie Morrell. "He started chasing cars, so they asked us to take him."
The couple and their four children tolerate the herd's preference for sleeping on the back porch of their mobile home, and occasionally making their way inside.
A new house they're building beside the mobile home will change all that, insists Jessie Morrell.
"No more goats on the porch," she says.
Roots in the spur
They moved to the spur eight years ago from Tierra Buena. Jeremiah Morrell, a Department of Water Resources employee, wanted to relocate into the foothills.
"I'll go as far as Hallwood," his wife had said.
One week later, they were ready to buy these several acres on
Owning property along the spur is a convoluted matter, according to Miller, who oversees Marysville's levees, along with the Hallwood Spur.
"They own the levee, but they don't own it," he says of the 10 private tracts along the spur. "It's all iffy."
The district's easement rights permit full access to the crown for maintenance and safety inspections.
Each week, on his patrols, Miller confronts a series of locked gates that delineates one property owner's share of the spur from the next.
The 20-year veteran of levee system maintenance knows every inch of earth along this stretch. He spent part of his childhood in a house on what is now the Morrell's property and attended the tiny
According to rules laid out by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, keeping the levee clear of vegetation and rodent damage is his responsibility. And the locked gates aren't his only obstacle. Some of the plant species abundant in the area are protected under state regulations.
The levee district can be held liable by the Department of Fish and Game if a cottonwood or black walnut tree is harmed or removed, but held liable by the Corps of Engineers if those same trees interfere with the passage of an inspection truck.
"It's a pain in the neck," says Miller.
The Good Earth
About 30 feet below the peak of what the Morrells do or do not own, herds of beef cattle graze in low-lying fields between the levee and Highway 20.
On a recent weekday afternoon, residents next to the church property stood atop the levee and waited for the spectacle of a laboring cow to deliver her calf.
One big-league home run away from that mound, cars and trucks whizzed by on the highway, heading toward Marysville or toward foothill towns north of the spur.
Beyond that, dark soils of recently inundated rice paddies mark an outer boundary for Reclamation District 10.
Landowners once boasted that anything that can be grown in
Out-of-towners referred to the district as "goose lands" for prized fowl and pheasant-hunting grounds that attracted vacationing movie stars and politicians from across the country.
In 1976, a book published by the Yuba County Historical Commission claimed "almost every nationality has been or is now represented in the population of District 10."
Chernyetsky says his fundamentalist Christian church membership — at 3,500, the largest Russian-language congregation outside of Europe — appreciates
Among a series of new pro-jects on their property is a recently built greenhouse.
"Most of our people come from small villages and they are used to farming," Chernyetsky says. "So it is kind of in our blood."
At the Morrell's place, two properties south, the couple discuss how they might rid themselves of a pungent-smelling billy — the latest donation to their goat herd. Surely, someone somewhere in the area needs to breed some female goats, Jeremiah Morrell says.
Nearby, one of the family's three formerly stray cats waits to enter the mobile home.
"This is the only bad thing about living in the country," says Jessie Morrell. "Everything shows up and wants to move in." #
http://www.appeal-democrat.com/news/levee_62153___article.html/spur_church.html
FLOOD CONTROL PROJECT:
By Jesse Duarte, staff writer
The proposed $2.9 million benefit assessment district required the approval of the owners of the four properties. Each party’s vote was weighted according to how much benefit they’ll receive from the project. Since
“We’re devastated,” park resident Diane Barr said, summing up the feelings of
St. Helena City Council members were also disappointed.
“We assumed this was going to pass because it’s in the best interests of all property owners to push forward,” said Mayor Del Britton. “We’re not dead in the water, but obviously we’re going to have to get together and discuss financing options again.”
If McDonnell had approved the assessment, he would have been responsible for paying
In a letter accompanying his vote against the assessment, McDonnell’s attorney, Scott Jenny, said McDonnell had heard “numerous concerns” from park residents, mostly retired couples on fixed incomes, opposed to paying additional rent to compensate him for his share of the assessment.
But park resident Ellen Cotton said she would be willing to pay a share of the assessment.
“I’m very upset,” she said. “Not only are we not getting our flood project, but with the work that’s been done it looks kind of like a war zone out there. I certainly don’t understand our owner.”
Money problems
The city’s hopes to begin construction by July 1 are now dependent upon receiving a state flood corridor protection grant.
City officials expect to learn in the next few weeks whether they will receive the $5 million they applied for.
But only $25 million is available — and the state has received requests exceeding that amount. It’s not clear how much the city will get.
Until property acquisition issues are finalized, it’ll remain unclear how much of the $5 million the city will need.
Jenny’s letter spelling out McDonnell’s objections to the project also mentioned the city’s initiation of eminent domain actions against McDonnell to acquire 4.7 acres of
Based on its own appraisal, the city offered McDonnell $1.4 million for the property last December. But the letter said the offer was “not sufficient” to offset the loss in property value.
City officials said they made an initial offer in January 2007 and have been waiting for McDonnell to make a counteroffer.
“Over a year ago they had a number from us that we felt was a fair value for the property,” said City Manager Bert Johansson. “But we have yet to hear from them what they consider a fair value.”
Jenny’s letter also pointed out that since the city’s legal costs associated with the eminent domain action are part of the flood project’s costs, the assessment would mean the park “is paying for the city’s outside attorneys to sue
In addition to
The flood project was awarded a $12 million state revolving fund loan last year. But the state was only willing to disburse the $9.1 million that’s backed by the city’s portion of Measure A funds. The benefit assessment district would have given the city access to the balance of the loan.
Johansson said the city might try to renegotiate the terms of the loan. Since
Financial problems aren’t the only obstacles standing in the way of construction. The city hopes to put the project out to bid by May 1, but first it needs to acquire the
Even though the city has initiated eminent domain against McDonnell, there’s still hope of reaching a deal outside the court process, Johansson said. He said negotiations on the Hunter property are “wrapping up.”
The city also needs PG&E and AT&T to remove some utilities from the project site so archaeological surveys can be finished and a bid can be awarded, which officials hope will happen in late June. #
http://www.napavalleyregister.com/articles/2008/03/31/news/local/doc47f092fddc009297756388.txt
IMPERIAL IRRIGATION DISTRICT ISSUES:
Garcia spars with IID reps
By Eric Galvan, staff writer
On Friday, Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia defended two bills she has authored that could potentially change California Water Codes and directly affect the Imperial Irrigation District.
During a meeting held at the El Centro Chamber of Commerce on Friday, Garcia took on a barrage of questions and concerns by IID representatives and local business people about the bills.
One of the issues was in regard to a 99-year agreement between the IID and the Coachella Valley Water District that expires in 2033.
“Why is it important for you, as an outgoing elected official, to bring this up now?” El Centro Chamber chief executive officer Cathy Kennerson asked.
“When the issue was first brought up a few years ago, it was decided that it was not a good time to bring it up,” Garcia said. “Now, this was an issue raised by the consumers, not the water districts.
“This is about doing what’s best for the community and not waiting until we have a lawsuit,” she said. “I don’t need to load my own gun and shoot myself on the way out.”
Part of the legislature could also see two seats added to the IID Board of Directors from the
IID Director John Pierre Menvielle said by introducing her bills, Garcia would be pitting the
“She called the IID reckless, but I believe she is the one being reckless in trying to pass this legislation on changing the water code,” Menvielle said.
On Friday, Garcia met with representatives from the Imperial County Farm Bureau in what Menvielle called a “closed-door meeting.”
Garcia contested that the meeting was “closed-door” and said it was an open public meeting.
When asked about the meeting Garcia said she was called by the Farm Bureau and discussed concerns that were also brought up at the El Centro Chamber meeting.
She said before moving forward with legislature or any action it is important to meet with all stakeholders involved.
IID interim General Manager Mike Campbell said he misunderstood expectations from Garcia about “next steps” following a previous meeting. Garcia said it was imperative that legal counsel for both sides meet to further discuss the bills. She also called for a meeting with the IID.
“Let’s meet and discuss what language works,” she said. “How do we get to a yes? How do we fix this?
“This not legislation to hurt the community, but to be proactive,” she said.
However, at least Menvielle believes Garcia is driven by the Imperial Group, a local land owners group.
“Water’s worth billions of dollars and this is what this is all about; it’s the Imperial Group trying to get her to change legislation to change water code,” Menvielle said, “so you could split water from power so the land owners can control the water.
“She’s doing this because someone’s pushing her buttons,” he said. “She’s just making a last-ditch effort.” #
http://www.ivpressonline.com/articles/2008/03/29/local_news/news01.txt
WATER POLICY:
Editorial: Prayer won't fix water problems
Winter's over. Actually, it has been since early February, even if the calendar says otherwise.
Temperatures will be in triple digits soon.
And a year from now, the state's residents will be in the same boat — wondering why our state's leaders are doing nothing to address
It's not as simple as just hoping for a lot of rain. We tried that this winter. After two years of subpar rainfall totals, January was very wet and people stopped uttering that "drought" word. The Sierra snowpack was well above normal and you could practically hear the big cities in the south turn on the faucets from here.
But there was no March Miracle this year. Quite the opposite. Unlike the deluge of 1991 that ended a prolonged drought, March passed with almost no measurable rain. April is usually drier, so that snowpack in the hills isn't like to get much higher.
When water managers took their regular snow survey of the
Just a month ago, the totals were 118 percent to 130 percent of normal throughout the Sierra.
Without an abundance of snow and with the rapid decline of several threatened species in the delta, requiring more water from reservoirs, there's not enough water to go around. The cities and farmers that contract with the state will get about 35 percent of what they want.
This fickle rainfall year just goes to prove, once again, how unstable our water supply is. We can't help but point out that an off-stream reservoir at Sites, west of Maxwell, would have been a perfect place to store runoff from high water in the
So why isn't anything done? Because our state's leaders would rather argue and pontificate than act. #
http://www.chicoer.com/opinion/ci_8745111
Column: Budget, water top Capitol issues; But legislators see little need to compromise
Marysville Appeal Democrat – 4/1/08
By Thomas Elias, columnist
As will surely become clear when the hot days of summer arrive about two months from now,
Yes, other problems affect tens of thousands of Californians, including the continuing spate of home foreclosures caused in large part by the real estate bubble that built through most of this decade and the questionable lending and borrowing practices that fueled it.
But unless the budget crunch is resolved, vital state services will be seriously diminished from levels that were often inadequate before.
And unless the state settles on new tactics to resolve longstanding water issues, they will become far more urgent as a so-far uncontested court decision mandates severe reductions in water pumped from the delta of the
But legislators whose votes are needed to solve both these problems remain adamant in opposition to practical solutions. Republicans won't accept a budget solution involving any kind of tax increase, even one as obvious as closing loopholes benefiting only wealthy special interests. And most Democrats refuse to acknowledge the easily apparent coming need for more water storage, whether in reservoirs behind new dams or by pumping supplies into underground aquifers in times of brief winter surpluses.
Both stances are unrealistic and spurred by fears of political retribution. Republicans have seen colleagues who bolted party lines to vote for budget compromises driven from office by hard-line no-new-taxes primary election opponents. Democrats fear being blackballed by environmentalists for whom "no" is the knee-jerk answer to any new water storage proposal.
Both sides are in this situation in large part because of gerrymandered legislative districts, which make most state Assembly and Senate seats safely Democratic and others safely Republican. There's little room for non-doctrinaire compromisers in either party these days.
But
For instance, rolling back the vehicle tax reductions of the late 1990s — as ex-Gov. Gray Davis attempted before being recalled in 2003 — would produce about $6 billion toward keeping the public school teaching workforce at current levels, rather than following through on thousands of pink slips already issued this year.
There's also the well-publicized "sloophole," which lets Californians avoid sales taxes on boats, cars, trucks and airplanes by buying them in other states and holding them there for 90 days after the purchase.
There's also a sales tax exemption on racehorses sold for breeding, and there are breaks for businesses that hire handicapped workers or workers who have been unemployed for long periods. Oil companies here do not pay extraction taxes for drilling
Eliminate enough of these and you'd raise sufficient funds to at least end the current threats of larger public school class sizes and much higher state college and university tuitions and fees.
All these things could be done without touching the single largest special-interest tax loophole, the homeowners exemption which helps keep property taxes down on virtually every owner-occupied residence in
In short, a lot of loopholes could be closed at a cost of about $300 per year per family. The question yet to be answered: How many Californians consider the services saved by such a tax hike to be worth the money?
Meanwhile, the water crisis festers. Many Democrats and environmentalists believe it can be resolved by conservation. But Californians have conserved water better than any other Americans for the last 25 years, since the droughts of the 1970s and '80s spurred large-scale use of things like low-flow toilets and shower heads and bans on watering lawns during the hottest times of day.
But population increases projected to continue at least 30 more years make it plain this won't be enough.
Meanwhile, most legislative Democrats won't even attend meetings to talk about water storage.
All of which means it's time for both Republicans and Democrats to put aside their fears for their own political skins, focus on what's best for California as a whole and get out of their respective parties' lockstep default positions.
Failure to do that, and soon, will be a sure sign that they simply don't take the state's major problems seriously enough to solve them. #
http://www.appeal-democrat.com/articles/water_62186___article.html/state_new.html
Column:
By John Howard, columnist
It's not the Civil War, of course. There's no
The Bay Area contingent has included Willie Brown, John Burton and Don Perata, and the L.A.-area team has boasted the likes of Dave Roberti, Antonio Villaraigosa and Fabian Nuñez. Even into the mid-1990s, as term limits kicked in and forced shorter terms for leaders and the rank and file, the last real Republican speaker of the Assembly, Curt Pringle, was from
But the Legislature's longtime north-south axis is tilting toward an east-west axis, a reflection in part of the swelling population, economic might and political clout of
He is Darrell Steinberg of
In the past, minority GOP leaders have often come from the state's interior, which tends to be more Republican and conservative. Jim Brulte, a former GOP leader in both houses, was from
But traditionally, those Republicans served as minority leaders in houses run by
In selecting their leaders, the party caucuses in the Assembly and Senate don't focus on issues or geography. Instead, lawmakers want to know what prospective leaders can do for them -- support a cause, raise money or provide protection if they screw up. In the end, it comes down to personality and promises, not geography. But after the new leaders are selected, geography inevitably comes up.
This shift in legislative leadership toward inland
First is water, the biggest of a long list of big issues facing the state. In the interior, there has been a push to build dams and reservoirs, even a peripheral canal, a proposal defeated by voters in 1982, to ensure future water supplies.
A second fundamental concern in inland
A third issue is land use, specifically the conversion of farmland and open spaces into residential and commercial development, which has transformed the nature of the
All areas of the state have these concerns, to be sure, but in the central interior, the three are overarching. For instance, inland Californians didn't create the region's air-quality woes -- they just breathe the air that blows inland from the clogged population centers on the coast. People unable to afford coastal housing have moved inland, where farmland has been increasingly turned into suburbs. And more people means more demand for water.
The bottom line is that inland residents believe that they pay inordinately for the problems of the coast that drive people toward the interior.
Steinberg, an environmentalist and preservationist, favors open space over development. Cogdill and Villines, both of whom come from the richest farmland in the world, favor farms over rampant development. All see water as their lifeblood. As the state wrestles with the question of whether to build dams or a version of the peripheral canal to move more water to the south or expand groundwater storage, the three will play pivotal roles.
Water and the other issues will be at the top of the new leaders' agendas because they've said as much. "I view my new position not as a personal accomplishment but as a historic opportunity for the
Cogdill, meanwhile, carried Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's unsuccessful plan to build dams and reservoirs, as well as fix the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta's environmental problems, to ensure reliable water supplies in the future. The bill died earlier this year in the Senate.
But a new water package, based on the findings of the governor's water advisory group, is likely to emerge in the form of a bond measure, and Cogdill is all but certain to be at the center of it.
Steinberg is no dam builder. But he is a canny negotiator with a reputation for bringing rival interests together.
His accession to Perata's job is particularly galling for the Bay Area. For 34 years, someone from the
The question is whether Steinberg, and the two GOP minority leaders, can make inland
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