[Water_news] 5. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: AGENCIES, PROGRAMS, PEOPLE - 4/25/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

April 25, 2008

 

5. Agencies, Programs, People -

 

 

Opinion:

Lloyd G. Carter: A California water story of individual tenacity

Sacramento Bee

 

Water projects could be thwarted by ballot measure, state memo says
San Diego Union Tribune

 

Cost to funnel water around Calif. delta has soared

Associated Press

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

Opinion:

Lloyd G. Carter: A California water story of individual tenacity

Sacramento Bee – 4/25/08

By Lloyd G. Carter - Special to The Bee

 

You have to give 75-year-old Felix Smith of Carmichael credit for tenacity.

 

A quarter-century ago, Smith became the conscience of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service when he blew the whistle on the selenium poisoning of the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge in western Merced County.

 

In the spring of 1983, Smith and another biologist discovered deformed bird embryos in nests at Kesterson, where 100-acre holding ponds were evaporating agricultural drainage water from the Westlands Water District. The drainage water contained selenium, a naturally occurring element in the soils of Westlands that was highly toxic to bird reproduction. Adult birds were dying by the thousands and some species had a complete reproductive failure.

 

James Watt, then U.S. secretary of interior, ordered news of the discovery suppressed while an official press release was prepared. Several months later, with the press release still supposedly being formulated, a frustrated Smith leaked the story to Deborah Blum, when she was a reporter for the Fresno Bee.

 

Within 18 months, the New York Times, the Washington Post and CBS' "60 Minutes" all gave major coverage to the unfolding debacle, pitting a politically powerful federal irrigation district against environmentalists and adjacent Kesterson landowners, who had seen their cattle die.

 

In February 1985, the State Water Resources Control Board, responding to a complaint from Kesterson neighbors Jim and Karen Claus, ordered Kesterson cleaned up or closed. The following month, the Interior Department, its options dwindled, ordered Kesterson closed, an action that left the Westlands Water District without drainage, a problem that exists to this day.

 

After 34 years as a federal scientist, Smith retired in 1990, but not into quiet obscurity. In 1995, Smith, as a private citizen, filed a complaint with the water board contending irrigation of high selenium soils in the western Valley was an unreasonable use of water under state law. Smith warned that even though the Kesterson ponds had closed, selenium-loaded drainage from federal irrigation districts north of Westlands was still being funneled untreated into the lower San Joaquin River. Studies had revealed that levels of selenium as low as 2 to 5 parts per billion in the drainage water could impact fish reproduction. That's equivalent to one drop in an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

 

However, the water board ignored Smith, claiming work was being done on the drainage problem by state and federal agencies. In 2000, the water board dismissed Smith's complaint without taking action. Smith knew that funding a private lawsuit to force the water board to act was simply far more than he could afford.

Smith could have given up and gone fishing with his grandchildren. But in January this year, with the Delta fishery facing catastrophic collapse, he refiled his complaint.

In a Jan. 10 letter to water board Chairwoman Tam Doduc, Smith wrote, "Many of the impacts documented in my past letters/complaints continue today. In addition, there are other more ominous concerns and environmental impacts coming to the forefront."

 

This is a reference to the current Delta fishery crisis and the collapse of the salmon runs.

 

Last month, the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance and the California Water Impact Network also filed a complaint with the water board again alleging unreasonable use of precious Delta water.

 

The sportfishing alliance and the water network, in an April 15 letter to Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, also warned of the perils of irrigating soils loaded with selenium. Feinstein is attempting to broker a drainage "solution" with Westlands (and adjacent water districts) that would keep at least 300,000 acres of high-selenium soils in production.

 

Feinstein has drawn much criticism from California's environmental community for her closed-door, limited-access negotiations with Westlands growers, who claim they have a drainage solution (limited land retirement, recycling and sprinkler evaporation), a solution that environmental scientists say is highly problematic and almost certainly unworkable. Where the millions of tons of salts ultimately accumulated would go is still undetermined.

 

If Feinstein wants to learn something about drainage and selenium, she should sit down with Felix Smith. After a half-century in the water wars, he could give her an earful.#

http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/888598.html

 

Water projects could be thwarted by ballot measure, state memo says
San Diego Union Tribune – 4/25/08

By Michael Gardner

SACRAMENTO – Water and flood-control projects across California could be jeopardized if voters approve a ballot measure to greatly restrict the ability of local governments to take private property, warns a state Department of Water Resources legal analysis.

Proposition 98 “could seriously hamstring or thwart future water projects,” state attorney Dave Anderson wrote in a confidential memo to superiors.

The five-page opinion surfaced just as the parties dueling over competing eminent-domain measures on the June 3 ballot wait for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to weigh in.

 

The governor has not taken a position on Proposition 98, but the review by one of his own attorneys could persuade Schwarzenegger that the measure would stand in the way of his pursuit of new reservoirs and an improved north-to-south water delivery system.

 

“It is clear that this report raises serious concerns,” said Aaron McLear, a spokesman for the governor.

 

Supporters of Proposition 98 contend that it provides exemptions to allow government to take land for public-works projects, such as reservoirs and canals.

 

“A farmer's livelihood is dependent on his water supply, and the Farm Bureau would not have drafted a measure that puts his future at stake. We are strong supporters of a water-bond measure that would provide new water storage,” said John Gamper, a state Farm Bureau representative testifying yesterday before a legislative panel.

Proposition 98 generally would prohibit government from seizing property from unwilling sellers and turning that land over to another private user. Water agencies, however, are alarmed by language they perceive as ambiguous that could raise legal barriers to new projects.

 

The argument that the initiative could block land acquisitions for water projects is not new. Supporters and opponents of Proposition 98 have released dueling legal opinions, and the uncertainty has prompted giant water districts, including the San Diego County Water Authority and Metropolitan Water District, to oppose it. #

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080425/news_1n25domain.html

 

Cost to funnel water around Calif. delta has soared

Associated Press – 4/24/08

By SAMANTHA YOUNG - AP

WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- The price tag for addressing the declining health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta while providing a reliable water supply to California cities and farmers keeps getting higher.

 

Officials met Thursday to discuss one of the state's most contentious proposals - piping fresh water around the delta and into the canals that carry it south and into the San Francisco Bay area. The various options are projected to cost between $4 billion and $17 billion.

 

The estimates were provided to a panel created by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to come up with solutions to preserve the delta. The estimates are far higher than the $1.3 billion cost in 1982, when California voters rejected the so-called Peripheral Canal.

"All the cost estimates for all water projects get higher the more you study them," said Phil Isenberg, a former state assemblyman who is chairman of the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force. "There has not been a serious, detailed study for more than a decade."

 

Funneling water around the delta is being considered as a way to restore the delta's ecosystem, in particular its population of the threatened Delta smelt and other fish. Their numbers have declined so precipitously that a judge last December ordered the state to reduce water pumping by a third.

 

Farmers and cities this year will receive just 35 percent of their contracted water from the state.

 

Scientists, environmentalists and sport fishing groups believe the massive pumps that suck water from the delta into the California Aqueduct also kill large numbers of fish and are a chief reason for their decline.

 

Eliminating the need to pump water from the delta, as state and federal agencies do now, also would safeguard supplies for Southern California and the San Francisco Bay area.

 

Nevertheless, building a canal or piping system remains controversial.

 

Northern Californians fear such a system would divert more water south. Farmers who draw directly from the delta worry their water supply would grow saltier if too much river water was diverted.

 

Engineers at the state Department of Water Resources presented the task force with four options to move water from the Sacramento River around the delta and into the California Aqueduct:

 

- A $4.2 billion canal in the eastern delta that runs parallel to the Deep Water Shipping Channel, which stretches from the upper reaches of the delta to West Sacramento. The canal later would cross beneath the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers by tunnel.

- An eastern canal coupled with a second system that funnels water through the Middle River, west of Stockton, at a cost of between $5.4 billion and $14 billion.

- A $7.4 billion canal in the western delta that diverts Sacramento River water near Hood, similar to the path selected for the Peripheral Canal before the 1982 vote spiked the idea.

-A western canal coupled with the Middle River system, costing between $8.6 billion and $17.2 billion.

 

Paul Marshall, an engineer in the Department of Water Resources' Bay-Delta office, attributed the higher price to rising construction and labor costs. He said the costs were only preliminary estimates.

 

The state is in the midst of a 30-month review of the environmental effects of piping water around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The Delta Vision task force is scheduled to issue its final recommendations to Schwarzenegger in October.

 

"In the past, the ecosystem has been dealt with as a risk to be mitigated," said Raymond Seed, a task force member and engineering professor at the University of California, Davis. "That's no longer how we're viewing it."#

 http://www.sacbee.com/114/story/888862.html

 

 

DWR's California Water News is distributed to California Department of Water Resources management and staff, for information purposes, by the DWR Public Affairs Office. For reader's services, including new subscriptions, temporary cancellations and address changes, please use the online page: http://listhost2.water.ca.gov/mailman/listinfo/water_news. DWR 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. Inclusion of materials is not to be construed as an endorsement of any programs, projects, or viewpoints by the Department or the State of California.