[Water_news] 5. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: AGENCIES, PROGRAMS, PEOPLE - 4/30/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

April 30, 2008

 

5. Agencies, Programs, People -

 

Garcia bill on district pulled -

Imperial Valley Press

 

Opinion:

Easy steps to beat water 'crisis' -

Napa Valley Register

 

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Garcia bill on district pulled

Imperial Valley Press – 4/29/08

By Brianna Lusk, staff writer

A bill that Imperial Irrigation District officials said would have been a detriment to its operation and threatened its resources was pulled Tuesday.

Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia, R-Cathedral City, reached an agreement with IID to prevent AB 2564 from moving into the preliminary hearing phase scheduled today.

The bill could have seen IID energy and water split if Coachella Valley voters made up more than 75 percent of its ratepayers. Currently the Coachella area makes up about 60 percent of IID ratepayers.

To view documents about the agreement, visit:

http://www.ivpressonline.com/docs/garciaiidpr4-29.pdf

http://www.ivpressonline.com/docs/eap4-29.pdf

With a six-point plan agreed upon, Garcia said the issue of long-term planning has been addressed.

“I believe each and every measure contained in the action plan will allow elected officials from both counties to work shoulder-to-shoulder to protect our valuable water and energy resources,” Garcia said.

IID Board President John Pierre Menvielle called the compromise a victory for ratepayers.

“The main thing is keeping this thing in local control and working with her to enhance Coachella’s representation,” Menvielle said.

Garcia had previously said that adding elected positions might have been a viable option. The IID board will remain a five-member board with each director elected from Imperial County.

Garcia said the IID, which operates under the state Water Code, was no longer in line with the rules and needed to answer to Coachella consumers.

The six-point plan agreed upon by IID and Garcia includes a long-term planning process to begin by July 31, the strengthening of the energy consumers advisory committee and other measures.

ECAC members have criticized the district in the past for being a “rubber stamp” entity that had little power.

The reconstituted ECAC would meet more frequently and eight members would be nominated by city councils of Palm Desert, La Quinta, Indio and Coachella and two others would be nominated by the Riverside County Board of Supervisors and the Coachella Valley Association of Governments.

Members of the ECAC currently are solely appointed by the IID directors.

IID General Manager Brian Brady said a critical element of the agreement is working with cities in the north desert on areas of concern.

“We can assure the representation on the ECAC reflects and is representative of Coachella Valley,” Brady said.

Debate erupted over why Garcia was bringing the bill forward at this late stage in her last months in office, an aspect Garcia contended.

It was unclear whether the bill had enough support to move forward past the hearing phase, as multiple local government bodies, water and state agencies sent letters of opposition to Sacramento in recent weeks.

IID Director James Hanks, who was present at several meetings with Garcia, said the consensus is an example of what can happen when lines of communications are opened.

“We’re appreciative of her not going to legislative action. At the end of the day we both have a lot of work to do,” Hanks said.#

http://www.ivpressonline.com/articles/2008/04/30/local_news/news03.txt

 

Opinion:

Easy steps to beat water 'crisis'

Napa Valley Register – 4/30/08

By Tony Bogar- Napa resident Bogar works with Friends of the River, California’s statewide river conservation group. FOR is not affiliated with Friends of the Napa River.

 

California has enough water. Surprised?

We hear endlessly about the “water crisis.” Politicians like Gov. Schwarzenegger and Sen. Feinstein are pushing to build more dams, at a cost of several billions dollars each. Even the Peripheral Canal has resurfaced as a solution to our crisis. But do we really need to pile on to the state’s debt and wait decades for these “solutions” to be built? Isn’t there a quicker, cheaper, smarter answer to our problems?

 

Let’s be clear. California certainly faces major water challenges like global warming and increased demand. So some people are rushing to build dams — expensive 19th century solutions to 21st century problems. We don’t need solutions that are expensive, destructive and useless. A little common sense shows us that the real answers to our problems are easy, efficient and smart.

Why dams don’t work:

• Dams are expensive. Dams today are the most expensive option for water, costing billions of dollars each to build and maintain. Taxpayers could end up paying a bill that’s almost 50 times — yes, 50 times! — the cost of smarter solutions.

• Dams are destructive. California already has lost 90 percent of our river environment. We have lost 95 percent of our salmon and steelhead habitat. Our commercial fisheries — and the communities they once supported — are barely hanging on as it is. Building more dams will only destroy more rivers and more fisheries.

 

• Dams are useless. California already has 1,400 dams on our rivers. As a practical matter, there is very little water to collect behind new dams anymore. According to the state, new dams would provide even less reliable water than cloud seeding!

Why common sense does work:

• Saving water is easy. Conservation really does work. California has cut its per capita water use by 50 percent over the past 40 years, even as the state has boomed. The city of Napa offers free low-flow showerheads, faucet aerators and hose timers to help us reduce our water use. Simply using the tools we already have — like new appliances and drip irrigation — we can easily cut our water use another 20 percent and still support a growing population and even bigger economy.

• Recycling water is efficient. Why spray clean, clear drinking water on our golf courses and median strips? We can use the rainwater than runs into our storm drains and recycle our wastewater. The Napa Sanitation District last year produced almost 700 million gallons of recycled water, nearly one-third of all the wastewater it treats. It distributed almost half of that to golf courses, and some vineyards and industrial parks use this recycled water as well. The proposed Milliken-Sarco-Tulocay project would be another example of using recycled water for irrigation. Through reclamation and recycling statewide we can save enough drinking water each year for 1.5 million households — roughly all of Los Angeles.

• Storing water is smart. Every year, enough water for almost 3 million households — one-quarter of all the households in California — disappears into thin air behind our existing dams. It’s much smarter to store our water underground by allowing it to seep into the water table. In fact, we already store enough water underground to fill Hetch Hetchy 15 times over — and there’s room for much, much more.

These three easy steps easily beat billion-dollar dams and canals. #

http://www.napavalleyregister.com/articles/2008/04/30/opinion/commentary/doc4817fffd16c41325909657.txt