[Water_news] 2. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: SUPPLY - 7/15/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment 

 

July 15, 2008

 

2. Supply –

 

 

 

Forces set to resist bid for rural water: Snake Valley — and its ranches, tribes and park — has chance of defeating Water Authority request

The Las Vegas Sun- 7/15/08

 

How does tap water get to Santa Clarita?
The Santa Clarita Signal- 7/15/08

 

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Forces set to resist bid for rural water: Snake Valley — and its ranches, tribes and park — has chance of defeating Water Authority request

The Las Vegas Sun- 7/15/08

By Phoebe Sweet

 

State engineer Tracy Taylor has played it down the middle so far, giving the Southern Nevada Water Authority about half the water it wanted from rural Nevada.

 

His two rulings — on Spring Valley and Cave, Dry Lake and Delamar valleys — were called cautious by some on both sides.

 

Final arrangements are to be considered today for the biggest showdown to date over rural Nevada’s water — hearings to determine whether the Water Authority can take water from Snake Valley. The hearings will provide another opportunity for Taylor to split the difference between the authority’s request and the contention of ranchers, environmentalists and others who argue that not a drop of water should leave rural Nevada for Las Vegas.

 

But those opponents say that other than sitting atop an aquifer coveted by the Water Authority, Snake Valley has little in common with the valleys that have come before it.

 

“This is not like Cave, Dry Lake and Delamar valleys, where you would be lucky if you could find a couple human beings,” said Simeon Herskovits, an attorney for many of the opponents of the pumping plan. “Snake is dramatically different.”

Snake Valley has a much larger population than Cave, Dry Lake and Delamar valleys combined and has many more existing water rights than Spring Valley.

 

In Snake Valley, the ears of mule deer peep above the vegetation on fields kept green by pivot irrigation. It’s that irrigation — and many long-standing water rights — that supports a ranching and tourist economy.

 

Because there are existing water rights and a history of pumping in the area, Herskovits said, it’s no mystery what will happen when pumping begins. There are cases “where ground water pumping on a very modest level — really a totally different scale of magnitude than what SNWA is proposing — ... have already caused springs to dry up ... and lowered the water table,” he said.

 

And the existing water rights give Taylor, the state engineer, a legal basis upon which to limit pumping from the valley. Although plants, animals and the environment have limited legal rights under Nevada water law, there are stronger protections for senior water rights.

 

“The law requires that (Taylor) protect existing water rights,” said Tom Meyers, hydrologist for the Great Basin Water Network, which opposes the pipeline plan. “The environment does not have an existing water right.”

 

More people and water rights mean more opponents arguing against the pumping during hearings that could be delayed by as much as a year if some opponents get their way.

 

Another thing that distinguishes Snake Valley from the others the Southern Nevada Water Authority has targeted for its water supply pipeline project is Great Basin National Park, the only national park in Nevada and one of the area’s major tourist attractions.

 

“You have a whole different level of environmental sensitivity and concern there,” Herskovits said.

 

And the national park, combined with the objections of several local Indian tribes, might be enough to keep federal agencies such as the Interior Department and its Bureau of Indian Affairs and National Park Service in the fight, too, Herskovits said. Although federal agencies agreed to withdraw their opposition to the Water Authority’s applications in Spring, Cave, Dry Lake and Delamar valleys in exchange for a seat at the monitoring table once pumping begins, they have not yet made such an agreement for the Snake Valley hearings.

 

Federal agencies did not reveal until the day hearings over the Spring Valley applications began that they had withdrawn their protests. They announced similar agreements more than a month before the Cave, Dry Lake and Delamar hearings, Herskovits said.

 

And while the population, existing water rights and the national park in Snake Valley may give the state engineer more reasons to deny SNWA’s application there, they also make the stakes much higher.

 

Pumping “could make agriculture ... very difficult because of lowering water tables and the effects it will have on existing water rights,” Meyers said. “The ranchers depend on those rights.”

 

Another factor that may weigh on Taylor’s ruling for Snake Valley, which might not come until eight months or more after hearings conclude, is that the valley spills over into Utah.

 

Herskovits said it’s impossible to tell how much water is available to be exported without taking into account how much is already promised to Utah users and what the environmental impacts might be in a state that has staunchly opposed the Water Authority’s pipeline plan.

 

“It’s implausible to pretend that the two-state aspect of this ... is not a very important distinction,” he said.

 

Water Authority Deputy General Manager Kay Brothers does not disagree.

 

She said last week it’s likely Taylor will grant the authority less than the 50,000 acre-feet it has asked for from Snake Valley.

 

Brothers said there’s a lot of unclaimed water there and that 80 percent of the water that flows into the aquifer under Snake Valley comes from Nevada. But she said Taylor may be cautious because the basin is shared.

 

And Utah must agree to the pumping plan before any water is exported from Snake Valley — thanks to a clause tucked into the 2004 Lincoln County Conservation, Recreation and Development Act.

 

Taylor’s boss, Allen Biaggi, director of the Nevada Conservation and Natural Resources Department, said negotiations with Utah are confidential. He said last week they are ongoing, despite persistent rumors that they have broken down completely.

 

The Interior Department has asked Taylor’s office not to hold hearings before July 2009, in part to allow time for an agreement to be reached with Utah.

 

But even if ranchers and environmentalists get their way and the state doesn’t grant the Southern Nevada Water Authority another drop of water from eastern Nevada, that will not keep the authority from pumping from the four rural valleys where it has already won water rights.

 

Last spring Taylor ruled that Spring Valley could stand to lose 40,000 acre-feet of water a year, increasing to 60,000 acre-feet after a decade of monitoring. Last week he awarded SNWA almost 19,000 acre-feet from Cave, Dry Lake and Delamar valleys.

 

Brothers said that even if Taylor doesn’t grant the authority any water from Snake Valley, it will build its pipeline to Las Vegas anyway, filling it with that water.

Because drought on the Colorado River, which provides 90 percent of Las Vegas’ water, is so severe, Brother said, with “the numbers we have now ... the project is feasible.”#

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/jul/15/forces-set-resist-bid-rural-water/

 

 

 

How does tap water get to Santa Clarita?
The Santa Clarita Signal- 7/15/08

By Jim Holt, Senior Writer


This is the final part of a two part series.

 

The thirst for Northern Californian water began long before the statewide drought declared by the Governor last month.

Many have tried to find faster and better ways of bringing northern water south.

The San Joaquin Delta
After the Gold Rush, President Ulysses S. Grant witnessed gold miners becoming farmers and in 1863 commissioned Colonel B. S. Alexander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to look at the water needs of California.

After surveying the Central Valley's irrigation needs, Alexander recommended systematic development of the Sierra watersheds.

The next 60 years saw extensive efforts to distribute the water in Northern California to an increasingly thirsty Southern California.

In 1883, William Hammond Hall called for flood control and navigation improvements on the Sacramento, Feather, Yuba, and Bear rivers and in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

The most ambitious plan, however, was hatched in 1919 by Lieutenant Robert B. Marshall of the U.S. Geological Survey who proposed transporting water from the Sacramento River system to the San Joaquin Valley then moving it over the Tehachapi Mountains into Southern California.

This concept evolved into the State Water Plan - predecessor of the State Water Project - which was approved under the Central Valley Act of 1933 at a cost of $170 million, sidelined by The Great Depression, then dusted off and funded, in part, by the federal government.

After the Second World War when droves of people settled in California, the increasing thirst for water motivated politicians to expand the State Water Project.

The Feather River Project of 1955 led to the construction of the Oroville Dam and reservoir and, ultimately, to the construction of the aqueduct that carries water from the Delta to the San Joaquin Valley to points in Southern California, including the Santa Clarita Valley.

After vigorous debate over water rights and shared costs, the SWP was born in November 1960 when voters endorsed the Burns-Porter Act, formally known as the California Water Resources Development Bond Act.

Extending more than 660 miles, the SWP is the largest state-owned, user-financed water system in the United States.

So, as our drop of water makes its way out of Lake Oroville it rejoins the Feather River which runs through Yuba County and merges with the Sacramento River at Verona - but not until it has pushed turbines at the Oroville Dam.

>From there, south across the central state's flat farmland to the grapevine, our drop of water (now having travelled 150 miles from the snow pack) is continually twisted, contorted and re-defined through continuous litigation and governance as it flows through the state capital into the San Joaquin Delta.

When the hands of power turn the taps in Sacramento, it affects the amount of water that flows out of taps in homes in Santa Clarita.

In 2007, U.S. District Court Judge Oliver Wanger issued a decision in federal court that limited pumping operations in the San Joaquin Delta because some species of animals were being harmed, including the Delta smelt.

Last month, Judge Wanger began hearings to discuss the possibility of further reducing pumping from the Delta - the hub of California's water system - to help protect other fish including the Chinook salmon and Central Valley steelhead.

Castaic Lake
By the time our sample drop becomes part of Castaic Lake via the SWP, it will have travelled more than 480 miles from the snow pack on Kettle Rock, pushed turbines at more than half a dozen hydro-electric plants and crossed two major mountain ranges.

The electricity generated is used to pump other drops of water just like it through the SWP, providing water to more than 23 million people and more than 750,000 acres of irrigated farmland in Northern California, the San Francisco Bay Area, the Central Coast, San Joaquin Valley, and Southern California.

Once its part of Castaic Lake, our drop of water is under the care and control of the Castaic Lake Water Agency.

Under terms of its contract with the State of California, the local water agency - and the 28 other agencies like it - pay approximately 94 percent of SWP costs, including construction and operations and maintenance.

Once in Castaic Lake, our drop of water takes one of two routes - to the Earl Schmidt Filtration Plant or the Rio Vista Water Treatment Plant on Bouqet Road, overlooking Central Park.

>From the treatment plant, our drop of water can take one of four routes as it's delivered to one of four local water retailers: Newhall County Water District, the Los Angeles Waterworks District No. 36 and the Santa Clarita Water (Company) District which was purchased by the agency in 1999.

>From there the retailer delivers that drop of water to homes in Santa Clarita Valley.

So, when a Santa Clarita ratepayer turns on the tap and our sample drop of water - that began as melted snow on the peak of Kettle Rock - helps fill a glass of water; half the glass is typically filled with water that has travelled the same route from Northern California. The remaining half of the glass is water that has come from four local sources: groundwater wells, including shallow wells that tap the Alluvial Aquifer and from water deposits set deep in the earth inside the Saugus Formation.

Last month, Masnada , speaking at a luncheon of the Santa Clarita Chamber of Commerce, told local business people, warned them about the consequences of diminishing snow packs.

"The most recent effects of climate change are reflected in the Department of Water Resources' State Water Project delivery regarding reduced availabilities of water," he told The Signal last week.

Continuing dry conditions and court-ordered restrictions on Delta water exports are limiting water deliveries to farms and urban areas.

DWR estimates that it will only be able to deliver 35 percent of requested SWP water this year to the Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley, Central Coast and Southern California.

"We're looking at a 35 percent allocation for this year," Masnada said. "The long-term average will see 66 to 69 percent (allocation). Some years, its been 80 to 90 percent allocation. Two years ago, it was 100 percent allocation.

"It really depends on what mother nature does."

On June 4, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a statewide drought. A week later, he declared a state of emergency for nine counties in Northern California, citing severe drought conditions in those areas.
California's Office of the Attorney General blames global warming for losses to the Sierra Snow Pack.

On its official website, explaining the impacts of Global Warming, the attorney general states:

"Higher temperatures diminish snowfall and cause the snow that does fall to melt earlier. This reduces the amount of water stored in the Sierra snow pack, which accounts for approximately half of the surface water stored in the State. Reductions and early melting of the snow pack will aggravate the State's already overstretched water resources."

Masnada reassured local business people, last month, however, that if catastrophe struck the San Joaquin Delta, Santa Clarita Valley residents can get by on water stored by the local agency for two years.

"If there was an outage (of State Water Project water), with the water stored in Kern County we could make it through two years, taking water (out) of storage," he told them.

But, citing a three-day tour of the Bay Delta area in June, Masnada still tempered his optimism with warnings about a diminishing snow pack.

The governor's executive order S-06-08 issued in regards to the drought reads: "Climate change will increasingly impact California's hydrology and is expected to reduce snowpack, alter the timing of runoff and increase the intensity and frequency of droughts in the western United States."

Masnada added: "From a water supply standpoint, it has huge implications... If things are bad right now, they're going to be worse with climate change.” #

http://www.the-signal.com/news/article/2911/