[Water_news] 5. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: AGENCIES, PROGRAMS, PEOPLE - 7/3/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

July 3, 2008

 

5. Agencies, Programs, People –

 

 

Seeking stable source of water, Sycuan looks to Otay district

The San Diego Tribune- 7/3/08

 

Editorial

Californians are all connected by disasters, regardless of where they live

The Los Angeles Times- 7/3/08

 

Kill your lawn. Artist gives old adage a water-conscious-in-’08 meaning: Statement that contradicts suburban ideal is for him a point of pride

The Las Vegas Sun- 7/3/08

 

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Seeking stable source of water, Sycuan looks to Otay district

The San Diego Tribune- 7/3/08

By Onell R. Soto, STAFF WRITER

 

EAST COUNTY – The Sycuan Indian band has decided that wells the tribe has long relied upon aren't the answer to its long-term water needs.

 

Sycuan, which is planning to double the size of its casino and build a new resort hotel east of El Cajon, wants to annex its reservation to the nearby Otay Water District.

 

That will allow the tribe to tap into water from the Colorado River and Northern California, like the rest of San Diego County.

 

Neighbors, who sometimes have clashed with the tribe over development issues, are in favor.

 

Adam Day, assistant tribal manager, said a big problem for the tribe is the quality of water from wells on the reservation.

 

“We've had to develop a pretty sophisticated nitrate-removal system,” he said.

 

Most San Diego County Indian reservations – Sycuan included – aren't within water districts and rely on well water.

 

That's often a problem for neighbors who bring up the effect on the water table whenever a casino or related project is proposed.

 

Some neighbors of the Barona reservation, for instance, say their wells went dry after that casino resort's golf course opened.

 

So far, the Sycuan proposal hasn't generated much opposition, said Pat Riggs, president of the Dehesa Valley Community Council.

 

“Sycuan uses a lot of water on their casino, and it's all groundwater,” she said. “It would be best for the community that they get a source of water other than groundwater.”

 

Riggs said her community planning group will probably support the annexation, even though the group has clashed with the tribe on other issues.

 

The Sycuan move comes just after the neighboring Padre Dam Water District finished building a $5 million pipeline along Harbison Canyon to the reservation. The tribe paid the cost.

 

It wasn't until after the Padre Dam pipeline construction was under way that the tribe decided to seek annexation to the Otay district.

 

The tribe now hopes to have Otay extend a pipeline along Dehesa Road, Day said.

 

The Padre Dam pipeline will continue to serve a residential area the tribe owns near its reservation. The reservation is adjacent to both districts.

 

Serving reservations can be tricky for water districts. Tribes, by law, can't be sued without their permission, said Thomas D. Cumpston, attorney for the El Dorado Irrigation District in Placer County.

 

That can take away the teeth of a district's regulations, he said, adding, “Can we make them conserve during a drought?”

 

Before agreeing to supply water to a casino under construction on a reservation between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe, Cumpston's district made a deal with the tribe, which agreed to go to court if it didn't follow the district's rules.

 

Mark Watton, the Otay Water District's general manager, said he has had similar discussions with Sycuan and doesn't think the issue will stop the proposal.

 

“Ultimately, Otay owns the meter,” he said. “I don't know that they would divorce themselves from the imported-water supply.”

 

In San Diego County, water districts buy water from the Colorado River and Northern California and sell it to residents, businesses, growers and other customers.

They also run large sewage-treatment plants.

 

In order to buy water or send sewage from its reservation to outside treatment, Sycuan will have to go through a years-long process to get its original mile-square reservation annexed into a neighboring water district.

 

The tribe, which operates a 2,000-slot casino, decided to annex the reservation to Otay because much of the off-reservation property it owns is already within that district's boundaries, Day said.

 

Sycuan is also asking to expand sewer service to much of that land, which it plans to add to its reservation.

 

Any changes would require a thorough environmental review, Watton said.

 

Approval of the annexation would be required from the Otay and Padre Dam districts, the San Diego Local Agency Formation Commission, the San Diego County Water Authority and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.#

 

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20080703-9999-1m3sycuan.html

 

 

 

Editorial

Californians are all connected by disasters, regardless of where they live

The Los Angeles Times- 7/3/08

George Skelton, Capitol Journal

 

TAHOE VISTA, CALIF. — We're skimming across flat water on blue Lake Tahoe, ringed by granite peaks still capped with winter snow. But a mile offshore we can't see squat.

It's like being socked in by fog on Santa Monica Bay. Only this stuff won't be burning off by noon. Better have a compass on board; preferably a GPS.

The crud is wood smoke from a few hundred Northern California wildfires. The unhealthy haze has been carried by prevailing south-westerlies up over the Sierra summit and now fills the Tahoe Basin.

People are leaving their boats on buoys. There's little clamoring for view tables at lakeside restaurants, especially outside on deck. The sweet scent of pine has been overcome by the stench of smoke.

And hikers beware: These aren't optimum conditions for strenuous ascents in the thin -- now dirty -- alpine air.

It seems surreal. There isn't a wildfire within 60 miles of Lake Tahoe. Most are hundreds of miles away. But up here we're still victims, if minor ones.

This rude act of nature is an unmistakable metaphor for an increasingly stark fact of California life: We're all connected, regardless of where we live. We're all in the same soup -- in this case, the same soot.

(Nod to the Lake Tahoe visitors bureau: Yes, the smoke blanket I describe was last week's. Since then the air has been clearing. "A lot of people are worried about the media coverage," says Julie Regan of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency. "We're open for business.")

Typically after I write about a natural disaster, e-mails pour in from cranky Californians who assert that anyone who builds in harm's way -- in the woods, along the seashore, on a slide-prone cliff, in a flood plain, on a quake fault -- gets what they deserve when calamity strikes. But that covers just about all of us.

No Californian should be smug. A major quake can occur practically anywhere, except -- knock on wood -- the Sacramento Valley. But flooding is a given in the Sacramento Valley and along the North Coast. Mudslides are a fact of coastal life in Southern California. And fires are everywhere that pines, manzanita and housing developments sprout.

Last week, virtually everyone from Big Sur to the Oregon and Nevada borders was breathing bad air from the estimated 1,450 wildfires, most of them ignited by lightning.

All Californians pay -- and not just with clogged lungs -- when any disaster hits. If not with personal loss, we at least pay through the pocketbook.

Fighting wildfires during the last fiscal year, which ended Monday, cost state taxpayers $393 million, the governor's office estimated Wednesday. That's $308 million over what was budgeted for all emergencies. The year before, the firefighting tab was $206 million.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed raising $69 million annually by adding a disaster fee to property insurance premiums. The hit would average about $12.60 per household in "high-hazard" zones -- almost everywhere -- and $6.75 in "low-hazard" areas. This makes sense, but Republicans call the fee a tax and are opposed.

At Tahoe, last week's smoky skies appeared obnoxiously on the one-year anniversary of a wildfire -- ignited by an illegal campfire -- that destroyed 254 homes and other structures on the south shore. Total damage was estimated at $160 million.

Today, the 3,100 charred acres are a mixture of dead-pine matchsticks and moonscape. But there are hopeful signs of sprouting new homes.

Since that disaster, the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency has made it easier for homeowners to knock down pines that can fuel fires. There's public money for partial rebates.

There should be better land-use planning and more fire prevention all over California -- something more acceptable and effective than dousing neighborhood fireworks on the Fourth of July, as Schwarzenegger advocates.

Actually, planning and prevention are improving. And they're costly.

Water is another especially clear example of Californians all swimming in the same soup.

For decades, northern environmentalists have objected to sending water south to fill L.A. swimming pools and quench developers' thirst for more housing tracts. No more dams, they insist. But they ignore that dams also protect northerners from the floods that invariably threaten after every drought cycle and are expected to worsen with global warming.

Farmers fret about fish gobbling Delta water that they believe should fill their irrigation ditches. But when fish don't get enough fresh water -- and they haven't been in recent years -- federal judges step in and tighten the farmers' spigots. Farms and fishing both have suffered.

Updating California's water facilities will demand creative compromise. And so far Capitol politicians have proven themselves incapable of it. Schwarzenegger still hopes the Legislature will agree to a water bond for the November ballot, perhaps as part of budget bargaining.

Healthcare is another instance of all Californians being in it together. Many complain that any universal healthcare should exclude illegal immigrants. But we're paying for their care anyway, only at much steeper rates in hospital emergency rooms, where the Supreme Court says they can't be turned away. And that's fortunate, because the sick spread disease to other people, regardless of status.

Schwarzenegger intends to take another run at healthcare reform after the Legislature ends its budget squabbling.

Go down the list of problems in a growing state with finite land and resources. Californians say they want it all -- guaranteed healthcare, reliable water, quality education, tough sentencing for bad guys, fire suppression. But polls show they don't want to pay for it themselves. Somebody else should.

Californians are in a dense haze about what to do -- another metaphor provided by the smoky skies.#

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-me-cap3-2008jul03,0,4957676.column

 

 

 

Kill your lawn. Artist gives old adage a water-conscious-in-’08 meaning: Statement that contradicts suburban ideal is for him a point of pride

The Las Vegas Sun- 7/3/08

By Abigail Goldman

 

Robert Curry gave up. He got tired of drowning his lawn with water, then paying gardeners to groom it, then balancing his checkbook only to find it was warped by the weight of the $225 he spent monthly just to keep the grass alive.

 

So Curry stopped watering, let the lawn burn brown and spray-painted the word “Green” onto the grass — perfectly precise letters that stretch from one end of his dead yard to the other — a suburban dream deferred, half-joke, half-statement.

 

Then his new water bill arrived in the mail: $9. No joke.

 

The Las Vegas artist has left his lawn like this since March. He’s mowed the straw-stiff grass once, and when he did, it made the font even sharper. So now the lawn screams “Green” even though it’s the furthest thing from it — an illusion, in Las Vegas of all places.

 

Curry, who’s made a living painting murals in casinos and buildings across Clark County, had the green paint left over from another project. He loaded it into an insecticide sprayer, the kind with pump action, and assaulted the grass. The actual word he created like a stencil — painting everything around the letters but not the letters themselves, so it’s a negative image: Green done in Brown grass.

 

Now he has green shoes, too.

 

But the grass isn’t just green, it’s also green. As Curry let his lawn die, he also made his house easier on the environment. He insulated his windows and attic so they’d stop leaching so much power. He went easier on the air conditioner. And this is part of what “Green” is supposed to mean — the greater green.

 

So Curry’s grass says something larger about living in the middle of the Mojave Desert: My lawn isn’t crazy. Yours is.

 

There’s something in the American psyche that loves a big green lawn. Pushing that mower around is a national paradigm, part heinous chore, part point of pride.

 

In Clark County, about 30 percent of water consumed is used outdoors. And sure, you get a check from the water authority for ripping out healthy grass and putting down rock, but Curry would rather spend the few thousand dollars that costs on, “Oh, you know, health care.”

 

His downtown Las Vegas neighbors are either happy with the lawn, ambivalent, or weren’t home when the Sun knocked.

 

Mark Melnick, two houses down, sees it as a “statement of conservation.”

 

Norma Rodriguez, across the street, admired Curry’s paint job the way you would a newly coated garage — nice, even, careful. As for the art element, she was indifferent: “It’s whatever,” she said. Happily, there is no homeowners association.

 

For now, Curry has cash to buy more paint for his personal projects — large, color wash paintings with words running across them in the precise font he’s mastered on canvas and now, grass.

 

Perhaps the next painting will happen in his back yard, in blue: “Pool.”#

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/jul/03/kill-your-lawn-artist-gives-old-adage-water-consci/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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