Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment
August 8, 2008
1. Top Items -
The Associated Press- 8/8/08
The Dessert Sun- 8/8/08
Funding a start for restoration
The Dessert Sun- 8/8/08
Salton Sea rescue effort clears key hurdle in state Assembly
Riverside Press- Enterprise- 8/8/08
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The Associated Press- 8/8/08
PDT Rio Vista, Calif. (AP) --On one side of the gravel road are hundreds of acres of corn. On the other is a different crop that scientists hope will enable farmers to rebuild sinking islands in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, combat global warming and make a profit at the same time.
The U.S. Geological Survey is growing tules and cattails on about 15 acres on
Twitchell and other delta islands are slowing sinking, their soil eaten away by wind, rain and farming. Most are more than 20 feet below the surrounding water. A levee system keeps them from being flooded.
A collapse of the levees would bring in salt water from
The Geological Survey project started 15 years ago as a small experiment on two 30-foot by 30-foot plots to see if growing mostly tules and cattails would help rebuild the islands' soil.
The plants can grow high enough to dwarf adults. As they die and decay, they slowly build up the peat. The soil under the 15-acre site has risen 1 to 2 feet since the project was moved there in 1996.
"All that soil out there are plants that grew 6,000 years ago and didn't decompose completely," said Robin Miller, a biogeochemist with the Geological Survey. "That's what peat is. So we're just making the same thing happen that happened here for millennia."
About 2 1/2 years ago, scientists noticed that their "big garden," as Miller calls it, was removing carbon dioxide, one of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.
"We were capturing a lot of (carbon dioxide) at levels much greater than other systems — marshes and forests, grasslands," said Roger Fujii, the project's director and the bay-delta program chief for the Geological Survey's
That revelation persuaded state and federal officials to expand the project. They are now trying to determine whether the tules and cattails could be used to combat global warming through what they call "carbon-capture" farming.
Under that scenario, companies could meet state greenhouse gas limits by paying delta farmers to plant tules and cattails rather than row crops.
"They can just sit back and watch the tules grow, and they should be making money," Fujii said. "That's what the vision is. It's not to do it just on
The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is at the heart of
The region between the state capital and
With a three-year, $12.3 million grant from the state Department of Water Resources, the Geological Survey and its research partners at the
The larger size would enable farmers to see how "they could really make a difference," Fujii said.
A series of questions needs to be answered before scientists can conclude that carbon-capture farming is beneficial. Among them is whether turning cornfields into tule-filled wetlands will only replace one type of greenhouse gas with more of another.
Plowing for agriculture oxidizes the soil, creating "perfect banquet conditions" for microbes that eat the peat and release carbon dioxide, Miller said. Flooding the fields with low levels of water to make wetlands limits the oxygen but forces the microbes to turn to other compounds.
"When oxygen is limited, the bugs, the microbes, have to eat and breathe somehow," she said. "They will use sulfate, iron or some other compound. Instead of producing (carbon dioxide) at the end of the pathway ... they end up producing methane," another greenhouse gas.
Scientists also want to be sure that changing cornfields to wetlands won't increase a third greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide.
They also are trying to determine how to minimize another potential problem — dissolved organic matter, which leaches out of peat soil and plants when exposed to water.
When delta water containing dissolved organic matter is treated for drinking supplies, it forms something called "disinfection byproducts," compounds that are carcinogenic. Geological Survey scientists want to make sure that creating more wetlands won't increase levels of those compounds.
They also want to be sure that carbon-capture farming won't cause the release of mercury that has been washing into the delta from mining operations going back to the Gold Rush era.
If scientists can work out those problems, they hope to develop a manual showing farmers how to create their own carbon-capturing wetlands and keep them healthy.#
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/08/08/national/a012909D34.DTL
The Dessert Sun- 8/8/08
By Jake Henshaw
SACRAMENTO — An Assembly committee Thursday reversed course and passed a bill to help get the salvage operation going at the Salton Sea — but not necessarily completing it.
The Assembly Appropriations Committee approved Senate Bill 187 by Sen. Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego, that would set out the ground rules for spending $47 million in previously approved bond funds to aid the dying sea.
But the bill was amended to make it clear that its approval doesn't constitute endorsement of an $8.9 billion restoration plan developed by state and local representatives under the direction of Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman.
This year, the Senate Appropriations Committee defeated another Ducheny bill, SB 1256, to set up a new agency to oversee the long-term restoration work.
Ducheny said the vote Thursday was important for the state's largest lake even though it didn't commit the state to a long-term restoration plan, which is estimated to stretch over 75 years.
“We can move forward,” Ducheny said, with approval of $47 million. “What they are trying to say is they are not ready to make a full commitment on what the ultimate project looks like.”
But she added that “if we can get this (bill through) and get momentum, it is important.”
Riverside County Supervisor Roy Wilson also was pleased with the vote, but said it just indicates the work ahead.
“It's going to be a long road” to get a full restoration approved,
http://www.mydesert.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080808/NEWS0701/808080319/1026
Funding a start for restoration
The Dessert Sun- 8/8/08
By Jake Henshaw
The Salton Sea's future is still uncertain, but leaders charged with restoring it are somewhat encouraged after learning Thursday the
“We got some kind of a yellow light that we should move forward but how we move forward is to come in future years,” said Dale Hoffman-Floerke, chief of the state's Colorado River & Salton Sea Office.
The bill approved Thursday also was amended to ensure legislative oversight of future spending. The same bill, without the spending and long-term amendments, was defeated last year by the same committee.
The bill, Senate Bill 187, next goes to the full Assembly.
As approved Thursday, the $47 million will help fund projects in what's known as Period One of restoration work outlined in the Resources Agency plan.
That period runs through 2013 with a $508 million mostly unfunded budget and calls for a variety of work, including initial projects to preserve endangered fish population as well as developing a baseline of data on air, fish, birds, sea sediment, Hoffman-Floerke said.
State officials already are working with $10.3 million approved in the 2007-08 fiscal year to prepare plans for an initial restoration project to begin preserving fish. That work is authorized by existing state law for species habitat conservation, she said.
The proposed project would be a 300-acre to 400-acre saline pond for fish who serve as food for fish-eating birds at the sea.
The environmental and design work on this habitat, which includes identifying its location, will take a year and the $10.3 million should cover that cost. The $10.3 million will come out of the $47 million.
But Hoffman-Floerke said the rest of the $47 million will be needed to help pay for construction work on the saline pond.
“I think $47 million would be a really good start on a big chunk of that” cost of the pond, said Hoffman-Floerke, though she isn't able to estimate the total cost until the preparation work is done.
She emphasized, however, that state officials need authorization for a long-term restoration plan to really get rolling on saving the sea.
“Without the support of (the Resources Agency restoration plan), our hands are tied and we really can't do anything beyond ecosystem restoration,” Hoffman-Floerke said.
Still, she said, state staff have been putting together monitoring plans to gather information for baseline data on air quality, lake bottom sediment, birds and fish.
To monitor air quality only, the state can tap a separate $133 million fund set up to offset impacts of the water transfer deal between the Imperial Irrigation District and
That money is for mitigation work at the sea and elsewhere, but it can't be used for restoration.
State and local officials working on the sea also agreed that full restoration is going to require creation of a new governing agency.
“Those of us with the Salton Sea Authority aren't convinced the (Resources Agency plan) is the best plan,”
Ducheny said approval of a governing agency and a long-term state commitment to restoration will require an all-out effort by supporters next year to educate lawmakers, especially the new members who are elected to replace legislators forced out by term limits.
“It is my goal in life to see all those pieces in place before we leave” the Legislature, said Ducheny, who will be forced out by term limits in 2010.
Hoffman-Floerke stressed the urgency of acting as soon as possible to prevent the sea from deteriorating further and making restoration all that much harder.
“We are trying to keep from losing ground and the clock is ticking,” she said.#
http://www.mydesert.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080808/NEWS0701/808080321
Salton Sea rescue effort clears key hurdle in state Assembly
Riverside Press- Enterprise- 8/8/08
A key legislative committee on Thursday approved a bill that would pump $47 million into jump-starting a long-awaited rescue effort for the
It would be the most significant funding funneled to the sea since California Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman 18 months ago unveiled an $8.9 billion restoration plan that would reduce the lake to one-fifth its current size and create wildlife ponds for bird habitat.
The bill, approved by the Assembly Appropriations Committee, is expected to be heard before the full Assembly next week.
The money would help test out a smaller version of the plan's main objective to help wildlife. Some 300 to 400 acres of shallow ponds would be carved out in the sea, where fish could thrive and feed birds, said Dale Hoffman-Floerke, chief of the
The agency, she said, would also start looking at the specifics of building perhaps the project's most costly feature, a barrier that would turn the sea into a 45,000-acre, horseshoe-shaped lake that would maintain a shoreline along the sea's remote towns.
"The large infrastructure that was proposed, that's where you start using some real significant dollars," Hoffman-Floerke said.
She said the state is about to acquire five stations to monitor air quality at the
The lake was accidentally created in 1905 when water from the
The sea will begin shrinking significantly in 2018, when vast amounts of water from the lake's surrounding farms is sent to San Diego taps as part of a deal to reduce the amount of water California takes from the Colorado River. The farm runoff sustains the sea, which has become 25 percent saltier than the
The 2007 restoration plan was crafted after three years of studies and negotiations with environmentalists, farmers and Inland politicians.
The state's budget crisis made passage by the Assembly Appropriations Committee the bill's biggest hurdle, even though the funding was earmarked in Prop. 84, a measure passed by voters in 2006.
"In this climate, you can't take anything for granted so we're very pleased," said Dan Taylor, Audubon
The Salton Sea,
Sen. Denise Moreno Ducheny, D-San Diego, has guided the bill, known as Senate Bill 187, for more than a year, and she got support Thursday from Assemblyman Bill Emmerson, R-Redlands, who sits on the Appropriations Committee.
"Most of the legislators from the area have been supportive of this bill because of the potentially devastating environmental issues," said Emmerson, who is the chairman of a caucus of Inland lawmakers.
The committee approved the bill but without making a full endorsement of the costly restoration plan. Still, said its author, it will send a major signal to the federal lawmakers who will consider matching funds that the state is serious about restoring the
"The heart of the legislation is that it's making a commitment to move the project forward," Ducheny said.
Hoffman-Floerke said that without the Legislature's full endorsement of the 2007 plan, specific restoration projects done at the Salton Sea by her agency and the California Department of Fish and Game will have to be approved by lawmakers each time.#
http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_S_salton08.4911ce2.html
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