[Water_news] 1. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS - Top Item for 9/12/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment

 

September 12, 2008

 

1.  Top Item

 

 

 

Rain, mudslides are a worry in scorched Big Sur: Monterey County officials must await a federal repair plan before they can move ahead with efforts to protect the area from debris flows before winter rains arrive.

The Los Angeles Times- 9/12/08

 

Smelt again at center of water conflict: Environmentalists want 3 dozen contracts canceled or reworked.

The Fresno Bee- 9/11/08

 

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Rain, mudslides are a worry in scorched Big Sur: Monterey County officials must await a federal repair plan before they can move ahead with efforts to protect the area from debris flows before winter rains arrive.

The Los Angeles Times- 9/12/08

By Catherine Saillant,  Staff Writer

Two months after major wildfires blackened nearly a quarter of a million acres of its forest land, Big Sur has returned to a normal tourist hum, and a mild Indian summer has set in.

But longtime residents worry about the badly scorched land and the flooding and mudslides that could come with winter rains.

Although government agencies say help is on the way, disaster-weary residents worry that it won't be enough and may come too late to stave off the potentially catastrophic effects -- not just on tourist spots but on the crucial artery of Highway 1.

Other fire-ravaged communities across California are faring better.

Near Goleta, more than 9,000 acres of rugged terrain stripped of vegetation in the Gap fire soon will be coated aerially with a glue-like substance that is embedded with fertilizer.

The mixture of wood and paper fibers, water and a plant-based binder will absorb rainwater and coax faster regrowth of native chaparral, said Tom Fayram, Santa Barbara County's deputy director of public works.

In Butte County, state Office of Emergency Services crews are fanning out to review the burn damage and suggest needed repair, said agency spokeswoman Tina Walker. The Telegraph fire that briefly threatened Yosemite National Park is not expected to pose any significant flooding risk, federal officials say.

As for Big Sur, a federal fix-it plan promised at the end of August has yet to be produced, said Lisa Kleissner, spokeswoman for the Coast Property Owners Assn., representing 1,500 homes in the area. Residents are dependent on the federal report because 83% of the burned area is in national forests.

"All the main businesses and many homes are threatened, but in particular between Big Sur campground and Big Sur River Inn," Kleissner said. "We can't do work on lands that aren't ours, even though it would impact our properties."

Rainfall in the Big Sur area typically begins in October and averages 43 inches a year.

Phil Yenovkian of Monterey County's Office of Emergency Services said his office's effort can't start before the federal plan. "Our action list," he said, "will be based on a document that we are still waiting for."

Kathy Good, a spokeswoman for the Los Padres division of the U.S. Forest Service, said the federal report, produced by the Burned Area Emergency Response team, is still being reviewed but should be ready by mid-September. "I'm sure people are getting anxious about the winter season," Good said. "They will turn it around as quickly as they can."

Brent Roath, of the Burned Area Emergency Response team, said that proposed projects include repairing service roads and controlling erosion on an extensive trail system within the Los Padres National Forest. A weather-alert system to let downstream residents know when flooding is likely is also being suggested, Roath said.

But the burned area is simply too large and too steep to apply protective mulch, he said. The first rains would wash them away. It's also impractical, he said, to do any large-scale logging of dead trees before winter.

The California Department of Transportation and emergency response team members have identified places on Highway 1 where debris flows may occur. They are planning to set up catch basins for the rocks and material that slide across the highway during severe storms.

"If the winter is a reasonable one, we get good vegetative recovery," Roath said. "That's what we are really counting on in this case."

In Santa Barbara County, officials are most concerned about mud and flood waters near Goleta's old town and above the Santa Barbara Airport, said Fayram, the public works manager. The county has a $4.7-million fix-it list that includes installation of debris racks to catch boulders and shrubs and large sediment basins near the airport, he said.

It is also holding community meetings to inform the public about plans and to hear their concerns, said Supervisor Janet Wolf, whose district includes much of the burned area. "The Gap fire covered seven watersheds immediately above the cities of Goleta and Santa Barbara," Wolf said. "The issue of flooding is paramount."

Big Sur is at higher risk than other areas because of its steep topography. A 2005 report by the U.S. Geological Survey found that the rugged area is one of the most landslide-prone stretches of the California coast. Slides frequently close down Highway 1, depriving Big Sur of tourism dollars.

A 1983 landslide near Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park closed the highway for more than a year and necessitated $7 million in repairs. In 2005, heavy rains again shut down the southern approach to Big Sur.

Janet Lesniak, owner of the Big Sur River Inn, said she wasn't waiting for officials to save her business. Before the first rains hit, she plans to install concrete K-rail south of her inn to divert flood waters from the nearby Big Sur River.

This being Big Sur, Lesniak, an artist who does oil paintings, said she would paint the homemade concrete channel in bright colors. What she hopes to avoid is a repeat of the winter of 1972, when heavy rains caused muddy floods across the inn's property, destroying one building. Big Sur residents hope for a gentle winter but fear a deluge, she said.

"We live in this spectacular place, and it comes with so many gifts," Lesniak said. "But it also comes with challenges. Every morning, the first prayer is for half an inch of rain every other day."#

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bigsur12-2008sep12,0,3087023.story

 

 

 

Smelt again at center of water conflict: Environmentalists want 3 dozen contracts canceled or reworked.

The Fresno Bee- 9/11/08

By John Ellis

 

Environmentalists want the federal government to cancel or renegotiate more than three dozen long-term water contracts in the Central Valley because they say they were drawn up using flawed data.

 

If the request is approved by U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger, agricultural users both north and south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta say it would likely mean less water for them.

 

Some say the environmentalists' request has the potential to turn the state's intricately woven water world upside down.

 

That's because some Sacramento River users say that if there's no federal contract, they should be able to reassert their longtime state water rights -- a claim that could devastate the Westlands Water District and even hurt the Friant Water Users Authority and other San Joaquin River water users.

 

Wanger today will hear arguments in his Fresno courtroom on the request to cancel water contracts in a case involving the tiny delta smelt, which environmentalists say is facing extinction.

 

They say the population decline is driven largely by reduced water coming into the delta, and also because increased pumping for users south of the delta has helped wreck critical spawning areas and is damaging the smelt's overall habitat.

 

Last year, Wanger threw out a key opinion on the effects of delta water pumping on the smelt.

 

Data from that opinion -- which is being rewritten by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service -- were used to help craft the new 25- to 40-year contracts with the 42 different users.

 

Environmentalists say the contracts should instead be based on the new smelt opinion, which is scheduled to be finished next year.

 

Trent Orr, an attorney with Earthjustice, a nonprofit legal watchdog group in Oakland, said the environmentalists aren't seeking to stop water deliveries. Instead, they want the contracts to be deemed legally invalid, but then keep the order from taking effect for one year while interim contracts are negotiated.

 

More potentially explosive, some say, is language in a legal brief on the contract issue filed by 22 Sacramento River settlement contractors -- water users who had used Sacramento River water before the federal Central Valley Project was constructed beginning in the late 1930s.

 

These users say in court filings that if there are no valid federal contracts -- as environmentalists want -- then they would revert to using water under those pre-existing rights, and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's "ability to operate the CVP would be severely compromised."

 

That in turn could affect users south of the delta whose supply originates in the state's far north.

 

Among them are the San Joaquin River Exchange Contractors Authority, which represents owners of 240,000 farmland acres in Fresno, Madera, Merced and Stanislaus counties on the San Joaquin Valley's west side.

 

Unlike other west-side water users such as Westlands, the exchange contractors authority has historic water rights on the San Joaquin River -- much like the settlement contractors on the Sacramento River -- dating back to the 1870s. The exchange contractors subsequently agreed to instead take delta water via the Delta-Mendota Canal, but also reserved the right to reclaim their share of San Joaquin River water.

 

If the authority turned to its historic San Joaquin rights, that could affect water on the Valley's east side, including the Friant Water Users Authority and those who get water from the Friant-Kern Canal.

 

Ron Jacobsma, general manager of the Friant Water Users Authority, said that for the first 50 years of the CVP, there was "little or no concern" that the exchange contractors authority would assert its San Joaquin River claim. They held a priority position in receiving delta water.#

http://www.fresnobee.com/263/story/862098.html