[Water_news] 1. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS - Top Item for 10/27/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

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

 

October 24, 2008

 

1.  Top Items -

 

 

Climate Change Summit

Space in DWR and WEF Sponsored Event Still Available

A 1-1/2 day summit, Climate Change: Managing Risk & Uncertainty, set for Nov. 13-14 at the Long Beach Hilton, will bring together top experts from local water agencies, cities, state government, and those in the water community connected with state and federal water systems, to discuss the effects of climate change and adaptation on California's water management. The summit will address the challenges and opportunities facing California in the development of water policies in the face of climate change. The summit is sponsored by the California Department of Water Resources and the Water Education Foundation.  Don’t miss this opportunity to discuss climate change impacts and adaptation with leading water experts.

 Summit Registration...

 

State's water revocation lets Auburn Dam die a little more

Stockton Record – 10/25/08

By Alex Breitler, staff writer

 

SACRAMENTO - Criminal.

 

That's how one San Joaquin County water official described the state's decision this week to revoke water rights for the Auburn Dam, a long-promised source of water for this area.

 

"When you look at what's been done to San Joaquin County over the years, it's criminal," said Ed Steffani, manager of the North San Joaquin County Irrigation District. "This is disappointing, and I think it was a dumb move by the state."

 

San Joaquin is still in line to get water from the American River under a newer, junior water right. But the Auburn Dam - or at least a right to the water that was to have been stored there - might have provided more water as well as seniority over other thirsty areas.

 

San Joaquin is scrambling for more surface water to take pressure off of over-tapped groundwater. The American River is just one of several possible solutions.

There's more than 40 years of history behind the ill-fated Auburn Dam, proposed in 1965. The large reservoir would have bolstered water supplies, improved flood protection in Sacramento and provided hydroelectric power. Some water would have been sent to San Joaquin via a canal.

 

The federal Bureau of Reclamation got the right to the water, and even began work on the dam, spending $136 million as of 1975, according to the decision this week by the State Water Resources Control Board.

 

But a 5.7-magnitude earthquake forced the bureau to rethink the dam's design. It got more expensive, soaring past what Congress was willing to spend, estimated in 2006 at $6 billion to $10 billion.

 

Meanwhile, environmentalists - including the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, led by Stockton's Bill Jennings - protested the bureau's request for more time to use its water right, citing needs for fish and water quality.

 

In the world of water, if you don't use your water right, you lose it. Reclamation basically put its water rights on "cold storage," preventing others from using the water while making no progress on the dam, the state board said in its draft decision.

 

"At some point, you have to close the door," Jennings said.

 

San Joaquin officials say they were urged for half a century to seek surface water from the American River, only to be denied by circumstances beyond their control. However, while the board recognized the problem here, it said it never denied the county the right to take water from other sources.

 

Pointing San Joaquin to that river in the north "did not guarantee water supply contracts to the counties," the ruling said. Nor was there a guarantee that Reclamation would enter into contracts with San Joaquin to actually deliver Auburn Dam water.

 

San Joaquin authorities want to take the bureau's water at Freeport on the Sacramento River, where the county applied in 1990 for its own junior American River water rights.

 

But the water San Joaquin County gets from that site won't be anywhere near the quantity it might have received had Auburn Dam actually been built, Steffani said.

"The dam has got to be built someday," he said. "It's got to."

 

Mark Madison, director of the Stockton Municipal Utilities Department, said the Auburn Dam "has been dead for a while."

 

"There were a lot of efforts for many, many years to make sure we might be able to enjoy some of the benefits" from that project, he said.

This week's decision doesn't completely kill the dam. The feds could get back in line and apply for a new water permit, the state said. But most seem to feel this is unlikely.

 

A bureau spokeswoman in Sacramento said Friday that it was too soon to say what that agency's next move would be.#

http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081025/A_NEWS/810250327/-1/A_NEWS

 

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DWR's California Water News is distributed to California Department of Water Resources management and staff, for information purposes, by the DWR Public Affairs Office. For reader's services, including new subscriptions, temporary cancellations and address changes, please use the online page: http://listhost2.water.ca.gov/mailman/listinfo/water_news. DWR operates and maintains the State Water Project, provides dam safety and flood control and inspection services, assists local water districts in water management and water conservation planning, and plans for future statewide water needs. Inclusion of materials is not to be construed as an endorsement of any programs, projects, or viewpoints by the Department or the State of California.