A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
October 20, 2008
2. Supply –
Governor's panel warns delta must be fixed
The secret's out: Tons of water in Oregon's Cascades
The Oregonian
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Governor's panel warns delta must be fixed
By Kelly Zito
The state must elevate environmental needs for water to a standing equal to that of human needs to restore the state's ailing water network, a report by the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force said.
Though the system is under extreme strain, it is uncertain whether the sweeping recommendations for the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta will fare any better than earlier attempts.
Members of the task force, however, insist this time is different. If nothing else, the ominous forecasts for the delta are putting all groups - farmers, urban users and environmentalists - on notice.
Stakeholders "are coming into alignment," said task force member Ray Seed.
"We've run out of alternatives," he added. "If this opportunity is lost, all is lost with it."
Members of the task force met Thursday and Friday in Sacramento to finalize and adopt the Delta Vision Strategic Plan, the fifth and final plan to achieve two main goals: ensure a reliable water supply for a booming population and repair the habitat damage incurred during decades of pumping water to farms and cities through a 1,300-square-mile estuary that is home to almost 900 species of birds and fish.
The plan, two years in the making, now goes to the Delta Vision Committee, chaired by Secretary for Resources Mike Chrisman. The committee is scheduled to send recommendations to the governor by the end of the year; supporting legislation is expected in 2009.
New oversight needed
In unveiling its study, the task force recommended creating a new delta oversight council that it said would not repeat the missteps of CalFed, a coordinating body formed in the mid-1990s that held many of the same goals as the Delta Vision group. CalFed's lack of leadership and accountability doomed many of its initiatives, according to the task force. The California Delta Ecosystem and Water Council would replace CalFed. It would have the power to allocate funds for projects and would be legally obligated to work on improving the delta.
Its five to seven members would be appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate.
"It would be a small, agile, accountable entity with oversight and responsibility," said task force member Sunne Wright McPeak.
According to Tim Quinn, executive director of a group that represents more than 450 water agencies in
"Nothing like it has ever been attempted. If you control the money, you control the authority."
The task force's report represents the latest in a series of policy efforts aimed at fixing the delta over the past four decades.
In the past several years, however, drought, legal restraints on delta pumping, crashing fish populations and worsening water quality lent more urgency to bolstering a system that delivers water to about two-thirds of
In addition to new dams and reservoirs, the plan calls for other measures, including: designating the estuary a National Heritage Area by 2010, increasing the amount of recycled water in the state to 1.5 million acre-feet annually, and cutting California's water use 20 percent by 2020.
'Positive development'
Environmental groups lauded the conservation recommendations and the move to legally establish ecosystem restoration and water supply as "co-equal" goals.
"It's a significant, positive development," said Cynthia Koehler, a lawyer at Environmental Defense Fund. "There's a certain amount of bravery in this. They're moving into some new areas that will be very productive."
But other environmental advocates remain concerned about the recommendation for a "dual conveyance" system - that is, strengthening the existing levees within the delta that channel water to pumping stations and building a separate pipeline that diverts water from the Sacramento River north of the Capitol to pumping stations in the southern delta.
Rather than big-ticket canals, groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council suggest that conservation and recycling could solve many of the problems facing the delta. Task force chairman Phil Isenberg, however, argued that the parallel systems offer a necessary insurance policy against earthquakes, floods and rising oceans.
Many
They were less enthusiastic about the task force's heavy emphasis on state water rights laws that define water as a public trust and subject to reasonable use. Task force members maintain that existing laws must be enforced to ensure that water is not wasted and that authorities don't continue to promise more water than can be delivered. As it stands, the state Water Resources Control Board has issued permits promising 3.4 times the amount of water available during high-flow years.
"It doesn't matter that there's a right to get water that doesn't exist," said Isenberg. "But it's hard to develop a coherent water system when you see this level of discrepancy between water rights and supply."
Some in the agriculture industry see a different agenda, though. Because
"We think there's a public trust value in a locally grown food supply," said Chris Scheuring, lawyer for the California Farm Bureau. "At least the public trust shouldn't act to push agriculture off the map. All our food will come from the
Delta Vision Committee's major recommendations
-- Make water supply and delta ecosystem restoration equal in state laws.
-- Apply for the designation of the delta as a federally recognized Natural Heritage Area by 2010. This would allow a large-scale preservation that would bring together public and private partnerships.
-- Develop a regional economic plan to support increased investment in agriculture, recreation, tourism and other resilient land uses.
-- Modify the Water Recycling Act of 1991 to add a statewide target to recycle 1.5 million acre-feet of water annually by 2020.
-- Enact legislation now that would encourage water agencies to use water desalination to triple the current statewide capacity to generate new water supplies by 2020.
-- Develop and construct new surface and groundwater storage and conveyance facilities by 2020.
-- Develop and enact a comprehensive plan to improve delta levees.
-- Enact legislation that would create a new oversight group for the delta.
To read the full report go online to: links.sfgate.com/ZFDE.#
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/18/MNIR13JKJI.DTL
The secret's out: Tons of water in Oregon's Cascades
The Oregonian – 10/19/08
by Michael Milstein, staff writer
The most valuable resource in the national forests atop the Oregon Cascades may not be the timber and recreation spots they're known for, but something else that's largely invisible: water.
Scientists from the U.S. Forest Service and Oregon State University have in recent years quietly realized that the high Cascades in Oregon and far Northern California contain an immense subterranean reservoir about as large as the biggest man-made reservoirs in the country.
The secret stockpile stores close to seven years' worth of
The reservoir hides within young volcanic rock -- less than 1 million years old -- in the highest reaches of the Cascades. The rock is so full of cracks and fissures it forms a kind of vast geological sponge. Heavy rain and snow falling on the rock percolate into the sponge, like a river filling a reservoir.
"It's not just the fact we get a lot of rain in Oregon that gives us copious amounts of water," says Gordon Grant, a research hydrologist at the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station leading the research. "It's the unique geology -- the plumbing system -- that allows us to retain much of it."
It's easily one of the biggest groundwater systems known in a mountainous region anywhere on the planet, he said.
Some water leaks steadily from the hidden reservoir, gushing from springs into rivers such as the McKenzie,
"The geology is kind of like your genetic code in terms of the water we can get out of the Willamette basin," said Julia Jones, a geosciences professor at
That all-year reliability of water from the underground store puts
At the same time, it may also make the Northwest a sought-after source of future water for the rest of the West. Southwest states have already floated the far-out idea of piping in water from the
Looking into the future, "the value of water coming out of this system absolutely exceeds any other economic value from national forestlands," Grant says.
The underground pool lies almost entirely within
More study proposed
A group of OSU and other scientists including Grant are proposing more research to better gauge the subterranean supply and examine the potential effects if thirsty regions such as
"We need to have a better understanding of what's there so we're in a position to make wise decisions about it in the future," said Michael Campana, director of the Institute for Water and Watersheds at
Grant took flak from colleagues last summer after Campana posted a
Some thought Grant was suggesting the water might go to
But the exchange highlighted the value of the underground water system, and researchers are now considering how to better understand it.
On par with Lake Mead
The volume of the underground water is difficult to fathom. Most of it lies in a layer around 500 feet thick, Grant says. Rough estimates suggest the system probably holds at least as much water as Lake Mead, the largest constructed reservoir in the nation.
Actually, it probably holds much more, but some water remains locked in cracks and crevices and cannot find its way out. While eight years of drought has left Lake Mead half full, however,
Given the enormous value of the reservoir of pristine water, Grant says, land managers may need to think about new ways to safeguard its quality. For instance, it might be worth considering limits on transport of hazardous materials across some parts of the Cascades to reduce the risk of spills contaminating the water, he said.
Forests such as those that house the groundwater system must be managed in the future to promote sustainable water supplies as much as anything else, Jones' National Research Council panel concluded in a report last summer.
That's especially true as growth and development erode forested areas that have long held crucial watersheds, Jones said.
Huge springs discovered
When Grant and his team began studying the water system, they found its water spilling from large springs so little-known they don't appear on maps. One spring pours out a full 1 percent of the summer volume of the
Grant isn't highlighting its location.
"You can be sure the bottled water people would like to know all about it," he said.
He and his colleagues are also studying the way global warming may influence the underground water supply. Many climate models show that as temperatures rise, more winter snow will fall as rain instead and run off the landscape more quickly. Less snow will remain to melt and feed rivers in summer, when water is needed most.
The underground Cascade reservoir changes the picture in the rivers its springs supply. Water entering the reservoir as rain or melting snow pushes water out of the springs, so as less water flows in from melting snow in the summer, less will exit the springs, Grant says.
However, because so much water remains underground, plenty is left to flow out during the summer. That means rivers fed by the reservoir's springs -- though reduced somewhat by climate change -- will keep flowing far more reliably than rivers fed by snowmelt alone.
"The high Cascades will continue to have water when others are losing it," Grant said. "When people look for where water comes from in the West, this is a place they will look." #
http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2008/10/the_secrets_out_tons_of_water.html
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