[Water_news] 3. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: WATERSHEDS - 10/16/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

October 16, 2008

 

3. Watersheds –

 

 

California Reminds Boaters & Water Users: Don't Move A Mussel
New Invasive Mussel Guidebook Available Online

DFG News Release

 

New vision for California Delta

Con tra Costa Times

 

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California Reminds Boaters & Water Users: Don't Move A Mussel
New Invasive Mussel Guidebook Available Online

DFG News Release – 10/15/08

 

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A state multi-agency taskforce today unveiled a guidebook to help water managers and recreationalists take part in the fight against invasive Quagga and Zebra mussels. The "Invasive Mussel Guidebook" outlines how aquatic mollusks can devastate waterways and why local governments and water users should encourage all Californians not to move a mussel.

 

The taskforce - composed of California's Department of Fish and Game, Department of Water Resources, Department of Parks and Recreation, Department of Boating and Waterways and Department of Food and Agriculture - is working to advance understanding about these mussels and their potential ecological and economic impacts. However, it is local officials and residents who must take critical steps to address this important issue.

 

Quagga and Zebra mussels were first detected in the Great Lakes in the late 1980s, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to water delivery systems. They were first detected in the Colorado River system in January 2007 and were later found in San Diego and Riverside counties by state and local water agencies. Zebra mussels were discovered in San Justo Reservoir in San Benito County in January 2008.

 

The "Invasive Mussel Guidebook" provides strategies for local involvement in the Quagga and Zebra mussel response. Although the mussels are not established in all California lakes and reservoirs, most areas of the state are vulnerable to future transport and contamination by the species. Because the mussels are primarily transported by watercraft, water managers are urged to develop policies to ensure that the invasive mollusks are not moved via boats or ballast water.

 

Both species of mussel are non-native aquatic mollusks that wreak havoc on the environment by disrupting the natural food chain and releasing toxins that affect other aquatic species. Although they range in size from microscopic to the size of a fingernail, they are prolific and attach themselves to hard and soft surfaces.

 

In addition to devastating the natural environment, Quagga and Zebra mussels pose a dramatic economic threat to California. The mussels can colonize on hulls, engines and steering components of boats, other recreational equipment, and can damage boat motors and restrict cooling. The invasive species also attach to aquatic plants, and submerged sediment and surfaces such as piers, pilings, water intakes, and fish screens. In doing this, water intake structures can be clogged, hampering the flow of water. The mussels frequently settle in massive colonies that can block water intake and threaten municipal water supply, agricultural irrigation and power plant operations.

 

Zebra mussels inhabit water depths from four to 180 feet, while Quagga can reach depths more than 400 feet. Both mollusks can attach to and damage boat trailers, cooling systems, boat hulls and steering equipment. Mussels attached to watercraft or trailers can be transported and spread to other water bodies. Water in boat engines, bilges, live wells and buckets can carry mussel larvae (called veligers) to other water bodies as well.

 

To help prevent the spread of the mussels, boaters should inspect all exposed surfaces, wash boat hulls thoroughly, remove all plants from boat and trailer, drain all water, including lower outboard units, clean and dry livewells and bait buckets and dispose baitfish in the trash.

Most importantly, watercraft should be dried for at least five days between launches in different fresh bodies of water. These steps are designed to thwart spread of the invasive mussels, safeguard boats and preserve high-quality fisheries.

 

The taskforce is currently working to determine the extent of the Quagga and Zebra mussel threat and to educate watercraft users and water managers about what they can do to help. As part of the public education effort, the state has facilitated nearly a dozen Quagga/Zebra inspection and decontamination trainings for more than 300 individuals in San Diego, Redding, Fresno, Stockton, Monterey, Los Alamitos, Onatrio, Lake County, Sacramento and Yountville.

 

To date, the taskforce has distributed more than 1.75 million information cards and 1.2 million letters to registered boaters and other water users around the state about the Quagga and Zebra mussel threat. The California Department of Food and Agriculture has inspected nearly 180,000 watercraft at its 16 Border Protection Stations since 2007. Inspections continue daily.

 

To access the "Invasive Mussel Guidebook" in its entirety, please visit www.resources.ca.gov/quagga.

A public toll-free hotline - 1-866-440-9530 - has also been established for information about destructive Quagga and Zebra mussels. The toll-free number is available Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

 

For more information about the Quagga/Zebra mussel response, please visit www.dfg.ca.gov/invasives/quaggamussel.#

http://www.dfg.ca.gov/news/news08/08107.html

 

New vision for California Delta

Con tra Costa Times – 10/15/08

By Mike Taugher, staff writer

 

California will have to build more dams and a controversial canal and still it will not be able to deliver all of the Delta water that has been promised to cities and farmers, an independent panel says.

 

The environmental crisis and water supply problems are so entrenched that nearly everything that has been suggested to fix the ailing Delta will have to be done, at least to some degree, according to the Delta Vision task force.

 

That means building a canal around the Delta, erecting more dams, enforcing much more conservation. And, still, some water users could lose their historical claim to water because the state has promised much more Delta water than is available.

 

"If there is a static water supply, together with statutory promises that exceed the available water supply, competing with a strong environmental ethic and facing continued population growth, how does the state guarantee to provide more water than is available?" the task force's latest draft plan asks.

 

"There is no particular secret to the answer. Over time, California has to do almost everything suggested by the major voices in the water wars. No, not every dam, canal or environmental spending project everyone can imagine; but some of each are required."

 

The panel will finalize its plan during a two-day meeting today and Friday, after which, the two-volume document will be sent to a committee of four state cabinet members and the president of the California Public

 

Utilities Commission. That committee is expected to make recommendations to the governor by the end of the year, based the panel's final report. Those recommendations could include proposed legislation for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to embrace.

 

The latest draft of the plan contains seven broad goals and dozens of recommendations to reach those goals.

They include:

 

  Putting the Delta ecosystem on equal footing with demands for water — and passing a constitutional amendment making the environment and water supply equally important.

  Raising the profile of the Delta as a unique cultural, recreational and agricultural resource.

  Restoring the ecosystem of the Delta — the West Coast's largest estuary — by restoring natural flows, removing pollution from farms, urban sewer plants and runoff, and re-creating wetlands.

  Promoting greater water efficiency and conservation.

  Building new reservoirs and an aqueduct to carry water around the Delta.

  Preparing better for floods, earthquakes or other Delta emergencies while discouraging home-building in flood-prone areas.

  Overhauling the government agencies that oversee the Delta's water supplies, environment and land use planning.

 

Perhaps the most far-reaching of its recommendations, the report says, is to force state agencies to implement existing water rights laws.

 

Laws that require the protection of the public trust and that require this natural resource be used reasonably have traditionally taken a back seat to the growing needs of water users, the panel noted. Endangered species laws have also been ignored or softly enforced.

So far, water officials and environmentalists appear, in general, cautiously supportive.

 

"It's hard to argue with the big picture vision, but we're going to argue over the details," said Tim Quinn, executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies.

 

Because any solution to the Delta's problems will take years, if not decades, the panel also endorsed a package of near-term actions designed to improve responses to levee failures, improve water quality and protect fish.

 

Perhaps the most controversial issue that needs to be addressed in any discussion about the Delta's future is the question of conveyance: how will water be delivered?

After 18 months of work, the panel, in its latest draft, still does not come to a definitive recommendation.

 

But it does say that the most promising alternative might be a combination that uses existing plumbing, with modifications, and builds a canal around the Delta.

Today, water is conveyed from Northern California through Delta channels to massive pumps near Tracy.

The pumps draw water that can be of poor quality and kill millions of fish each year in the process.

 

Many water agencies that rely on those pumps, particularly in the Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley and Southern California, want to build a canal from the Sacramento River near the capitol, around the Delta channels and to the Tracy pumps.

 

While that would reduce fish kills at the pumps, avoid the threat of levee collapses and draw higher quality water, opponents in Contra Costa and elsewhere fear it would result in a more polluted Delta and other environmental problems because less water would flow through the estuary.

 

The task force supports further study of a "dual conveyance" option.

 

This compromise would involve fortifying levees around selected Delta channels in order to secure a water delivery channel while at the same time isolating other channels from the suction created by the pumps. Those channels would, hopefully, prove better habitat for fish. At the same time, a new aqueduct would connect the Sacramento River to the pumps.

 

With two intakes, water managers would be able to maximize water deliveries and minimize environmental harm.#

http://www.contracostatimes.com/search/ci_10729923?IADID=Search-www.contracostatimes.com-www.contracostatimes.com

 

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