Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
November 24, 2008
5. Agencies, Programs, People –
Dry Land’s Wet Fate
12
What if water rules change?
Ag Weekly
Critics blast report on state regulation of groundwater use
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rising Tide in
It’s not the extra few feet of water that make sea level rise so dangerous. It’s the extra few feet during a storm during El Niño during high tide, say researchers
Dry Land’s Wet Fate
12
By Janine Zúñiga
The 88-year-old widow fears it's only a matter of time before her
“I have papers that say we own this land, but it's all disappeared,” Sewall said.
Sewall is one of a dozen homeowners living along
Three of those property owners are taking legal action. They blame the erosion on dredging that was done to deepen the channel and on waves from the Navy's aircraft carriers that dock nearby. The Navy, however, is expected to release an environmental report next month that absolves it of any responsibility for the erosion.
Sewall and two neighbors are suing the Army Corps, the San Diego Unified Port District and the Navy for help in protecting their properties. They point to a 2005 Army Corps study, still in draft form, which states that within 15 to 25 years, about 12 homes could be lost or be too hazardous to occupy.
The neighbors say the erosion is caused by three efforts between 1998 and 2005 to deepen the bay by dredging the channel, and Navy carriers that measure more than 1,000 feet long, the size of nearly three football fields. The last dredging in 2005 removed 550,000 cubic yards of sediment and lowered the channel depth to 42 feet from 40 feet in an area where the carriers turn near the
The lawsuit alleges that the dredgings made the steep slopes of the channel even steeper, though the studies do not name dredging as a cause of the erosion.
The property owners, who began to notice the erosion over the past several years, want the agencies to “construct appropriate protective measures” to prevent the loss of their homes or provide compensation for damage to their properties and for the loss of their homes.
The studies
Both studies by the Army Corps of Engineers looked at 35 properties on 2,800 feet of land on
Lt. Col. Burke Large, assistant district counsel for the Army Corps, would not comment on the lawsuit because it is pending.
The studies suggest four ways to protect the 12 homes most at risk. The most expensive, at $3.3 million, includes building a 320-foot-long, 8½-foot-tall protective stone structure reinforced with filter fabric and sand.
Navy officials deny that the carriers and dredging caused the problems, and are considering putting a third carrier, the Carl Vinson, at the base in 2010. The Navy agreed, though, to take a look at erosion in its analysis of the impact of a third carrier making its home at North Island Naval Air Station.
Navy analysis
The Navy's draft analysis, which will be added to a 1999 environmental impact statement, says the shoreline is in continuous change and that the erosion is caused by natural and historical conditions.
Among those conditions are tides moving rapidly through a narrow passage between
Additionally, the Navy report says that much of
The property owners' attorney, Richard Opper, said he knows of only one fill project that occurred in the
The Navy's environmental study will contain extensive analysis on the erosion, said a Lt. Kellie Randall, a Navy Region Southwest spokeswoman.
Leslie FitzGerald, the deputy port attorney handling the case, said the port was not involved with the dredgings except to help pay some of the costs. She said neither the port nor the Army Corps is responsible for the erosion.
“They have provided no proof of their claims and no proof that the Army Corps (dredging) projects undermined their properties,” FitzGerald said.
Howard Chang, an engineering consultant specializing in erosion, said waves, tidal motion, deep-water troughs, dredging and even wind can cause erosion.
“All of these are factors,” said Chang, who is not aware of the details of the erosion on
Speaking out
Leo Beus, who lives two doors down from Sewall and is part of the lawsuit, said the soil placed underneath rocks and a special filter fabric he put in to protect his property have been steadily washed away, leaving a 5-foot-deep hole under unstable rocks.
“I won't let my kids or grandkids go out there,” Beus said.
Port and Army Corps officials visited Beus' property in 2005 and acknowledged the problem, he said. They encouraged him to ask the Army Corps for an emergency permit to build a barrier to protect his home. He made the request, but it was denied.
Beus said he was later told by Army Corps officials that he needed an environmental study before he could put in a barrier. Estimates on the study's cost were more than $1 million, he said.
“It's really frustrating,” Beus said. “The erosion is now starting underneath my swimming pool. It will eventually crack. It's not going to last very long. Pool people have advised me to drain the pool, but then I have a hole in my backyard.”
Opper said he hopes that by next year, everyone will have agreed to fix the problem.
“The answer might be a sea wall,” Opper said. “Let's get one put in so these homeowners don't have to give up their backyards and lose their homes.”
Meanwhile, Sewall feels as if she's walking a fine line. Her husband, Richard Sewall, a retired Navy captain, died in March. She fears upsetting longtime Navy friends, but she feels abandoned by the government.
“We want to be friendly and work with the Navy, but feel they haven't been fair,” Sewall said. “We're getting desperate now.” #
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20081123-9999-1m23erode.html
What if water rules change?
Ag Weekly – 11/22/08
By Cindy Snyder, Ag Weekly correspondent
Take the shareholders in the Stockton East Water District. The district is located in a part of
| |
In the 1970s, the Bureau of Reclamation built a dam on the
So Stockton East sold bonds and assessed everyone from irrigators to homeowners to raise the $65 million needed to build the 25 mile-long conveyance system that included tunneling through the mountains.
The BuRec contracts were signed in 1983, the canal system was completed in 1992, the same year Congress redirected BuRec to use 800,000 acre-feet of the yield of the reservoir for fish restoration. As soon as Stockton East finished building the canal system, it asked for 10,000 acre-feet of water and was denied.
And that raises a couple of questions: What does the law mean when contractors have contracts to receive water from a federal Bureau of Reclamation project but the federal government decides to use the water for a different purpose? If the government decides to use the water for fish restoration is that a takings, a breach of contract or a really bad deal?
| |
| |
“Unfortunately, many of you in this room may face this situation,” Spaletta told water managers and water-law attorneys during the Idaho Water Users Association’s annual fall water law seminar in Boise on Nov. 7.
Stockton East Water District has been trying to find answer since 1993 after the district was told that a minimum reservoir level of 1.4 million acre-feet was needed to provide the 800,000 acre-feet of water for fish and wildlife.
Essentially, Spaletta said, the federal government said, “We are never going to give you all your water.”
Even in wet years, when the dam is operating under flood-release guidelines, Stockton East has never received more than the 90,000 acre-feet cap established by the government. Because the district has never been able to put all of the water to beneficial use, there is now questions about whether it still has a valid claim to all of the water.
The other entity that entered into a contract with BuRec to receive water from the dam was a municipal water district that has been forced to mitigate, to buy water from other sources, to get the needed water.
So Stockton East filed a lawsuit claiming that BuRec was in a breach of contract by not supplying all the water specified in the contract and another claiming that the deficit represented a constitutional takings.
These are two separate issues, so the decision was made to try the breach of contract case first, and then the takings claim.
The district lost its initial breach of contract case and has filed an appeal. Spaletta expects to know the outcome of the appeal within six months. The central question, she believes, has ramifications for irrigation districts and canal companies that rely on federal projects.
“When the districts entered into those contracts, did they assume all the risk of the government changing their priorities or did the contract protect them?” she asked.
She also briefly mentioned the Klamath Irrigation District in
So far, the courts seem to be finding the government is not in breach of contract if the government decides to use the water for another purpose.
However, Spaletta was quick to point out there are no consistencies between the three cases she discussed. The third involve a municipal water district that was told to build a fish ladder and then sued for a takings because it can no longer use all the water it is entitled to.
The best advice she can give to water districts and canal companies is to know their water rights.
“A lot of people don’t understand all the ways their water right is limited,” Spaletta said. “We have had success when you understand your limits and we can say, ‘Government, you’ve gone beyond this and you owe me money.’”#
http://www.agweekly.com/articles/2008/11/22/news/ag_news/news03.txt
Critics blast report on state regulation of groundwater use
By
The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office in October issued a report recommending lawmakers approve a water rights system for groundwater, as the state already has for water diverted from rivers or streams.
Most landowners can draw groundwater without such approvals or permits.
The county's Advisory Water Commission on Wednesday voted to recommend county supervisors oppose the proposal and keep close watch for any legislation that might result from the report.
"Tell (the state) to stay out of it,"
The report is indeed intended to inform legislators, but it doesn't say outright that the state should dictate exactly how much water an individual landowner can take.
"You'll see, it's pretty vague," said Catherine Freeman, a water analyst with the LAO. "The idea is not to say, 'You have to go this route to regulate groundwater.' We know there are a lot of folks doing a great job locally. We don't discount that."
But the report says relying on groundwater as a significant future source may be hampered by the fact that there are no state rules governing its use. Groundwater management at the local level may not take into account the needs of the state, the report says.
Every other western state except
Mel Lytle, water resources coordinator for the county, called the report a "new assault" on water rights.
"It's potentially a huge concern, not only for irrigation districts but also for any cities that rely on groundwater," he said.
Water commissioners were also unhappy with the LAO's recommended changes to surface water rights. The group's report says that the "use it or lose it" policy attached to water rights on rivers or streams can foster waste.
The report recommends that water rights for agriculture, for example, might in the future cover only the amount of water needed to grow a given crop.#
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081123/A_NEWS/811230315/-1/rss14
The Rising Tide in
It’s not the extra few feet of water that make sea level rise so dangerous. It’s the extra few feet during a storm during El Niño during high tide, say researchers
By Robert Monroe
UC California
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Robert Monroe is an award-winning journalist and senior science writer at UCSD's Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Scripps is one of the oldest, largest, and most important centers for ocean and earth science research, education, and public service in the world. Research at Scripps encompasses physical, chemical, biological, geological, and geophysical studies of the oceans and earth.
In "
But in the warming world of the 21st Century, waves could be riding oceans that will rise anywhere from 0.5 meters (19 inches) to 1.4 meters (55 inches), and researchers believe there's a good chance they will stir stronger feelings than melancholia.
Several scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego are finding that sea level rise will have different consequences in different places but that they will be profound on virtually all coastlines. Land in some areas of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the
On the West Coast, with its different topography and different climate regimes, problems will likely play out differently. The scientists' most recent conclusions, even when conservative scenarios are involved, suggest that coastal development, popular beaches, vital estuaries, and even California's supply of fresh water could be severely impacted by a combination of natural and human-made forces.
Scripps climate scientists often consider changes in average conditions over many years but, in this case, it's the extremes that have them worried. A global sea level rise that makes gentle summer surf lap at a beachgoer's knees rather than his or her ankles is one thing. But when coupled with energetic winter El Nino-fueled storms and high tides, elevated water levels would have dramatic consequences.
The result could transform the appearance of the beaches at the heart of
"As sea level goes up, some beaches are going to shrink," said Scripps oceanographer Peter Bromirski. "Some will probably disappear."
Sea level has been trending upward for millennia. For the last 6,000 years, it is estimated that global sea levels have rising an average of five centimeters (2 inches) per century. Before that, between 18,000 and 6,000 years ago, the seas rose a full 120 meters (400 feet). Step by step, they bit into rocky coastlines like California's by smashing cliffs, creating beaches with the debris, rising a bit more, and repeating the process over and over again.
Humans are speeding up the pace of that assault. The United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that sea level rose, on average, 1.7 millimeters (0.07 inches) per year over the entire 20th Century. But recent estimates from satellite observations find a marked increase, at 3.1 millimeters (0.12 inches) per year since 1993.
The oceans are rising because the warming ocean water increases in volume and because water is being added from melting glaciers and land-based ice sheets. The complex difficult-to-predict contribution of the latter is such a matter of controversy that the recent IPCC Fourth Assessment report didn't factor glacial melt into its sea level rise estimates. Today there is quite broad-based opinion that the IPCC estimates are considerably lower than the higher range of possible sea level rise. Some individuals, pointing to the quantity of water frozen in Greenland and
"That's fine," said Scripps climate researcher Dan Cayan, who is leading an analysis of climate change scenarios for the state of
Recent news footage of overtopped levees makes it easy to envision what two meters' difference means to low-lying cities like
In contrast to the beaches of the East Coast, many of which are covered with vast expanses of sand,
In so doing, nature's two primary sources of beach replenishment have been muted in a process known as passive erosion. Managers have compensated through artificial beach replenishment projects but at a costs that approach $10 per cubic yard. Since usually millions of cubic yards of sand need to be moved, there are monetary limits to what they can reasonably accomplish.
Reinhard Flick, who received his doctorate in oceanography from Scripps in 1978, needs only to look out his office window to watch the losing battle of beaches unfold. During his student days, he used to play volleyball on stretches of sand that are now underwater except during low tide. Rocks buried under several feet of sand four decades ago are now exposed for large parts of the year.
The staff oceanographer for the California Department of Boating and Waterways, Flick said that seawalls causing passive erosion will likely combine with sea level rise to doom some
If sea levels rise substantially, when a large storm coincides with a high tide during an El Nino event, there could be widespread inundation along the
The threat resonates with state officials, who have tasked Scripps and other institutions with creating and updating sea level rise scenarios.
"There's no clear path forward with sea level rise," said Tony Brunello, deputy secretary for climate change and energy at the California Resources Agency, a key Scripps partner in developing the state's response to manifestations of global warming. "You typically want to work with one number (but) what we want people to do is work with the whole range of estimates."
Cayan and other Scripps researchers who are collaborating to study sea level rise emphasize that there remains a great deal of uncertainty in the creation of estimates for the coming century. The range of rise estimated by Cayan is based on scenarios of global air temperatures over the next 100 years, which range from about 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) to about 6 degrees C (10 degrees F). By 2100, global sea level rise reaching a half-meter seems likely, and if the higher rates of potential warming occur it could rise by more than one meter. The potential cost of any government project or policy change puts a high premium on narrowing this range. As O'Neel and his co-authors observed in their paper, the cost of raising
"These are very broad-brush preliminary kinds of studies right now, but you have to start somewhere," said Scripps coastal oceanographer Bob Guza.
Flick said it will be essential for scientists to be able to study the effects of the next El Nino so they can begin to understand not just where damage will happen on the
"We need to be geared up to quantify what beach changes are," said Flick. "We have to do an even better job of studying wave forces and wave climate."
If there's any good news for
"I'm a surfer. I think that's horrible," he said.#
http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2008/11/the_rising_tide.html
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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
No comments:
Post a Comment