A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
December 3, 2008
5. Agencies, Programs, People –
Salton Sea Speedweek on tap
Imperial Valley Press – 12/2/08
By Eric Galvan, staff writer
Ross Wallach, president and owner of RPM Racing Enterprises, says he’s heard all the rumors and talk about the Salton Sea being a dead sea, but this weekend he plans to show how alive it really is.
For the first time since the 1970s, speed boats will take to the sea as they try to break and establish new speed records.
“I’ve heard people talking about the sea, but I’ve been down there and I know there’s plenty of uses for the Salton Sea,” Wallach said. “This weekend we figure on having between 50 and 100 boats and I think we’re going to see a lot of records set.”
Officially called the “2008 Salton Sea Speedweek presented by Centurion Boats,” the event will run Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Salton Sea’s recreation park in the NorthShore area. It will follow rules and guidelines set by the American Power Boat Association and the Union of International Motonautique.
Each participant will run a kilometer, or 5/8 of a mile, on a course set up at the Salton Sea. Wallach said because of the sea’s low level, air density and buoyancy, the Salton Sea is ideal for speed boat racing and for setting speed records.
“There seems to be a resurgence in wanting to do these (kilometer races),” Wallach said. “And the Salton Sea holds the key to setting more records than anywhere else.”
Imperial County Supervisor Gary Wyatt, a past president of the Salton Sea Authority, said there have been many inquiries and many uses of the sea over the last few years for those wanting to recreate in the area.
He said the interest proves the Salton Sea is still a viable source of recreation.
“It’s a resource that many people thought was gone,” he said. “But to others, it isn’t.
“This absolutely shows one of the real values of the sea is recreation for various types of events,” he said. “And it shows the sea is usable and viable right now.”
If this event is successful, Wallach said he has plans to bring actual speed boat races back to the Salton Sea.
In 2009, along with the Salton Sea Speedweek, he said he would like to have the Salton Sea 300, a 300-mile endurance race as part of the American Power Boat Association’s “Triple Crown of Endurance” racing.
If that’s successful, he said in 2010 he’d like to bring back “the grand daddy of all endurance boat races,” the Salton Sea 500, a two-day endurance speedboat event.
“There’s a lot to this and I think the Salton Sea’s got a lot of potential,” he said. “I hope this weekend proves to be the launching ground for all of this.”#
DWR’s California Water News is distributed to California Department of Water Resources management and staff, for information purposes, by the SWR 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.
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
December 3, 2008
4. Water Quality –
Column:
Recycled drinking water gives new meaning to bottoms up!
The San Francisco Examiner – 12/2/08
Bu Vicki Godal, Examiner staff
As Californians, we know that we live in a desert magically transformed into an oasis via billions of gallons of water over the last hundred years, right? So, as we continue to use our water for those emerald green lawns and golf courses, tropical flower gardens and swimming pools, do you ever wonder if you should be worried about running out of water? After all, according to the United Nations, today, a billion people worldwide don't have clean drinking water. Here in the southwestern United States, drought has left the ColoradoRiver Basin (where we get our water here in LA) nearly half empty. By 2025, the UN predicts that 2/3 of the world population could face serious water shortages. But there is a workable and quite sustainable alternative water source that could prove to be at least part of the solution to our thirsty state, purified potty water.
Indirect potable reuse is a process that purifies waste water to recharge reservoirs. Also known as "toilet to tap" or " sewer to sink", El Paso, Texas and Fairfax County, Virginia are already reusing waste water incorporating this process. Miami-DadeCounty has earmarked $350 million dollars to begin waste water to drinking water recycling operations in 2013. Although LA and San Diego have been considering the process for several years, OrangeCounty has clearly emerged as the Southern California leader in the development of waste water to drinking water purification.
Since 1976, the Orange County Water Department through its Water Factory 21 Direct Injection Project, has been injecting highly treated recycled water into the aquifer to prevent salt water intrusion, while augmenting the potable ground water supply. The primary usage of this water was non-consumable for use in irrigation, toilet flushing, construction, manufacturing or artificial lakes, for instance. In fact, until recently only Namibia in Africa was actually using the process to create drinking water.
To protect the public health and safety, the US Environmental Protection Agency regulates many aspects of wastewater treatment and drinking water quality. The majority of states in the US have established guidelines for the use of recycled water. In 2004, the EPA developed "Guidelines for Water Reuse," which contains a summary of state requirements and guidelines for the treatment and uses of recycled water. State and Federal regulatory oversight has successfully provided a framework to ensure the safety of the many water recycling projects that have been developed in the United States.
Recycled water can satisfy water demands, as long as it is adequately treated. For human consumption of the water, more treatment is required. Last January, OrangeCounty launched its $490 million water purification process to begin creating drinkable water from waste water. The Orange County Groundwater Replenishment Project uses reclaimed wastewater to recharge the drinking water aquifer with a more advanced treatment of wastewater using a three prong water purification process which includes micro-filtration, reverse osmosis, ultraviolet light and hydrogen peroxide that treat the water to very high levels that meet state and federal drinking water standards before the highly treated water is returned to the groundwater basin. In the basin, the treated water blends with other waters and is buffered with natural minerals before it enters the local drinking water supply.
The water produced out of the GWR System is not similar to other recycled water. Because the treated water meets and exceeds all federal and California state drinking water standards, it is the highest quality water of all sources in OrangeCounty. The water has already been treated twice by the Orange County Sanitation District before it hits the Groundwater Replenishment process. Other water systems in this country don't treat wastewater to this high level of quality. However, we Southern Californians are resistant.
In 2000, Los Angeles voted down a $55 million dollar project designed to create drinking water using a similar process. San Diego did a survey last year which showed that the majority of its citizens are not into drinking water that has had human fecal matter floating in it. San Diego's citizens also rejected a pilot program last November to use recycled water to augment their city's drinking water. A similar plan failed there in 1999 as well.
So even in the face of the most critical water crisis this state has ever faced, Southern Californians are still reluctant to drink purified potty water. Perhaps we just haven't gotten thirsty enough...yet.#
DWR’s California Water News is distributed to California Department of Water Resources management and staff, for information purposes, by the SWR 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.
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
December 3, 2008
3. Watersheds –
Comments on Delta plan sought at Friday meeting
Sacramento Bee
Crab trickling in
Eureka Times Standard
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Comments on Delta plan sought at Friday meeting
Sacramento Bee – 12/3/08
By Matt Weiser
The public is invited to comment on the future of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta when a committee of state officials meets Friday.
The Delta Vision Committee is charged with recommending projects and policy to the governor and Legislature to improve the environment and water supply in the estuary between Sacramento and Tracy.
Committee members are four state Cabinet secretaries and the president of the Public Utilities Commission. They're reviewing two years of work by the Delta Vision Task Force, a seven-member panel appointed by the governor.
A draft recommendation adopts many of the task force recommendations, including a new Delta water canal and 100,000 acres of habitat restoration. Its final recommendation must be made by Dec. 31.
Friday's workshop is from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Bay-Delta Room of the JohnE.MossFederalBuilding, 650 Capitol Mall. For information, call (916) 445-5511 or visit www.deltavision.ca.gov.#
Local markets are selling crab, but it's not the deluge the NorthCoast often sees at this time of year.
”Just getting some water boiling now,” said Mr. Fish fishmonger Mark McCullough Tuesday.
The crabs began coming in Monday night, and McCullough was prepared to sell cooked crab Tuesday afternoon. But he wasn't hearing promising reports from fishermen.
Dungeness crab fishermen are seeing scanty catches right from the start of the season. Humboldt Fishermen's Marketing Association President Aaron Newman said there appears to be just a scattering of crabs everywhere, and that those will be mostly tapped out in short order. He expected much of the fleet to pack up within a couple of weeks.
”We've got a sad crab fleet this year,” Newman said.
NorthCoast fishermen went fishing after Oregon crabbers negotiated a price of $1.60 per pound. While Oregon fishermen are bound to that price for a week, California fishermen are not, and the price they're paid is expected to go up quickly.
West Coast markets will likely have the fresh crab they need this season, said Bill Carvalho with Wild Planet Foods, which bought Carvalho Fisheries. But there will be less frozen crab available, he said, which may happen to correspond with lower national demand for the specialty food.
The fishing and fish buying industries, however, depend on volume to cover overhead costs, Carvalho said, and there is unlikely to be much volume this year.
The songs that whales and dolphins use to communicate, orient themselves and find mates are being drowned out by human-made noises in the world's oceans, U.N. officials and environmental groups said Wednesday.
That sound pollution — everything from increasing commercial shipping and seismic surveys to a new generation of military sonar — is not only confounding the mammals, it also is further threatening the survival of these endangered animals.
Studies show that these cetaceans, which once communicated over thousands of miles (kilometers) to forage and mate, are losing touch with each other, the experts said on the sidelines of a U.N. wildlife conference in Rome.
"Call it a cocktail-party effect," said Mark Simmonds, director of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, a Britain-based NGO. "You have to speak louder and louder until no one can hear each other anymore."
An indirect source of noise pollution may also be coming from climate change, which is altering the chemistry of the oceans and making sound travel farther through sea water, the experts said.
Representatives of more than 100 governments are gathered in Rome for a meeting of the U.N.-backed Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals.
The agenda of the conference, which ends Friday, includes ways to increase protection for endangered species, including measures to mitigate underwater noise.
Environmental groups also are increasingly finding cases of beached whales and dolphins that can be linked to sound pollution, Simmonds said.
Marine mammals are turning up on the world's beaches with tissue damage similar to that found in divers suffering from decompression sickness. The condition, known as the bends, causes gas bubbles to form in the bloodstream upon surfacing too quickly.
Scientists say the use of military sonar or seismic testing may have scared the animals into diving and surfacing beyond their physical limits, Simmonds said.
Several species of cetaceans are already listed as endangered or critically endangered from other causes. But sound pollution is now also being increasingly recognized as a serious factor, the experts said.
The sound of a seismic test, used to locate hydrocarbons beneath the seabed, can spread 1,800 miles (3,000 kilometers) under water, said Veronica Frank, an official with the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
A study by her group found that the blue whale, which used to communicate across entire oceans, has lost 90 percent of its range over the last 40 years.
Other research suggests that rising levels of carbon dioxide are increasing the acidity of the Earth's oceans, making sound travel farther through sea water.
The study by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in the United States shows the changes may mean some sound frequencies are traveling 10 percent further than a few centuries ago. That could increase to 70 percent by 2050 if greenhouse gases are not cut.
"This is a new, strange and unwanted development," Simmonds said. "It shows how the degradation of the environment is all linked."
However, governments seem ready to take action, said Nick Nutall, a spokesman for the U.N. Environment Program, which administers the convention being discussed in Rome. The conference is discussing a resolution that would oblige countries to reduce sound pollution, he said.
Measures suggested include rerouting shipping and installing quieter engines as well as cutting speed and banning tests and sonar use in areas known to be inhabited by the endangered animals.#
DWR’s California Water News is distributed to California Department of Water Resources management and staff, for information purposes, by the SWR 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.
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
December 3, 2008
2. Supply –
Businesses, watchdogs clash on water policies
San Francisco Chronicle
Deeper wells defy drought
As state dries up, company goes extra 40 feet for water
Merced Sun Star
Drought emerging as water panel topic
ChicoEnterprise Record
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Businesses, watchdogs clash on water policies
San Francisco Chronicle – 12/3/08
By Kelly Zito, staff writer
What do a computer company, an office chair manufacturer and a soft drink maker have in common?
Aside from dealing with the economic slump, all three firms - IBM, Steelcase and Coca-Cola - use vast amounts of water each year. And each is trying to learn to use less.
This week, leaders at some of the world's largest corporations are gathering in San Francisco to talk about dwindling freshwater supplies, gray-water recycling technologies and the risks of rising water costs. Among the attendees are Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, MillerCoors, Nestle Waters, Dean Foods, Cadbury, Cisco and Adobe.
"Water is the most critical ingredient for beverages we make around the world," said Lisa Manley, director of environmental communications for Coca-Cola. "But in doing business in 200 countries, we're also a local business. We know we can only be as sustainable as the communities where we're working because water is the No. 1 resource people need for health and economic prosperity."
Manley said the soda company is working on a global program that would return all of the 300 billion liters of water it uses each year back to local communities and the environment. But water watchdog groups compare such statements to greenwashing - the term used to describe companies that tout the eco-friendliness of products and services that may be quite the opposite.
"This constitutes 'bluewashing' when you get down to it," said Mark Schlosberg, spokesman for Food and Water Watch, a consumer advocacy group. "We welcome efforts to increase sustainable water use, but such discussions can't be led by the companies that are some of the biggest water abusers in the world."
Today, the group plans a news conference and a series of sidewalk skits that parody big corporations' use of a resource that is widely described as "the next oil."
The location for the protest and a two-day conference on water that drew not only big industry but government, nonprofits and the scientific community could not be more appropriate. With a continuing drought, crumbling water infrastructure, dying fish populations and hard questions about how water is divvied up, California is home to some of thorniest water supply dilemmas in the nation.
Although the food and beverage industry generally has not been an overwhelming part of the water debate in the state, pockets of controversy exist.
The SiskiyouCounty town of McCloud, for example, is embroiled in a bitter battle with Nestle Waters after the company several years ago proposed a 1 million-square-foot bottled-water facility that would have siphoned about 1,250 gallons per minute from tributaries feeding into the McCloudRiver. According to published reports, the company would have paid about $350,000 to the local water district for a 100-year contract.
After protracted community resistance forced Nestle Water to pull out of the contract this summer, the company is asking the McCloud Community Services District to consider a scaled-down version of the plan that would pull about 600 gallons per minute from the waterways.
Environmentalists still question the impacts the project would have on the pristine landscape and an important feeder river to the nearby Shasta reservoir. But some local authorities see their rich water supply as a way to create jobs - an alluring prospect for a former lumber town whose economy relies mostly on tourism.
"There are people who say don't touch the water and leave the springs pristine," said Beth Steele, general manager for the services district. "While I understand the emotional reasons for that, it's not realistic in the state of California."#
As state dries up, company goes extra 40 feet for water
Merced Sun Star – 12/3/08
By Jonah Owen Lamb
Armando Blas gripped a 3-foot-long mud-covered metal drill bit as a long drill shaft spun into place from above. The tall rig holding the shaft stood 42 feet above the ground from the back of a truck whose engine was running.
On Tuesday afternoon the rig groaned away on a cold, empty lot just north of Merced.
Beside the rig, two muddy trenches filled with water. As the drill sunk deeper into the ground, a pump sucked up the muddy liquid from the trench and shot it back down the drill hole to lubricate the two-day well-drilling process.
After pushing down past mud and rock and sand, the well will tap 300 feet below the Valley floor. At that depth it won't catch any of the chemical runoff that floats at the top of the water table, said Joe Silveira as he watched Blas at work.
In the midst of a drought, with water tables continuing to drop and farms and cities with their never-ending thirst for water, Silveira's Atwater-based Quality Well Drillers has been working overtime to drill ever-deeper holes in the soil of the Central Valley.
For Silveira's 12-man crew and its five rigs, this has been a nonstop year. So far, they've drilled about 300 wells, said Silveira. Until Thanksgiving, he employed one agricultural well driller going 24 hours a day.
"We've been really busy the last 15 years," said Silveira. "Now, because of the drought, we're doing about 30 percent more than usual."
His company's good fortune has come from a sinking water table and a long dry spell.
With a three-year drought, the already declining levels of the water table haven't been replenished.
But for as far back as Silveira can remember, the groundwater has been dropping in the Valley.
"Around Atwater we've seen drops of 40 feet in the water level," said Silveira as he leaned against his truck watching the drill dig into the soil.
According to the state's Department of Water Resources' California Ground Water Bulletin, Merced's groundwater levels have sunk 30 feet since 1970.
The story is similar across much of the Valley. With the drought getting worse, the only place to get water is from the ground.
Merced Irrigation District's general manager, Dan Pope, said it has had to increase pumping with reservoir levels almost 50 percent below average. This growing season they ran 170 pumps. Typically, they have 40 or 50 pumps running.
"This thing's going to get really serious if we don't get some snow and some rain soon," said Silveira.
Silveira is no stranger to drought. He first got into drilling during the 1976-77 drought, the worst in recent history. A couple of his friends were working on rigs at the time, and he got a job. Eventually, he bought some rigs of his own and has been sinking holes ever since.
Besides the deeper depths, wells are pretty much the same. After drilling down beneath the water table and into sand, a 5-inch PVC pipe is placed down the hole. The perforated pipe is encircled in small rounded beach stones from Monterey that filter the water. Finally, crews cap the well with clay that prevents runoff from going down the hole.
"If it's done properly they don't need another filtration system," said Silveira.
But with a sinking aquifer and prolonged drought, one day there may be no water to filter.#
OROVILLE — Drought-related topics are beginning to be the norm at meetings of the county's Water Commission.
With the state's water picture looking more and more bleak, the county's water staff continues to monitor groundwater conditions, which are predictably dropping.
In addition to the threat of wells going dry, the county is increasingly on alert that the state will be looking at Northern California to fill in the state's water gaps.
Vickie Newlin, assistant director of Butte County's Department of Water and Resource Conservation, said the county has been working with the state Department of Water Resources on the 2009 Drought Water Bank, which is looking for water transfers through crop idling and using groundwater instead of surface water.
ButteCounty has Chapter 33, which is a groundwater ordinance that prohibits transfer of groundwater outside the county and prohibits transferring surface water and using groundwater, unless a permit is granted.
However, there are more factors involved.
"The projections for 2009 are pretty gloomy," Newlin said. "We don't know what will happen."
In Butte, and other counties, many agricultural water users receive water through settlement contracts. These users have water rights that date back before Oroville Dam was built. While these water rights are generally more stable than others, they too can be cut back if water is scarce. Many of those contracts allow for a cutback of up to 50 percent in a dry year, and up to 100 percent decrease over two years.
Those cutbacks would not come with a water payment, Newlin explained.
Additionally, those water users would likely seek groundwater.
"We need to start thinking about how we could help people through that," Newlin said.
For example, if the drought intensifies, neighbors may need to organize to talk to one another so that everyone does not start pumping groundwater at the same time, Newlin said.
Water Commissioner David Skinner said he recently talked with three groundwater users who use water for orchards and they said they already noted water pressure was down in August.
"It seems we're in a precarious situation if we don't get rain," Skinner said.
He said people should be aware that things could get very bad next June and July if conditions continue.
Butte has been working with the counties of Colusa, Glenn, and Tehama on regional water planning, and a report is due out today on talks.
New development, both agricultural and residential, continue to put pressure on the existing water supplies, county water staff explained. Also, as drought intensifies, so have legal challenges to water delivery due to environmental concerns.
Kristen McKillop, manager of water program development, gave a report on groundwater levels.
Several areas are showing groundwater levels similar to the early 1990s when wells began to go dry, prompting the passage of the county's Chapter 33, groundwater protection ordinance, also known as Measure G.
With those low groundwater reports, there will be much more discussion needed. #
DWR’s California Water News is distributed to California Department of Water Resources management and staff, for information purposes, by the SWR 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.
A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment
December 3, 2008
1.Top Items -
Long-delayed Auburn Dam hits final hurdle
Associated Press
Auburn dam officially dies as board yanks water rights
Sacramento Bee
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Long-delayed Auburn Dam hits final hurdle
Associated Press – 12/3/08
Samantha Young, AP
(12-03) 04:00 PST Sacramento -- A California board on Tuesday revoked federal water claims that were critical to building a long-stalled dam northeast of Sacramento, effectively ending the project.
The unanimous vote by the State Water Resources Control Board comes more than four decades after Congress authorized the Auburn Dam to control flooding along the AmericanRiver, which descends from the mountains ringing Lake Tahoe to Sacramento.
Board members said the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation had not done its job.
The state granted water rights to the bureau so it could fill the future reservoir but did so with conditions. The federal government had to complete the dam by December 1975 and start using the water 25 years later.
Work on the Auburn Dam stopped after a 1975 earthquake led to the discovery of a fault beneath the site, in the Sierra foothills about 30 miles northeast of Sacramento. Engineers redesigned the dam and raised the construction cost to more than $1 billion, a price that gave Congress another reason to delay action.
Scars remain where crews scraped away earth and trees on either side of the AmericanRiver canyon to make way for the dam. The project generated intense opposition after it was proposed, in part because the scenic canyon it would have flooded is popular for rafting, fishing and swimming.
"The chances of this project coming back are possible, but the obstacles they would have to jump over would be huge," said Paul Tebbel, executive director of Friends of the River, which opposes the dam. "Auburn Dam as we know it, we don't believe is going to resurface anytime soon."
Congress authorized the Auburn Dam in 1965 as part of the Central Valley Project, a network of 22 dams and canals that funnel subsidized water to farmers.
Daniel Merkley, director of water resources at the California Farm Bureau Federation, argued that the state needs more dams to meet its growing population and the changes projected from a warming climate.#
Auburn dam officially dies as board yanks water rights
Sacramento Bee – 12/3/08
By Chris Bowman
The long-lived federal Auburn dam proposal is officially dead.
The state water board drove the last nail into the coffin Tuesday, unanimously revoking the water rights it dedicated to the AmericanRiver project nearly 40 years ago.
"This is a death certificate," board spokesman William Rukeyser said following the 5-0 vote.
Under California's use-it-or-lose-it water laws, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation had to put its rights to AmericanRiver water to "beneficial use," as it had proposed with a 690-foot-high dam and a 68-mile canal to San JoaquinCounty.
But the bureau halted construction more than 30 years ago because of safety concerns following a 5.7-magnitude earthquake 50 miles north of Auburn. Environmental concerns and ballooning costs have delayed the project ever since, leaving the river's deep north fork canyon heavily scarred but not blocked.
"You have to use water with due diligence and due faith, and that hasn't been followed here," water board member Arthur Baggett said before casting his vote to rescind the bureau's rights to 2.5 million acre-feet of water a year. An acre-foot of water covers 1 acre a foot deep, enough to supply an average family of five for a year.
That's by far the largest amount of revoked water rights in memory, board officials said.
The revocation opens the door to other applicants for those AmericanRiver water rights. The city of Sacramento and San JoaquinCounty already have filed.
The State Water Resources Control Board has rarely taken back water rights. It did so Tuesday only after 37 years had passed with no dam construction in sight.
"Without a doubt, the water board was patient – 37 years patient," Rukeyser said.
The bureau's proposal surfaced in President Harry Truman's administration, won congressional authorization in 1965, was redesigned after the 1975 quake and slowly petered out as cost estimates skyrocketed and the values of an unimpeded north fork of the American River rose.
The bureau had planned to store up to 5 million acre-feet for flood control, power generation, recreation and farming and urban consumption.
The water board many times had granted extensions to the bureau, which operates a network of aqueducts and giant dams including Shasta, Folsom and Friant near Fresno.
In 2001, the board said it could not consider another extension unless the bureau documented the dam's environmental effects on the AmericanRiver drainage and downstream through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where massive water pumping to cities and farms south and other pressures have decimated fish populations. But the environmental studies never came.
"The bureau didn't follow through. So the water board had no choice but to move to revoke the water rights," said Bill Jennings, executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, which formally protested the extension along with the local Friends of the River, ProtectAmericanRiverCanyons and the Planning and Conservation League.
The bureau made no comment at Tuesday's water rights hearing in Sacramento. The agency had made its case for an extension at a board hearing in July.
The agency had argued that it should retain the water rights until Congress definitively decides whether to pursue or scrap the Auburn proposal it authorized in 1965.
"We see it as their decision," said Lynnette Wirth, a bureau spokeswoman in Sacramento.
A spokeswoman for Rep. Dan Lungren, R-GoldRiver, and representatives of the California Farm Bureau spoke Tuesday against revocation, saying Congress might view the dam proposal more favorably in light of projected water shortages from global warming, population growth and stronger environmental protections.
Rukeyser of the state water board said the bureau is welcome to reapply for water rights should Congress have a change of heart. But the bureau doesn't see that happening anytime soon.
"We don't see on our plate of key issues trying to revitalize Auburn dam," Wirth said.
The finale of Auburn dam came as Rep. John Doolittle, R-Rocklin, leaves Congress, where he had been a tireless proponent of the project.
The prospect of the dam surfaced in the race to be Doolittle's replacement.
Republican candidate Tom McClintock said an Auburn dam "could produce the cheapest electricity on the planet." Democratic hopeful Charlie Brown said the $10 billion-plus project cost far exceeds potential energy benefits. #
DWR’s California Water News is distributed to California Department of Water Resources management and staff, for information purposes, by the SWR 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.
