[Water_news] 5. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: AGENCIES, PROGRAMS, PEOPLE - 2/23/09

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

February 23, 2009

 

5. Agencies, Programs, People –

 

 

Details of canal emerge

Stockton Record

 

How a drought year changed the course of California history

Santa Rosa Press Democrat

 

An unsure insure

Confused at why it's that way? So are the people who live there

Stockton Record

 

Raise that (desalinated) glass of water and drink up!

Orange County Register

 

Opinion:

SoCal beast awakens

Marysville Appeal Democrat

 

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Details of canal emerge

Stockton Record – 2/23/09

By Alex Breitler, staff writer

 

Piece by piece, details are emerging about a peripheral canal that could skirt water around, rather than through, the Delta.

 

While officials planning for the estuary's future say no definite decisions have been made, documents under review as part of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan call for a relatively large canal that would divert anywhere from zero to two-thirds of Sacramento River flows depending on the time of year, under one scenario.

 

Officials are also leaning toward wrapping the canal around the east side of the Delta, rather than the west side, meaning it will likely cut through farmland in west San Joaquin County.

 

A new public comment period has opened and a series of meetings will be held around the state, including in Stockton on March 24.

 

"The good news is it's becoming clearer. The bad news is it's becoming clearer," retired County Counsel Terry Dermody told San Joaquin County water commissioners last week. Dermody is watching Delta issues for the county.

 

The conservation plan is a complex mesh of habitat restoration, water supply and environmental goals that would ultimately give water contractors from the Bay Area, the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California legal authority to continue diverting water.

 

It's widely agreed that the status quo - sucking Sacramento River water through the Delta to the state and federal pumps near Tracy - isn't working. Smelt populations are crashing, and water exports have been cut.

 

In theory, a canal would reduce the number of fish killed at the pumps and secure much of the state's water supply should vulnerable levees fail. Opponents say that siphoning off the Sacramento River will turn the Delta into a swamp and would add no actual water to the system.

 

"The decision (to build a canal) was made before this whole thing started, in my opinion," said Stockton attorney Dante Nomellini, steadfast canal foe.

Here's what we know, and don't, about the proposed canal:

 

» The size. A Feb. 10 report by a Bay Delta Conservaion Plan committee says a canal that can carry 15,000 cubic feet per second is the best choice. For perspective, that's enough water to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool in about six seconds; it's also roughly the maximum amount of water that can be exported from the pumps near Tracy.

 

A large canal allows for what officials call the "big gulp/small sip" strategy. That is, when the Sacramento River is bulging with water, they can take a big gulp; when it's a relative trickle, they can take a small sip.

 

The original peripheral canal, defeated by voters, would have carried up to 21,000 cubic feet per second with the intention that about 6,000 cubic feet per second be released back into the Delta, Nomellini said. Either way, he said, the canal will be little more than a dry ditch if the government respects Delta and upstream water rights.

 

» The straw. Where will the canal tap into the Sacramento River? Water may be diverted from five locations, from Freeport in the north to an area near the Delta Cross Channel south of Hood, a January report says. Altogether, those five diversions would account for the 15,000 cubic feet per second maximum.

 

» The route. A canal has been studied for either the west or east side of the Delta, but draft reports say the east alignment is most likely, and likely cheaper.

Exactly what path the canal will take is unclear. The state Department of Water Resources is surveying land in the Delta for that purpose.

Karla Nemeth, a spokeswoman for the conservation plan process, said public comments will help officials determine a number of alternatives outlining what works best for people, fish and water quality.

 

"We're looking at a lot of information, and a canal is part of that," she said.#

http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090223/A_NEWS/902230310/-1/RSS02

 

How a drought year changed the course of California history

Santa Rosa Press Democrat – 2/22/09

By Gaye Lebaron

 

Several years before the Mexican War, before the discovery of gold, before California became a state, Lt. Charles Wilkes of the United States Navy, one of the more interesting characters in the dramas of early California, sailed into San Francisco Bay to assess the prospects of the Pacific Coast for the U.S. government.

He was astonishingly unimpressed.

 

There was no land suitable for agriculture anywhere around the pueblo of Sonoma, he wrote in his report. And the Sacramento Valley was no more than a "barren wasteland."

 

Wilkes, you see, had the bad luck to arrive in California in the year 1841, which was a drought year in this area of such significant proportions as to change the course of history.

 

I raise this issue now because it looks like the course of history may wobble, or at least bend a bit, in subsequent months. We've had rain, but the experts tell us that 2009, like 1841 and a dozen or more years since, will be recorded as another drought year.

 

It was also a pivotal year for Mexican California, with not only the United States but France, Great Britain and the last of the Russian occupiers poking around, taking notes to help their governments decide whether -- or when -- to make their move.

 

So there were a number of trustworthy sources (not including Wilkes) to attest to the effect of the rainless months on the land.

It was the year that John Bidwell arrived in California with a band of settlers nominally captained by John Bartleson, the first wagon train to cross the Sierra into California.

 

Bidwell is an excellent source for drought information. He was highly literate and, at 22, the de facto leader of the group of 69 men who struggled down from the mountains, over what we know as Sonora Pass, where they had abandoned their wagons, to John Marsh's ranch at the foot of Mount Diablo. It was November. They had spent 24 weeks on the trail and were footsore and near starvation, having been reduced to eating their mules.

 

I tell you this to remind you that those were not necessarily the good old days. Here is what Bidwell found in this promised land of lush landscapes and year-round fertility.

 

"IT HAD BEEN one of the driest years ever known in California, The country was brown and parched; throughout the State wheat, beans, everything had failed. Cattle were almost starving for grass, and the people, except perhaps a few of the best families, were without bread, and were eating chiefly meat, and that often of a very poor quality."

 

Consider also that there was little or no organized agriculture. No orchards to speak of, no truck gardens, very few grapes to suck up the ground water.

 

The Mexicans relied on hides and tallow from their cattle as a source of ranch income, so the drain on the water table had to be minimal.

 

Certainly the population couldn't drink enough to matter. There was only a Presidio, nothing more, in San Francisco. Northern California was divided into large (I mean 40,000-acres large) land grants.

 

Bidwell, traveling south, estimated there were 200 people in Santa Barbara, 250 in Los Angeles and 150 in San Diego. He may have missed a few, since estimates for Mexico's Alta California in the 1840s placed the population at about 80,000. But there were still a lot fewer water drinkers, lawn-waterers and driveway-hosers than today's 36 million-plus.

 

Still, there had not been enough rain to go around. In another recollection, Bidwell wrote about the "parched earth" that blew out of his hand and about the "total failures" of corn and grain crops.

 

ONE OF THOSE significant failures altered the destiny of our North Coast. If we had had a little more rain that winter, John Sutter might have been able to pay the departing Russians for Fort Ross. As it happened, Sutter had three successive years of crop failures and couldn't pay the Russians the $5,000 worth of wheat he owed them in '41 and '42, or the $10,000 in wheat and produce that was due in '43, which Bidwell described as "dryest year I've ever known, in fact it was almost rainless."

 

Possibly because they heard that news, the Russians never returned to take possession of Sutter's Sacramento Valley fort, which they had demanded as collateral.

How interesting would THAT have been?

 

BAD YEARS have a way of altering history. Say Dust Bowl, think Depression.

 

While we treat each new drought as if the world has shifted on its axis, drought is part of our climate pattern. Fort Ross' Russian officials reported in the 1830s that the river they called Slavianka "sometimes dried up in summer."

 

There have been a number of 15-inch years in the 155 years we've been keeping rainfall records here. The 1870s had two low years and Santa Rosa Creek ran dry (well, almost) in 1885. Mostly, the farmers took it as part of the cycle -- why they call it farming instead of shopping, as the old joke goes.

 

But, in 1977, when February rolled around and Santa Rosa's rainfall total stood at less than 7 inches, with Coyote Dam in place and Warm Springs Dam a hot button political issue, government agencies began to fight among themselves.

 

The Board of Supervisors blamed the Water Agency. The agency blamed the opponents of Warm Springs Dam. Weathermen blamed the state for not paying attention to the long-range forecasts. Santa Rosa blamed Rohnert Park, where water was not metered, for draining the aquifer. And everybody else blamed Santa Rosa for growing too fast.

 

The advertising agencies vied to find the right slogan for our water saving program. "Blush. Don't flush," was the most tasteful. And several city leaders (well, two at least) demonstrated how to shower standing in plastic garbage cans to save the water for plants.

 

So what do we learn from history? That this too shall pass? That dead lawns will come back in time? That it will rain a lot one day soon and that it may even flood again in our lifetime?

 

The optimist might take a longer look at John Bidwell. He hung around through those dry years -- and then he found gold on the Feather River, bought himself a 22,000-acre spread in Chico, went to Congress, ran three times for governor and once for U.S. president on the Prohibition Party ticket.

 

He lived a long, happy life in California -- through several drought years -- and there are lots of things -- a state park, a lake, a mountain and a fort -- named after him.#

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20090222/OPINION/902221050?Title=How-a-drought-year-changed-the-course-of-California-history

 

An unsure insure

Confused at why it's that way? So are the people who live there

Stockton Record – 2/23/09

By Alex Breitler

 

STOCKTON - A virtual line arching through central Stockton appears to slice right through retiree Virginia Garcia's duplex at Elmwood and Marine avenues.

One on side of this line is a "high-risk" flood zone in which homeowners with mortgages will have to buy flood insurance come October.

 

On the other side are homeowners who are probably breathing a sigh of relief that they have, so far, been spared.

 

Since Garcia rents, she won't be saddled with any insurance bill. But the duplex owner could well compensate his new costs by raising her rent.

"It's outrageous," she said, gesturing toward a house directly across the street that, according to preliminary maps, would be outside the flood zone, despite a neighborhood that, to the non-engineer, appears to be as flat as a pancake.

 

"If there's a flood, the whole blooming area is going to flood," Garcia said.

 

A report by the National Research Council appears to back up some of the long-standing complaints of Garcia and thousands of others who are poised to be thrust into the flood zone.

 

The new maps by the Federal Emergency Management Agency are not as accurate, nor as specific, as they could be, the council found in its report, commissioned by FEMA. Despite a $1 billion investment in updating flood maps across the nation, only about one-fifth of the population has maps that meet FEMA's own data quality standards.

 

FEMA must do a better job conveying what the flood risk is to individual properties, explaining the consequences of flooding and not merely drawing a broad area where a flood might occur, the National Research Council said.

 

"Maps that show only flood plain boundaries imply that every building in a designated flood zone may flood and every building outside the zone is safe," the council said in a statement. Clearly, that's not the case on Garcia's street.

 

Since San Joaquin County's first draft of the latest FEMA maps was released in January 2008, local officials have excluded close to 14,000 homes and businesses from the mandatory insurance zone by supplying FEMA with better data.

 

Still, an estimated 4,000 homes and businesses remain in the flood zone because of Smith Canal's levees, which cannot be proved to meet FEMA's muster.

Officials are looking at possible fixes, including building a flood-control gate at the head of the canal. But that will take years, and the draft maps are scheduled to take effect in October.

 

Meanwhile, other portions of Stockton could be thrown back into the flood zone if officials cannot prove that levees guarding those neighborhoods are adequate.

Residents' frustration with the process was evident last year in a series of community meetings. Mandatory flood insurance at a time when many can't afford to pay their mortgages could be a devastating blow, they argued.

 

Specifically, here are the shortcomings the council found with FEMA's maps:

 

» In San Joaquin County and elsewhere, FEMA relied on topographic data from the U.S. Geological Survey that is about 10 times more uncertain than newer technologies in which precise ground elevation measurements are taken by laser-equipped aircraft.

 

In one study area, the difference between the old and new technologies was about 12 feet, enough to significantly change the flood risk, the council said.

FEMA engineer Kathy Schafer, based in Oakland, said the laser method is still too expensive for use across the country and said that even if it were used in San Joaquin, the flood zone footprint likely would not change much.

 

Still, she said, "The report validates what those of us on the ground have already known: that there is an interest for better topographic data, and we do agree with that."

 

An area's topography is critical, because it can determine the depth of a flood and where the waters might flow should a levee break.

 

» San Joaquin's maps do not establish a base elevation at which flooding might be expected, which again is the result of a lack of funds, Schafer said.

 

» The council said flood maps should "personalize" flood risk for each address. Schafer said FEMA agrees and envisions a national flood risk database that contains the elevation of every resident's first floor.

 

While simply drawing a line to separate a high-risk zone from a lesser-risk zone may be overly simplistic, FEMA is required to produce some kind of line, she said. For any flood zone, there has to be a boundary.

 

And, regardless of whether you're in or out of the flood zone, "If you live in San Joaquin County, you have a flood risk," Schafer said.

 

Steve Winkler, deputy director of the San Joaquin County Department of Public Works, said better data will always yield better maps. That's why local authorities have fed FEMA information that has removed thousands of homes from the original flood zone.

 

"At the end of the day, (FEMA hires) engineers and consultants to use the best data they have to make that call," he said. "Sometimes they're interpolating, because they don't have details to the nearest foot."

"They have to make that call."#

http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090223/A_NEWS/902230315/-1/rss14

 

Raise that (desalinated) glass of water and drink up!

Orange County Register – 2/23/09

By Teri Sforza, staff writer

 

Desalination is one of the keys to Orange County’s water future, a recent survey of residents says.

Extracting salt from sea water is an expensive undertaking that has had a controversial reception in Orange County, where some complain about its cost and urge conservation and recycling instead.

 

The agency paying for the survey - the embattled Municipal Water District of Orange County - happens to be in a fight for its life, and also happens to be pushing hard for desalination as a multi-million answer to our future water woes.

 

The survey of 500 people cost $10,500 and was done by the firm of former state Assemblyman John Lewis.

It found that:

 

·                     Nearly 73 percent said desalination was a good idea for increasing Orange County’s water supply.

·                     72 percent knew there was a water shortage.

·                     An overwhelming majority said they’d be willing to take shorter showers, cut back on watering days, combine loads of laundry and refrain from washing cars if necessary.

·                     People don’t want Water Police. More than 54 percent were against the idea of enforcers out there issuing tickets for people watering on off days or washing cars.

·                     Nearly half had no idea who actually provided their water - city, water district, etc. 

·                     Despite this fog, people overwhelmingly said they wanted Muni to continue to have elected directors, rather than an appointed board (one of the ideas on the table for Muni’s future). 

 

Muni is the middleman that buys water from the giant Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and then resells it to other special districts and cities, and hydrates southern Orange County (and others as needed).

 

Six of Muni’s 29 member agencies - south-county water districts - have demanded that Muni slash its operating budget and hack its generous reserves, or they’ll walk. Taking nearly half of Muni’s budget along with them.

 

Desalination has been one of the issues they argue about.

 

Meantime, The Local Agency Formation Commission is pondering what to do with Muni now. A recommendation will be coming in later than anticipated, surprise surprise.

 

Orange County water consumers are pleased with the performances of their existing water providers. The Orange County Water District, Municipal Water District of Orange County and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California elicit net positive ratings of 43%, 33% and 27% respectively. 67% of those surveyed believe their city or local water district does an effective job of helping them stay informed about their local water supply. By a 3 ½ to 1 margin, respondents want to make sure that the current governance structure of elected water board members is maintained.

 

Orange County residents are aware that we have a water shortage. 51% of respondents characterize it as a mild shortage of water, while 21% describe the situation as an “extreme shortage.” 76% of respondents claim they have heard or read something about a water shortage in the last few months.

 

Orange County residents are poised to help in a water emergency. 78% of respondents said that they would be willing to take immediate action to curtail water use if they were told that would help avoid water rationing. By huge margins, residents are prepared to help in such ways as taking shorter showers (93% willing), combining loads of laundry (91%), and cutting back on watering plants and lawns (85%). A plurality of residents would even be willing to allow their lawns to die. Residents, however, oppose by a 13% margin the implementation of a Los Angeles style water policing program.

 

Most Orange County residents are unfamiliar with most of the water rebate programs. A notable exception is the 67% familiarity with rebates for high efficiency toilets and washing machines. Unfamiliarity appears to be the stumbling block for a greater utilization of rebates.

 

Local water providers (66%) and coverage by the press (57%) appears to be the most influential sources of information in relaying the need for water conservation. Printed information, especially attached to water bills, remain the most effective type of communication.#

http://taxdollars.freedomblogging.com/2009/02/23/water-survey/9578/

 

Opinion:

SoCal beast awakens

Marysville Appeal Democrat – 2/22/09

By Harold Kruger, Columnist