[Water_news] 1. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS - Top Items for 4/28/09

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment

 

April 28, 2009

 

1.   Top Items–

 

Fed judge halts further ag water cuts

The Fresno Bee

 

San Luis refuge gets big chunk of fed stimulus dollars

The Fresno Bee

 

Salton Sea restoration panel clears hurdle in state Senate

The Palm Springs Desert Sun

 

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Fed judge halts further ag water cuts

The Fresno Bee – 4/27/09

 

By John Ellis

 

A federal judge on Monday rejected a request to cancel or renegotiate more than three dozen Sacramento River water contracts that environmentalists claimed were drawn up using flawed information.

 

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Oliver W. Wanger appears to keep in place the Central Valley's intricately woven water system -- and to spare agricultural users north and south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta from potentially losing even more water.

 

Trent Orr, an attorney for environmental group Earthjustice, said it appears that water amounts outlined in the Sacramento River users contracts will be "there in perpetuity. We just don't think that's right."

 

Westlands Water District spokeswoman Sarah Woolf said it was "nice to see [environmentalists] simply didn't win one."

Wanger's ruling involves one of the last outstanding issues in a federal lawsuit involving the endangered delta smelt. Earlier, Wanger had thrown out a set of rules governing the smelt's management and ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to rewrite them.

 

The new smelt rules involved the effect of delta pumping on the tiny fish. But environmentalists said the new rules also should govern water delivery contracts reached with Sacramento River water users.

 

At issue were decades-old contracts reached with Sacramento River Settlement Contractors. Those contractors hold water rights that predate the federal Central Valley Project, which delivers water to Westlands and other Valley users.

 

The settlement contractors argued in court filings that if their contracts were canceled, they would revert to using water under their pre-existing water rights. In turn, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's "ability to operate the [Central Valley Project] would be severely compromised."

 

Wanger's 86-page ruling makes clear that the federal government and the Sacramento River Settlement Contractors agreed in the early 1960s "on long-term water contracts to continue for a 40-year term and renewals thereafter, for fixed, contractually defined quantities [of water]..." Those contracts predate the federal Endangered Species Act, which governs management of the delta smelt.

 

Orr said environmentalists will study Wanger's opinion closer and determine if they will appeal. #

 

http://www.fresnobee.com/local/story/1361173.html

 

San Luis refuge gets big chunk of fed stimulus dollars

The Fresno Bee – 4/27/09

By Michael Doyle

 

WASHINGTON — The San Luis National Wildlife Refuge Complex is getting a new headquarters and visitors’ center courtesy of a big economic stimulus package.

 

A $9.8 million grant will enable the Los Banos-area network of refuges to build the long-deferred project. The grant also makes the San Luis refuge complex the nation’s largest single recipient of Fish and Wildlife Service economic recovery funds.

 

“This will provide for a much more welcoming opportunity for visitors,” Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Alexandra Pitts said Monday.

 

The San Luis refuge complex funding is part of $280 million in Fish and Wildlife Service grants being spread nationwide.

 

Other Central Valley refuges are getting a share, though the San Luis refuge is receiving more than any of the other 770 projects funded from coast to coast.

 

Fish and Wildlife Service officials have been talking publicly about a new San Luis refuge center since at least 2002.

 

Once completed, the new center will host refuge visitors as well as Fish and Wildlife Service administrators now stuffed into uninspiring quarters on West Pacheco Boulevard in Los Banos. The federal agency employs 30 full-time and 20 seasonal workers.

 

“They’re in a strip mall,” Pitts said. “They’re not in a particularly functional space, because it was designed for retail.”

The San Luis complex spans nearly 45,000 acres and includes the San Luis, Merced and San Joaquin River wildlife refuges as well as the Grasslands Management Area. Migrating waterfowl love the region, as do endangered species including the San Joaquin kit fox. In the mid-1980s, the refuge complex also became notorious as the location of the since-drained Kesterson Reservoir, where selenium-tainted irrigation runoff accumulated and poisoned thousands of birds.

 

An estimated 120,000 visitors now come to the refuge complex annually. Officials estimate this could triple with the help of an attractive new interpretive center. The center would be built on a two-acre site off Wolfsen Road, close to Los Banos and the southern entrance to the San Luis refuge.

 

“There would be increased opportunity for interaction between visitors and personnel, and increased environmental interpretation by refuge staff,” an environmental assessment states, adding that local schools and colleges also will benefit.

 

The current leased facility in Los Banos costs more than any other Fish and Wildlife Service field office in California.

 

The Merced National Wildlife Refuge, which is administered as part of the overall San Luis National Wildlife Refuge Complex, is separately receiving $25,000 for work on a canal. The Kern National Wildlife Refuge is receiving $67,000.

 

All told, California refuges are receiving $22.3 million — more than any other state. Texas refuges, which are second in funding, will receive $16 million. The grants were announced Sunday. #

 

http://www.fresnobee.com/local/story/1360491.html

 

Salton Sea restoration panel clears hurdle in state Senate

The Palm Springs Desert Sun – 4/28/09

By Jake Henshaw

 

A bill creating an overseer for restoration of the troubled Salton Sea passed the Senate Environmental Quality Committee on Monday.

 

Senate Bill 51 by Sen. Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego, would establish the Salton Sea Restoration Council governed by a 14-member executive committee of local, state, and tribal officials to direct what's estimated to be a 75-year effort to prevent much of the state's largest lake lake from drying up.

 

The council won't have the authority to make local land use decisions and will be amended to clarify that it won't have regulatory power over air and water issues, Ducheny's staff said.

 

The measure to help the lake off Highway 86 also has picked up Senate leader Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, as a co-author.

 

Some initial work has started at the sea to gather wildlife data and to preserve endangered fish, but the major work and funding are still to come.#

 

http://www.mydesert.com/article/20090428/NEWS0701/904280323

 

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