[Water_news] 1. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS - Top Items for 5/11/09

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

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

 

May 11, 2009

 

1.   Top Item–

 

Seniority rules:

The Chico Enterprise-Record

 

U.S. water infrastructure needs seen as urgent

Reuters

 

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Seniority rules:

The Chico Enterprise-Record – 5/10/09

By Heather Hacking

 

A legal battle for Sacramento River Settlement Contractors reached a conclusion recently when a judge ruled that water users with water rights that pre-date the Shasta Dam and Central Valley Project have the right to continue to receive water deals originally negotiated in the 1960s.

 

These contracts cover about 440,000 acres of land along the Sacramento River, from Redding to Sacramento, for about 2 million acre-feet of water.

 

One acre-foot of water equal 325,851 gallons, about the amount of water for two average California households for a year.

 

The ruling affects 145 Sacramento River Settlement Contractors, including Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District, smaller districts including Princeton-Codora-Glenn Irrigation District and Provident Irrigation District, Butte Creek Farms, Maxwell Irrigation District, Meridian Farms Water Co., Reclamation District 108, as well as water for various corporations, partnership and even individuals with water rights as low as 10 acre-feet.

 

These rights were established before the Central Valley Project was built by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to store and transport water throughout the state.

 

Before the Central Valley Project, people established water rights along the Sacramento River. In the 1960s, after Shasta Dam was completed, these water users entered into negotiations with the bureau and came up with contracts that recognized "base supplies" of water for established users.

 

Under the deals, these settlement contractors also were able to use water from the Central Valley Project.

 

Mark Atlas, attorney for Princeton-Codora-Glenn Irrigation District and Provident Irrigation District, said at that time there was an agreement that in critical drought the water supply supply could be cut by 25 percent.

 

A critical year is when inflow to Shasta is less than 3.2 million acre-feet.

 

That means when inflow at Shasta is above that mark, water users with these contracts receive their full supply, even while water users nearby may be getting only a small percentage of water under terms of different contracts with the Central Valley Project.

 

The settlement contracts were due for a 40-year renewal in 2004, which was approved in 2005, Atlas explained.

A biological opinion was completed that concluded renewal of the contracts would not adversely affect delta smelt, which are listed as threatened on the Endangered Species List.

 

The Natural Resources Defense Council filed a lawsuit challenging that opinion.

 

"They said consultation on settlement contracts was inadequate and that they should renegotiate the contracts and renegotiate the quantity" of water in those contracts, Atlas said.

 

"We said they don't have the discretion to change the quantities of water," Atlas explained.

 

During the process, Judge Oliver Wanger, of the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of California in Fresno, determined the biological opinion was indeed inadequate. That opinion is currently being rewritten.

 

But Wanger also determined the Bureau of Reclamation "did not have the discretion" to change the quantities of water.

 

Without that ruling, Atlas predicted there would have been decades of litigation over those senior water rights, many that were established in the early 1900s, and in one case — Glenn-Colusa — back to the late 1800s.

 

Judge Wanger is the same judge who ruled in this same ongoing case in 2007 that Delta pumping would need to be cut back up to one-third to protect Delta smelt.

 

There is the possibility of appeal. Kate Poole, senior attorney for Natural Resources Defense Council, said the state is "struggling with limited water supply in this state particularly in a year like this one."

 

"People throughout the state are being asked to cut back. We think it's unfair for this relatively small group of water districts to receive one-third of the entire Central Valley Project supply in this state," Poole said.

 

"This year they're getting half of the entire Central Valley Water supply," she said.

 

"Everybody really needs to contribute if we're going to figure out how to repair a crashing salmon population and maintain sufficient water supply for a growing population," Poole said.

 

The lawsuit asked the bureau to look at those contracts negotiated in the 1960s and see if they needed to be adjusted for the current water supply.

 

"We still think that needs to happen," Poole said.

 

"State law doesn't allow you to claim a water right in the early 1900s, or late 1800s, and say we own this water for all time. That's not the way water rights work," she said.

 

She used the example of Reclamation District 108, which Poole said recently won an award for investing in efficient equipment that resulted in 25 percent water savings.

 

"If everybody made those investments, those are the things we want to take a look at," Poole said.

 

Thad Bettner, general manager of Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District, said the judge's ruling is a validation of the district's long-held senior water rights.

 

Bettner said Glenn-Colusa has been involved in discussions about how to meet delta and ecosystem needs, but the solution is not to take the water from his and other districts and then decide where it goes.

 

"We think there is a better way to address these cooperatively, rather than legally," Bettner said. #

http://www.chicoer.com/news/ci_12336902

 

U.S. water infrastructure needs seen as urgent

Reuters – 5/8/09

By Jim Christie

 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The crumbling U.S. infrastructure is routinely in plain sight, from potholes strewn across interstate highways built during the Eisenhower administration to rusting Depression-era bridges connecting those old highways.

 

At its most extreme, neglect can turn catastrophic: Experts had long expressed concern that New Orleans' aging levees could fail in the face of a major hurricane and they did dramatically in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

 

By contrast, the condition of the nation's water infrastructure is often hidden from view. Drinking water and efficient sewage disposal is taken for granted along with the safety of the buried pipes, but was much on the minds of several guests at this week's Reuters Infrastructure Summit.

 

Out of sight, water infrastructure remained largely out of mind for U.S. policymakers in the federal economic stimulus effort. The $787 billion program allotted less than $10 billion for drinking and wastewater projects.

 

State and local officials will not turn the cash away but they say much more is needed to fix and add capacity to the nation's water systems.

 

"It's something that concerns me, because we pay so much attention to things we see and this is something we don't see -- until it's too late," Maryland State Treasurer Nancy Kopp told Reuters in a recent interview.

 

"In Maryland and other eastern states there have been repeated episodes in which pipes carrying clean water or sewage have collapsed," Kopp said. "Over the next 20 or 30 years, water systems are likely to hit obsolescence."

 

CONSERVE OR BUILD?

 

In Western states where epic water projects from the mid-1900s helped propel growth, many policymakers were likewise underwhelmed by stimulus spending for water works.

 

California, the most populous state, is receiving less than $1 billion for water projects and the money will not fund the kind of engineering feats that cross hundreds of miles to sustain coastal population centers with water from distant mountains and a handful of rivers, which water-issues researcher Peter Gleick applauds.

 

Instead of helping to build a new batch of monumental water works, California should focus on making use of its water more efficiently, Gleick, of the Pacific Institute of Oakland, California, said during the Infrastructure Summit.

 

"About 30 percent of the water used in urban California could be saved with existing technology," Gleick said.

 

Paying households to adopt the technology would also help avoid the economic and environmental costs of building traditional and pricey water projects such as dams.

 

"In a sense, a million low-flow toilets is the same as building a dam, but faster and quicker," Gleick said.

 

But if the federal stimulus effort was meant to spur job growth, it flubbed it in giving water such a small slice of its pie, Scott Paul of the Alliance for American Manufacturing said during the Summit.

 

"Water systems have the biggest bang for the buck," said Paul, noting his group recently commissioned a study that found water projects topped infrastructure categories in terms of job creation with 19,769 jobs created from every $1 billion spent.#

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/Infrastructure09/idUSTRE5473IG20090508

 

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