[Water_news] 5. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: AGENCIES, PROGRAMS, PEOPLE - 5/27/09

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

May 27, 2009

 

5. Agencies, Programs, People –

 

 

Opinion:

Time for the governor to wade into the delta

San Francisco Chronicle

 

The Resnicks: farming's power couple

Contra Costa Times

 

Board fires away at canal supporter

S.J. supervisors also oppose bill they say would hurt farming

Stockton Record

 

Supes seek political intervention for future for Redwood Creek levee

Eureka Times Standard

 

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Opinion:

Time for the governor to wade into the delta

San Francisco Chronicle – 5/27/09

William K. Reilly

William K. Reilly is a member of the Governor's Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force and served as administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President George H.W. Bush.

 

Clean, abundant water is something most people take for granted. Yet, with California in its third year of drought, that nonchalance is no longer justified. Across the state, there is a growing consensus that we cannot go on as before, and that we need serious change in the way in which we view and use water. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has taken on some of the fearsome challenges California faces on his watch. But he has yet to meet the water challenge.

 

The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is ground zero in the water debates currently taking place at the state Capitol. The delta provides water for more than 25 million Californians and 3 million acres of agriculture, supporting a $400 billion economy. But the delta's ecosystem is crashing, portending a water crisis for the entire state.

 

Schwarzenegger has called for a 20 percent reduction in statewide water use, a notably bold recognition that excessive water use and population increase are doubly threatening to our water future. But he and legislative leaders have not acknowledged that the critical missing ingredient in water management in the delta is governance.

 

More than two years ago, the governor appointed the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force, of which I was a member, to develop a plan for an environmentally sustainable delta and a reliable water supply for California. We met for two days a month for two years. We took testimony from water users in the cities, in agriculture, localities in the delta, scientists, academic experts, environmentalists and bureaucrats.

 

We tried to come to grips with some stunning realities: The delta water's average annual flow is overcommitted to users by more than eight times! Even in the wettest years, the water is overcommitted by three times! The fact that some 200 federal and state agencies share power over governance of water in the delta explains how this grotesque incongruity between realistic supply and entitlement could have come to be.

 

In addition, potential abuses - like that of the state's Environmental Water Account, where water in Kern County was purchased from the state and then traded back to the account for a higher price - are more prevalent under the current system.

 

So, the task force proposed an integrated set of recommendations to break the deadlock surrounding water policy in California. Although our work concluded with the release of our Delta Vision Strategic Plan, our commitment continues under the banner of the Delta Vision Foundation.

 

On Monday, we will come together for a public meeting in Sacramento to announce one of the first products of this new, independent organization: a report card to rate the progress that state policymakers are achieving in resolving the delta's problems. Fair warning: The results are disappointing.

 

The good news is that the delta is a top priority on the state's legislative agenda. But when we looked at how recent policy proposals compare with the Delta Vision Strategic Plan, there is one serious gap.

 

The Delta Vision Strategic Plan is a comprehensive and inclusive roadmap for California's water future, and most key stakeholders engaged with water issues around the state are supportive of the plan's recommendations. But without creating a new governance entity for the delta, the center will not hold. The many recommendations aiming both to ensure a reliable water supply for the state and restore the delta ecosystem won't be effective. Our strategic plan recommends a five-member statewide commission appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate. The commission would oversee actions of various state and federal agencies in the delta by requiring consistency with a California Delta Plan, which the commission would develop and adopt.

 

I watched President George H.W. Bush break a 12-year stalemate on clean air and propose a daring cap-and-trade system with an ambitious goal of taking 10 million tons of sulfur dioxide out of the air, thus solving the acid-rain crisis. Cap-and-trade is now the gold standard for efficient cost-effective pollution control.

 

Leadership on the creation of a new governing entity for the delta could cut through the cacophony of competing bodies and provide leadership in reforming California's water management. A single, unified governance is the most controversial of our proposals. Governance is the one issue everybody tries to ignore. Achieving it requires brave leadership and heavy lifting. It requires leadership by the governor.#

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/26/EDCP17R69A.DTL

 

The Resnicks: farming's power couple

Contra Costa Times – 5/23/09

By Mike Taugher

Stewart Resnick is not your typical dirt-under-the-fingernails farmer.

 

The Beverly Hills billionaire's companies, according to tax records, appear to own more than 115,000 acres in Kern County, about the size of four San Franciscos and more than all of the East Bay Regional Park District's parks combined.

 

The operation is the largest pistachio and almond growing and processing operation in the world, according to the company's Web site, and part of a business empire that Resnick runs with his wife, Lynda, whose Web site asserts they are the largest farmers of tree crops in the country.

 

The Resnicks' holding company, Roll International, also owns Fiji water, Pom Wonderful pomegranate juice, Teleflora, the largest floral wire service in the world and, until October 2006, the Franklin Mint, the largest collectibles company in the world.

 

Forbes ranks Roll International as the nation's 246th largest private company.

 

Resnick, a New Jersey native who graduated from UCLA in 1959, started his own janitorial company to pay his way through college, while Lynda started her first business at 19. The couple bought their first business together in 1979.

 

Today, the Resnicks' net worth is estimated at more than $1 billion, and they are believed to be among Los Angeles' richest people. They give generously to art museums, throw parties attended by Hollywood stars and donate lavishly to political campaigns usually, but not always, to Democrats.

 

During the presidential campaign that ended in November, they gave money to anyone who had a shot at winning, including Democrats Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John Edwards, Bill Richardson and Republican John McCain.

 

In the past decade, the Resnicks and their Kern County farming operations gave more than $1.6 million to political campaigns in California, including a whopping $373,000 to former Gov. Gray Davis.

 

Shortly after he was elected in 1998, Davis appointed Stewart Resnick as co-chairman of his water and agriculture advisory committee with former Rep. Gary Condit, D-Modesto, and Keith Brackpool, a businessman with plans to develop water storage underground in the Mojave Desert.

 

Last year, the couple pledged more than $55 million to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and this year they are opening a charter school in the farm town of Delano. Both sit on an executive committee for UCLA's medical sciences. Stewart Resnick is on the board of directors for the environmental group Conservation International.#

http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_12437262

 

Board fires away at canal supporter

S.J. supervisors also oppose bill they say would hurt farming

Stockton Record  - 5/27/09

By Zachary K. Johnson

 

STOCKTON - County policy-makers stepped into the ever-changing maelstrom of water-related bills Tuesday long enough to debate a peripheral canal proponent before voting officially to oppose one piece of developing legislation in Sacramento.

 

County officials have never been shy about voicing opposition to any plan to build a canal to divert water bound for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to pumps sending water to points across the state, but at their meeting Tuesday, members of the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors were able to deliver their disapproval directly to a representative of a group promoting such a canal.

 

They listened to Karla Nemeth, a spokeswoman for the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan, lay out her presentation, including her take that the fragile estuary would sustain less damage if exported water were diverted around the Delta instead of being sucked out at pumps along with nutrients and fish. The Bay-Delta Conservation Plan proposes to balance ecological needs of the Delta with the needs of the 25million Californians who use the estuary as a source of water.

 

"It's a major challenge to restore an ecosystem in an environment like the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta," she said. Rough estimates say the plan could restore at least 55,000 acres of wetlands, she said.

 

But county supervisors noted any canal would do nothing to create new sources of water for an increasingly thirsty state, and they were concerned a peripheral canal would harm the county's water quality and the livelihoods of farmers who use that water.

 

"There's another terrestrial species not listed here, and that's farmers," Supervisor Ken Vogel said, referring to Nemeth's list of aquatic and land animals covered in the plan.

 

And like the other five counties adjoining the Delta, San Joaquin County has not been given an important enough role by the state in plotting the Delta's future, supervisors said.

 

If these counties feel ignored, they will fight, Supervisor Larry Ruhstaller said. "If we go to war, we go to war."

 

Later in the meeting, the board unanimously opposed one bill in Sacramento that all the Delta counties would oppose, according to San Joaquin County officials.

Senate Bill 12 would give a newly created panel authority to review the general plans of Delta counties and their cities.

 

"It could clearly impact farming practices in the Delta," said Terry Dermody, a former San Joaquin County counsel who is the county's water attorney.

That bill was one of 60 water-related bills on a list Dermody gave the board.

 

He also said he was concerned that water issues will be in play when the Legislature meets to attempt to balance the state budget.

 

It's difficult to see where developments concerning water issues are headed, because significant changes are happening quickly, Ruhstaller said.

"There's so much chaff in the air, you cannot see or acquire the true target."#

http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090527/A_NEWS/905270312/-1/A_NEWS06

 

Supes seek political intervention for future for Redwood Creek levee

Eureka Times Standard – 5/27/09

By Jessie Faulkner

 

New Federal Emergency Management Agency requirements for flood insurance maps will likely mean the deaccreditation of Orick's Redwood Creek levees, resulting in a huge increase in flood insurance costs and a dampening of development activity in the county's northernmost community.

 

County Public Works Department staff came to the Board of Supervisors Tuesday asking for a letter to be sent to Rep. Mike Thompson asking that he meet with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in an attempt to remedy the situation.

 

”We think there's a need for him to be aware of the situation and discuss options with the corps,” said Hank Seeman, environmental services manager for the Humboldt County Public Works Department.

 

The board agreed by voting in support of the letter, which argues that the levees' inability to pass sediment through the system was a design deficiency that warrants consideration for a fix by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

 

The request comes following the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers December 2008 technical report that concludes the levees, in their current state, only provide protection level for a 13-year flood.

 

Orick is situated in a 100-year flood zone.

 

”If the FEMA standards are not met or the documentation is insufficient, then the flood insurance rate maps will be modified to show the 100-year flood plain as if the levee did not exist, and flood insurance requirements would apply,” according to the staff report.

 

The on-the-ground reality is that such a change would limit new construction in the area, limit modification of existing structures and would have financial impacts on property owners, Seeman said.

 

Public Works Director Tom Mattson, who lives near an unaccredited levee on the Eel River in the Fortuna area, says it costs him $1,300 per year for flood insurance.

Further, the county would have to remove 430,000 cubic yards of sediment to restore the levees to the protective quality present when they were new. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed the Redwood Creek levees in 1967.

 

The initial agreement with the federal government for construction of the levees was that the county would assume responsibility for operation and maintenance of the earthen bank structure in perpetuity. The current problem is the county has no funds to complete the work that would be necessary to restore the levee to full function.

 

The cost comes in removing tons and tons of gravel -- a process the county has had to pay contractors to work on, according to Seeman.

One of the additional problems, Seeman said, is acquiring the necessary permits to remove the collected sediment, vegetation and gravel which provide habitat for endangered species.

 

In the best case scenario, according to Seeman's presentation, the Redwood Creek leeves could be made certification-ready for $650,000. Conversely, such compliance could run as high as $2.9 million to $3.4 million.#

http://www.times-standard.com/localnews/ci_12457606

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