[Water_news] 2. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: SUPPLY - 6/19/09

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment 

 

June 19, 2009

 

2. Supply –

 

Opinion -

Fixing the Delta is critical

San Diego Union-Tribune

 

Opinion -

tHE Water War:

State needs more storage capacity

San Diego Union-Tribune

 

 

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Opinion -

Fixing the Delta is critical

San Diego Union-Tribune – 06/19/09

By Ellen Hanak and Jay Lund

Now in a third year of drought, Southern Californians are once again facing the realities of living in a region with variable and unpredictable rainfall. Voluntary rationing, increased water rates and a proliferation of water-use restrictions are the order of the day. This is an opportunity for residents to achieve durable gains in water conservation. One key to resolving the state's biggest long-term water crisis: fixing the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

We believe there is a solution to the crisis in the Delta — the hub of the state's water supply and the focus of years of conflict — that balances the state's need for both a reliable water supply and a healthy ecosystem. But it's one that requires compromise. For Southern Californians and others who rely on Delta water supplies, it is likely to mean taking less water from this source in the future than they've gotten in the past.

The most recent flare-up in this troubled region began in 2004, when the populations of several key fish species crashed, including the endangered delta smelt. In 2007, the fish crisis became a water supply crisis: To protect the delta smelt, a federal judge restricted the operations of water export pumps at the Delta's southern edge. In 2008, he made a similar ruling to protect Chinook salmon. Yet the numbers have continued to tumble for smelt, salmon and other species, raising the specter of additional cutbacks. Compounding these environmental woes, the fragile levees that help keep Delta waters fresh face a high and increasing risk of failure from earthquakes and floods. A catastrophic failure of Delta levees could shut down the pumps for months or even years.

Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area depend on the Delta pumps for nearly a third of their water supplies, and Delta water irrigates nearly a third of the farmland in the San Joaquin Valley. It is not surprising, then, that water managers in regions that rely on Delta exports are reacting to the crisis with a sense of urgency.

The solution water exporters have been pursuing, with the support of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration, is to build a canal around the Delta to convey Sacramento River water to the pumps with less interference to native fish. The environmental review for this approach, which would also include significant ecosystem investments, is scheduled to be completed by 2010. Proponents hope that ground could be broken within several years, with the canal coming online in about a decade.

In broad strokes, the exporters' approach is consistent with the conclusions of our recent study of the Delta crisis. We found that ending water exports altogether would be the best prospect for native fish, but at significant cost to the state's economy. A peripheral canal around the Delta could improve conditions for the fish by allowing the return to more natural, variable flows in the Delta. The increasing demand for water by cities and farms has created a Delta in which water flows are often fatal to fish.

A canal would also be the least costly solution for water users, by reducing the threat of catastrophic levee failure and improving water quality for human use. In contrast, continuing to pump large volumes of water through the Delta is bad for the state's economy and is the worst alternative for native fish.

In 1982, Northern California voters overwhelmingly rejected a canal plan that already had the blessing of the Legislature, the governor and the federal government. The fears then — that the canal would permit a Southern California “water grab,” harming the environment and Northern California's economy — are still present today. But since that time, Southern California has become a much better steward of the state's water resources, with impressive gains in water conservation and improved use of local water resources.

Even if a canal is built, it is unlikely that as much water will move south in the future. Because native fish populations deteriorated over a period when water exports increased significantly, long-term export reductions will probably be needed to help bring the Delta ecosystem back to health. The health of fish and the volume of water exports also will depend on the successful expansion of fish habitat in the Delta.

Our analysis suggests that compromise is essential. Even with significantly reduced exports, a canal is still the best option for water users. The current drought provides Southern Californians with the opportunity to make progress in reducing water use — one key to living with the near-term drought and to finding a durable solution for the Delta.

Hanak is director of research and a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. Lund is a professor of environmental engineering and co-director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis. Their full report is available at ppic.org .#

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jun/19/fixing-delta-critical/?uniontrib

 

Opinion -

tHE Water War:

State needs more storage capacity

San Diego Union-Tribune – 06/19/09

By Mary Wells

When my family purchased our ranch 35 years ago in the foothill community of Sites, 75 miles northwest of Sacramento, we knew there were proposals to flood our land and make it a reservoir. Even so, we hoped we could continue to ranch here for generations to come.

We could not have predicted back then that California would grow so fast or that our state's needs would be so great that a reservoir would become an essential part of solving California's current water crisis.

It would be sad to see our land, and our neighbors' land, flooded, but I understand that every Californian would benefit in some way from storing this water.

For years, California's leaders talked about solving our water crisis. In drought years they focused on this issue, but public attention faded with the next rainfall.

That short-term thinking has created a long-term problem for everyone.

As the great, great-granddaughter of W. H. Williams, the founder of a small town in western Colusa County in the mid-1800s, and as a grandmother, I think about the past but most importantly about the future.

My children and grandchildren sit on tractors and harvesters and on horseback in Northern California, managing our lands. I want their lives to be as good as they are now, where we maintain our roots on the land that sustains us all while protecting California's environment. This requires unprecedented commitment to resolve our state's water crisis.

Over many years, people have assumed conserving water would solve our crisis. While helpful, conservation alone cannot provide for the future of a growing population.

We as a state have done little for decades to expand the amount of water we can store in wet, and normal, years to ensure we have water available in drought years to meet the needs of citizens, business, agriculture and fish and wildlife.

A partial solution to our problem lies in rural Colusa County, where a natural bowl formation in the hills on the east side of the Sacramento Valley provides what the Department of Water Resources calls the best alternative for increased water storage for California.

Known as the Sites Reservoir because the small community bears the name of its earliest landowner, John Lee Sites, some 2 million acre feet of water — that is 652 billion gallons — could be stored. This offers the most cost effective and environmentally sound alternative to provide water so that we don't experience shortages every year. With this reservoir, excess water that flows down the Sacramento River, sometimes causing serious winter and spring flooding before heading to the Pacific Ocean, could instead be stored and available when we really need it.

The water could be used to maintain the flow in our rivers during drought years, water that is critical for both fish and river habitats. The citizens of this state decided to place great value upon protecting our environment for future generations. This water storage supports that effort.

The water also would be available to meet the stat's contractual obligation to provide water to farming families throughout California, and to protect jobs and the economies of many rural communities. This is especially important for permanent crops, such as orchards and vineyards, where even one year without water is devastating to the survival of the long-term investment in and production of the agricultural land.

The water needs of our state's growing population must be addressed without sacrificing agriculture or the environment. Water diverted to farms is only partially used to grow crops. Much of it flows back into our streams and rivers to be used over and over again by more farms, cities, wildlife refuges, and our Bay Delta ecosystem.

I cherish my ranch and my home in Sites with all the memories that go with them. But for me, the time has come to use our land in a different way. We need Sites Reservoir to help solve California's water crisis.

Californians need to understand and embrace water storage as part of their future. This requires thinking and acting beyond the kitchen faucet that provided water this morning. We must work together to ensure that future generations have the water they need at their faucets, on their farms and in their environment.

Wells is a fifth-generation Californian who owns ranch land in the area that would be part of the proposed Sites Reservoir in Northern California. #

 

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jun/19/water-war/?uniontrib

 

 

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