Department of Water Resources

California Water News

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

July 1, 2009

1. Top Items–

Farmers heading to downtown Fresno for water rally

The Oakland tribune

Dutch expert offers advice on saving Delta

Sacramento Bee

Bay Area coastal projects to get $18 million

S.F. Chronicle

Grand jury report raps IID over practices

The desert Sun

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Farmers heading to downtown Fresno for water rally

The Oakland Tribune-7/1/09

Streets in downtown Fresno are being closed to traffic as officials prepare for potentially thousands of farmers and their supporters gathering for a water rally.

Nearly three months after the Latino Water Coalition drew attention to San Joaquin Valley water shortages with a march from Mendota to the San Luis Reservoir, the grower-funded group is holding another event. This time, they hope to get the attention of officials with jurisdiction over the dwindling resource.

Farmers say drought and delivery cutbacks to protect a threatened fish have caused high unemployment and idled fields across the region.

They have denounced cutbacks in their water deliveries from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta as putting "fish ahead of families" and are demanding policy changes.#

http://www.insidebayarea.com/search/ci_12732004?IADID=Search-www.insidebayarea.com-www.insidebayarea.com

Dutch expert offers advice on saving Delta

Sacramento Bee-7/1/09

By Matt Weiser

Tropical islands and mountain glaciers get all the attention. But the planet's river deltas are the real front lines of climate change.

Sharing that message is a goal of the Delta Alliance, a new effort by officials in the Netherlands to unite people around the world struggling to manage river delta regions. This includes Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Nigeria – and California.

Scientists have advised California to prepare for 55 inches of sea level rise in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta by 2100. Protecting communities and the Delta freshwater supply, which serves 23 million Californians, will be a complicated and pricey task.

The Dutch have lived below sea level for hundreds of years. They've survived by building massive levees that are the envy of the world.

Last week, a delegation from the Netherlands visited San Francisco and the Delta. One result is a planned September symposium in California on common challenges.

On Thursday, The Bee interviewed Bart Parmet, director of the Deltateam for the Netherlands Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, during the delegation's stop in Sacramento.

Why did you form the Delta Alliance?

Already 50 percent of the population in the world lives in delta areas, and this will grow up to 80 percent maybe. The problems with the deltas, with rising sea level and changes in river discharges, are similar. That was the background to say, "Hey, why not make an alliance of places to exchange knowledge, do research together and be prepared for this rise in sea level." We are a nation that is curious. We have a good name in water. We are a nation that doesn't mind selling things. We'd like to combine helping, and if we can benefit from it, too, it's OK.

Does the public understand that deltas may be more vulnerable to climate change than other areas?

Yes, at least in the Netherlands, that's for sure. And I think here, now, growing awareness in California as well. Maybe the Delta Alliance would help to raise awareness of this problem. Because as I understood during our visit, it's not common knowledge with Joe America.

How are deltas more vulnerable to climate change?

Because they are there where the river enters the sea. So with a rise in sea level, they are the first victims, so to say. But they are attractive areas to live in, and that's because there is fertile ground, there is water from the river, there is fish, there is everything you need.

You toured the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta today. Tell me what you thought.

I heard about the large subsidence of the soils, and that was very clear to see. And I asked myself, where will this end? How will this end?

What I saw, and what I tried to imagine, is the complex government structure you have here. In the Netherlands, all major levees are owned by the government. So it is very clear who is responsible.

Here I heard that levees are privately owned. And if the state would improve them, or the Army Corps, they are liable. So: I'm a farmer, I get help from the state, they improve my levee, and after that I can even sue them if things go wrong.

Well, that's strange. So I try to imagine how to work in such a complex situation, which seems very difficult.

What did you think of the levees you saw?

These levees have a quality that would not meet Dutch standards. Although there are also levees built by the Army Corps which do, there are a lot of levees which are old levees on peat soils and those are not the most, let's say, strong levees. It would be huge work to improve them, but if you want to you can.

How do you deal with people who aren't concerned about sea level rise?

We faced the same problem. And we have one advantage, where I think you have also an advantage. If the Netherlands would not be protected at the moment, about two-thirds would be flooded now and then – without sea level rise.

What you have is not only sea level rise. There are more problems. For example, an earthquake, or a storm surge, or a maximum river flow. You already have problems that can cause inundation. You don't need the sea level rise for that. That could help to make the sense of urgency very clear.

Do you have any thoughts about what we should do?

To me, this complex situation of conflicting interests, that's something that really needs to be tackled. In the Netherlands, we are used to doing things together. If we don't do it together, we drown together. So that's simple.

In the Netherlands, there will be a delta fund that will be fed by at least 1 billion euros (about $1.4 billion) per year (from income taxes). It's not a luxury, it's a necessity. And 1 billion euros is a real bargain to protect our country. Because the public was involved, it makes it easier for Parliament (to approve this).

So my advice, modest advice for California, would be to think about a delta fund, so you don't have to argue in the political arena about funds every year. Second: Try one water act or delta act in which you combine all the things you have on water and your delta. That will be a major task.

Sit together, talk about it.

Confront people if they don't want to look into interests of other stakeholders. You really have to work together because it's too big an issue to think you can tackle it in the Delta alone or in the Bay Area alone. It's an issue of all California.#

http://www.sacbee.com/ourregion/story/1991103.html?mi_rss=Our%2520Region

Bay Area coastal projects to get $18 million

S.F. Chronicle-7/1/09

By Kelly Zito

Coastal habitat restoration projects in the Bay Area will receive nearly $18 million in federal stimulus money, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office said Tuesday.

Projects from Bodega Bay to San Francisco Bay will receive $1.5 million to $8.4 million each as part of a $31.1 million allocation for nine wetlands and fisheries improvement projects across California.

The $8.4 million will go to a Ducks Unlimited Inc. project aimed at demolishing former salt cultivation ponds near the mouth of the Napa River near Vallejo.

About 50 workers will cut through levees in an effort to re-establish tidal flows over a 1,000-acre area and develop better habitat for threatened chinook salmon and steelhead trout, said Rudy Rosen, director of the nonprofit Ducks Unlimited regional office in Sacramento.

Other local projects are:

-- $7.6 million to open three former salt ponds on San Francisco Bay to tidal flow, as well as restarting removal of Spartina alterniflora.

-- $1.5 million to plant native vegetation and improve in-stream habitat for endangered coho salmon and threatened steelhead trout in Salmon Creek in Bodega Bay.#

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/01/BA4018GQV8.DTL&feed=rss.bayarea

Grand jury report raps IID over practices

The desert Sun-7/1/09

By Keith Matheny

Imperial County's civil grand jury criticized the Imperial Irrigation District's management and policies in a new report.

“Our investigation has been unable to identify a clear chain of command; (and) the budgets and policies of the IID are so labyrinthine that they tend to bog down into a bureaucratic mess,” a portion of the grand jury report states.

IID officials sharply defended the agency, noting several inaccuracies in the grand jury report and calling its nonspecific allegations of corruption “sinister.”

“It's a very vague report — there's not a lot of substantive items to respond to,” said IID legal counsel Jeff Garber.

IID provides water to farmers and residents in Imperial County, as well as electricity there and to residents in eastern Coachella Valley.

About 60 percent of the agency's 145,000 energy customers are in the Coachella Valley.

The grand jury questioned whether managers and employees at IID are adequately following the direction and policies provided by the agency's elected board of directors.

The grand jury noted that IID middle managers and some employees seemed to drag their feet on some board directives “in order to wait out the terms of service of elected officials, and perhaps even allow these requests to be forgotten, rather than to act on them,” the report states.

The grand jury report called for the IID board to commit to running the agency, “rather than allowing decisions to rest with and information to filter through a single general manager who is unelected and unaccountable to stakeholders.”

IID officials took exception to this recommendation in their initial response to the grand jury report.

“The board is not elected to ‘run' the district, a task for which it is unsuited and ill-equipped to carry out,” the response states.

“The general manager, who is charged by the board to ‘run' the district, is the board's agent; in fact, he is its only employee.”

The grand jury also recommends developing a “reinvented,” externally audited annual budget that is “zeroed-out” each year and “clearly grounded in fiscally responsible computations.”

Additionally, the grand jury recommended IID limit its use of outside consultants with “close ties to competing water agencies,” and to reinvest in “local expertise.”

The report also called for an Imperial County Civil Grand Jury review of IID every year, and asked for community members to come forward with relevant information for the grand jury regarding IID.

In its response, IID officials strongly objected to the use of the word “corruption” in the grand jury report, without any specifics on what was considered corrupt practices.

“If evidence exists of corruption at IID, it has not been shared with the district or included in this document,” the agency's response states.

“To employ such a term in the preparation of its final report is, at best, careless and imprecise; at worst, it is reckless and impugns the integrity of an organization that has served the public interest for nearly a century.”

Randall Carson was secretary of the 2008-09 fiscal year grand jury that developed the IID report, and is the foreman of the new grand jury, which will be seated today.

Carson said the corruption issue is part of the current grand jury's ongoing investigation of IID.

“If and when we disclose any instances of corruption, it would be through the proper channels, through the district attorney or perhaps through other law enforcement agencies,” he said.

Though IID officials are highly critical of the grand jury's report, at least they are talking about the issues, Carson said.