Department of Water Resources
California Water News
A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment
August 18, 2009
1. Top Items–
Major water action vowed, but all sides are skeptical
Fresno Bee
Package of water bills seek to balance thirst of water users and environment
Mercury News
Liquid assets new priority for lawmakers
Woodland Daily Democrat
Locals head to state water hearings
Hanford Sentinel
Boating event sees low turnout
Stockton Record
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Major water action vowed, but all sides are skeptical
Fresno Bee-8/18/09
By E.J. Schultz
Lawmakers say they are determined to start solving the state's water problems this week.
"I think we have to get something done on water, period. Expect major action," Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, said.
But with only four weeks left in the legislative session, groups on all sides of the debate are skeptical that Democrats and Republicans can strike a deal to stabilize city and farm water supplies while reversing the environmental decline of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Informational hearings on legislation will start today and continue for two weeks. At that point, a special joint committee of the Senate and Assembly is scheduled to convene, leaving only two weeks for compromise.
"We don't have a lot of time left," said Sen. Dave Cogdill, R-Modesto, a lead water negotiator. But he said he is confident that "if we don't get it done by the regular session, (Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger) will call a special session on water and keep after it."
Southern California cities and San Joaquin Valley farms are pushing for a canal to send water around the Delta and bring more certainty to their supplies. Environmental opposition to the decades-old proposal has somewhat softened, but Delta residents and farmers remain steadfastly opposed because they fear a water grab.
On the east side of the valley, agricultural groups continue to push for new dams – and they have the backing of Republicans. But environmentalists favor other alternatives, such as groundwater storage and recycling.
In fits and starts, the governor and lawmakers have sought a major water deal for three years. But like previous leaders, they've been paralyzed as regional interest groups fight for their own needs.
"After a while it's hard to remember we're one state and we're supposed to work together on problems," said Phil Isenberg, chairman of the Delta Vision Task Force, created by the governor in 2006 to seek solutions to the Delta's woes.
The three-year drought has fallowed farmers' fields and left farmworkers without jobs. The anger has overflowed into the streets in the form of marches and protests against Delta environmental pumping restrictions, which farmers say have made their problems worse.
Meanwhile, the ecosystem collapse in the Delta – which environmentalists partially blame on the pumping – has forced the shutdown of commercial salmon fishing and endangered Delta smelt.
The starting point is a five-bill package by Democrats that focuses on the Delta. The key bills would form the Delta Stewardship Council, a seven-member panel appointed by the governor and Legislature. The council would be charged with adopting a plan by 2011 to restore the Delta, while assuring more-reliable water supplies.
At present, more than 200 agencies have some role in the Delta, a 700-mile maze of rivers, tributaries and sloughs that is the hub of the state's complex water delivery system. But none of the agencies has the sweeping authority needed to press for major change, Isenberg said.#
http://www.sacbee.com/politics/story/2117532.html?mi_rss=State%2520Politics
Package of water bills seek to balance thirst of water users and environment
Mercury News-8/17/09
By Mike Taugher
With the state's budget resolved for now, lawmakers this week will take up a comprehensive reform package that is the most ambitious attempt in at least a decade to revamp management of the increasingly unreliable Delta.
Though the package is certain to draw debate, supporters say it is the best attempt in years to resolve the intensifying conflict between the thirst of California's cities and farms and the needs of a severely damaged Delta ecosystem.
The debate is being closely watched in Silicon Valley. Santa Clara County receives roughly half of its water supply from the delta, and the other half from local groundwater sources.
"These bills collectively are the closest thing I've seen in my career to a coherent plan for the future of both water supplies and the Delta," said Phil Isenberg, a former legislative leader and former mayor of Sacramento. He led a Delta Vision task force that recommended rebalancing the state's thirst and the Delta's health.
The bills largely reflect the goals of that task force, especially its insistence that the Delta ecosystem has played second fiddle to water demands for decades and that the two goals should have equal footing.
Still, the bills would completely reshape management of California's biggest watershed, and for that reason the effort is receiving support from those who say it is time for dramatic change, caution from those worried about the details, and skepticism from those who say the bills go too far or who contend the state is incapable of complying with existing laws.
Taken together, the bills:
Establish new authorities to run water systems and protect the Delta environment. A Delta "stewardship council" made up mostly of gubernatorial appointees would set the rules and a "water master" would police water management day to day. The council would decide whether to approve a canal to divert water around the Delta. In 1982, voters rejected a similar project, called the "peripheral canal," after Northern Californians saw it as a water grab by the south.
Impose fees on water users to finance water administration, new water investments and habitat restoration. The fees would apply to agencies that pump water out of the Delta and to water agencies, such as the East Bay Municipal Utility District and the San Francisco Public Utility District, that take water upstream and have traditionally watched Delta controversies from the sidelines.
Require the Bay Delta Conservation Plan that is being written to support a new canal and protect the environment to both defend species from extinction and to meet a higher standard of recovery for endangered species. It also sets a number of other conditions before the plan, a high priority of the governor's office, is approved.
Strengthens the role of local governments, such as Santa Clara County's , though it is unclear whether that role will be strong enough to satisfy the local governments. That issue is important because local governments generally oppose construction of a new Delta aqueduct and their power could make or break the canal plan.
For the first time regulate and monitor how groundwater is used in California. The bills would also take a closer look at water rights in a state where some users are under scrutiny for possibly using water without legal rights to it.
What is not in the bills is also has major potential for debate. Although they would set fees for water agencies, there is no larger financing tool to restore wetlands, build dams, clean up pollution or pursue other projects that water users say are the public's responsibility.
"We recognize that we are responsible for paying the costs of projects that will directly benefit us," said Tom Birmingham, general manager of the Westlands Water District, the nation's largest irrigation district and one that is particularly vulnerable to water-supply cuts in the Delta. "But the state and federal contractors should not be viewed as the ATM for the state of California."
Birmingham, like one of his staunchest critics, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance executive director Bill Jennings, compared the drive to reform state water policy to the Legislature's disastrous deregulation of the electricity industry in 1996.
Like the electricity sector, water deliveries are complex, vital and often taken for granted, and lawmakers say they will move quickly with water reform, as they did with electricity.
In each case, lawmakers turned to a legislative process that bypassed the normal reviews by policy committees in favor of an expedited path that relies on a conference committee of senators and Assembly members.
"They're approaching this like they approached the deregulation of the electricity industry," Birmingham said. "We will have the same type of unintended consequences."
Jennings also doubts the state's capacity to succeed where so far it has failed.
"If we can't enforce the existing laws, how are we going to enforce the new ones?" he said.
The delta is a roughly 750,000 acre maze of marshes, islands and channels where California's two largest rivers, the Sacramento and the San Joaquin, meet before emptying into San Francisco Bay. More than 20 million Californians get some or all of their drinking water from massive state and federal projects that pump water from Tracy south to Silicon Valley, Central Valley farmers and Los Angeles.
The delta is facing numerous problems. It's aging earthen levees are vulnerable to collapse in an earthquake. Several endangered fish species, particularly the delta smelt, have declined precipitously in number, prompting federal judges to reduce pumping. And a third year of drought has further reduced available water.
Decades of lawsuits, bond measures and a 1990s effort called the CalFed program, failed to solve the problems. Farmers and many city water districts support new dams and a canal around the eastern edge to bring water south more easily. Environmentalists and fishing groups oppose both, saying farmers should take less fresh water from the delta by using more drip irrigation and other conservation methods.
Despite criticism, the Legislative effort to fix it this week is gathering cautious support from a number of players.
"It has plenty of flaws that need to be addressed, but it's a terrific opportunity," said Barry Nelson, a water policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "A major opportunity comes around every 10 years. This is an extraordinary opportunity."
Although the state Senate's top leader, Sen. Darrell Steinberg, has said he would like to pass water reform legislation this year, it is unclear whether that is possible given the session ends next month.#
http://www.mercurynews.com/california/ci_13146086?source=rss&nclick_check=1
Liquid assets new priority for lawmakers
Woodland Daily Democrat-8/18/09
By Samantha Young
With California mired in a third year of drought and thousands of farm acres lying fallow, lawmakers are turning their attention from the state's budget crisis to another issue that is equally as charged: state water policy.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers of both parties want sweeping reforms that would overhaul how the state manages its water supplies. The difficulty, as with solving California's continual fiscal crises, will be finding compromise.
While the nation's most populous state has been growing, a half century-old delivery system that stores snowmelt in dozens of reservoirs and funnels the water to farms and cities throughout the state is showing signs of stress.
The growing demands on California's water supply also are wreaking havoc with the environment.
Water quality and conditions for fish have worsened in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, prompting federal restrictions on how much water can be pumped out of a region that serves as the hub of California's water-delivery network.
Even as problems grow more apparent with each year, state lawmakers have failed repeatedly to find common ground. Farmers, urban water districts, environmentalists, fishermen and others offer competing visions of what needs to be done.
"It's like trying to solve peace in the Middle East," said Laura Harnish, a San Francisco-based water expert at the Environmental Defense Fund. "People are very wedded to their water rights."
Lawmakers will return from their summer recess on Monday with their party leaders and the governor saying they want a comprehensive solution that will ensure adequate water supplies while protecting the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
The debate comes as farmers throughout the Central Valley are struggling to grow crops with less water after three years of below-average rain and snowfall in the Sierra Nevada. Federal pumping restrictions intended to protect vulnerable delta fish also have curtailed water deliveries. Thousands of acres have been taken out of production, orchard trees cut to stumps and farm workers laid off.
At the same time, cities throughout the state have imposed mandatory water rationing and limited the number of days homeowners can use outdoor sprinklers or wash their cars. Others have raised rates and imposed drought surcharges.
Farmers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, supported by Schwarzenegger and Republican lawmakers, have argued for more dams to supply the needs of a growing state. California's population is expected to grow from 38 million to 49 million by 2030.
Southern California water districts want to find a new way to funnel drinking water around the estuary, in part because of the court-imposed pumping restrictions and worsening water quality that becomes more expensive to treat.
The existing pumping system changes river flows in the delta and sucks fish in, killing them in large numbers. Water managers also are concerned about a breach in the 1,115 miles of earthen levees throughout the delta, which could disrupt water deliveries for months.
"Everybody understands if we don't act we will have disaster in the delta," said Department of Water Resources director Lester Snow.#
http://www.dailydemocrat.com/ci_13149732
Locals head to state water hearings
Hanford Sentinel-8/18/09
As state legislators grapple with complex reforms of the state’s water system amid withering drought, local farmers plan to be heard.
Organizers are setting up buses from Kings and Fresno counties to take people to Sacramento Tuesday to testify on a package of water bills moving through the Senate and the Assembly, said Sarah Woolf, spokeswoman for Westlands Water District.
Legislators have scheduled hearings to get public input on the five Democratic bills, which represent months of bipartisan negotiations about how to improve a water system strained by three consecutive years of drought.
The bills do not authorize additional water storage projects.
Local farmers, supported by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Republican lawmakers, have pushed for new dams to supply the growing needs of the state.#
http://hanfordsentinel.com/articles/2009/08/17/newsupdates/doc4a899d9834ff1368661545.txt
Boating event sees low turnout
Stockton Record-8/18/09
About 40 boats hit the water for Sunday's so-called "Million Boat Float," well short of the several hundred boats for which organizers had hoped.
Nonetheless, they called the event - to protest a peripheral canal - a success due to extensive media coverage.
The float had been hastily organized to precede today's opening hearing on a set of water bills that opponents fear could lead to construction of a canal. The lack of time to organize, and the cost of gas for each boat, may have contributed to the lower turnout, said boater Bruce Connelley.
Sunday, the boaters traveled from Antioch to Sacramento. Monday, they held a rally at the state Capitol, drawing a crowd of about 300 people, he said.
All told, about 500 people participated for at least part of the two-day event, he said.#
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090818/A_NEWS/908179984/-1/A_NEWS
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DWR’s California Water News is distributed to California Department of Water Resources management and staff, for information purposes, by the DWR Public Affairs Office. For reader’s services, including new subscriptions, temporary cancellations and address changes, please use the online page: http://listhost2.water.ca.gov/mailman/listinfo/water_news . DWR operates and maintains the State Water Project, provides dam safety and flood control and inspection services, assists local water districts in water management and water conservation planning, and plans for future statewide water needs. Inclusion of materials is not to be construed as an endorsement of any programs, projects, or viewpoints by the Department or the State of California.
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