Author Archives: Francine

Press Release: AquAlliance and Allies Sue Glenn Colusa Irrigation District

Transfers, Groundwater Overuse, Voluntary Agreements, and Lots of $$$

February 3, 2025
Contact: Barbara Vlamis, AquAlliance, 530-895-9420

Chico, CA. AquAlliance, Central Delta Water Agency, the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, and the California Water Impact Network filed a challenge to the final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) for the Water Reduction Program Agreement Between the Sacramento River Settlement Contractors Nonprofit Mutual Benefit Corporation, Individual Sacramento River Settlement Contractors, and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in Sacramento Superior Court on January 28, 2025.

The lawsuit alleges violations of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) with Glenn Colusa Irrigation District’s approval of the FEIR, such as:

  • The FEIR failed to disclose the alarming subsidence trends in the Colusa Subbasin where much of the Project’s activities will occur.
  • The Project description only provided a general description of the proposed drought resiliency projects, including the proposed conjunctive use program to artificially recharge surface and groundwater supplies, and never identified where each project will be implemented or what the scale of these projects will be.
  • The FEIR failed to analyze the impacts of increased groundwater use on already overtaxed, declining groundwater. It never identified where 30 new groundwater wells will be constructed or where existing groundwater wells will be utilized.
  • The California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s extensive early Notice of Preparation comments were neglected by GCID, which left the impacts analysis on Groundwater Dependent Ecosystems, Interconnected Surface Water, and groundwater substitution pumping.
  • The FEIR failed to disclose that throughout the last decade, state and federal agencies have attempted to negotiate and solidify, in secret and without public input, “Voluntary Agreements” with Sacramento River Settlement Contractors whereby the agencies pay Sacramento River Settlement Contractors to reduce their demand through the implementation of water-related projects like those being contemplated under this Project.

AquAlliance’s Executive Director, Barbara Vlamis, explained, “The multi-decades efforts by the California Department of Water Resources and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to squeeze ever more water from the streams and groundwater basins of the Sacramento Valley are repeating the destructive patterns in the Owens and San Joaquin valleys. If the agencies truly wanted to find any potential water that wouldn’t destroy the Sacramento River’s valley watersheds, they would have conducted real science over the last four decades. But no, science would have demonstrated that bleeding another watershed dry would destroy the last, somewhat healthy watershed to benefit desert agriculture in the south-state. To represent the small farmers, communities, and the natural heritage, we had to pursue our legal options.”

This project is financed with public funds. The Bureau will provide $250,000,000 and asks only that “The SRSC shall use at least 50.1% of the Inflation Reduction Act proceeds to invest in drought resiliency projects.” DWR is allocating almost $55 million.

The lawsuit asks the court to declare that GCID’s FEIR failed to meet minimum requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act and that all approvals be set aside.

AquAlliance has been joined by the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance and the California Water Impact Network, and they are represented by the Aqua Terra Aeris law firm. Co-plaintiffs in the litigation also include Central Delta Water Agency and they are represented by the Soluri Meserve law firm.

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AquAlliance is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit public benefit corporation established to defend northern California waters and to challenge threats to the hydrologic health of the northern Sacramento River watershed to sustain family farms, communities, creeks and rivers, native flora and fauna, vernal pools and recreation. www.aqualliance.net

Background

A) Lawsuit filed: https://aqualliance.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/25.01.28-Petition-GCID.pdf.

B) Maps of subsidence created by AquAlliance from DWR data that is ignored in the GCID FEIR:
https://aqualliance.net/ground-water-issues/subsidence/subsidence-in-colusa-glenn-tehama-sacramento-counties-2015-2024/
C) Historic maps illustrating the groundwater conditions in the Sacramento Valley.
DWR stopped producing these maps after 2021. The public must now track the data through numerous Groundwater Sustainability Agencies.
https://data.cnra.ca.gov/dataset/northern-sacramento-valley-groundwater-elevation-change-maps

1 GCID 2024. Agenda Memo 12/30/2024 Agenda Item No. 6.B. Resolution No. 2024-14. “WHEREAS, the State of California has provided funding from FY 2022-23 Senate Bill 154 for Participation in the FC Program [Sacramento River Flow Contribution Program], and $54,884,160 is available to Sacramento River Settlement Contractors that participate in the HR&L Program [“Healthy Rivers & Landscapes Program”]; and…”


					

		
												
							
									
			
				


				
					
	

		

						
Subsidence in Colusa, Glenn, Tehama & Sacramento Counties 2015-2024

			
						

							

			
					


				

			

Appendix A: AquAlliance Et Al. Comments
SRSC Water Reduction Program Environmental Assessment





AquAlliance used DWR data to illustrate what should have been in the CEQA analysis of the so-called Drought Resilience plans to disclose the seriousness of subsidence occurring more broadly than is known and very significantly in certain geographic areas.





CLICK HERE TO VIEW MAPS





 


 






					

		
												
							
									
			
				


				
					
	

		

						
New Lawsuit Challenges GCID EIR (January 2025)

			
						

							

			
					


				

			





We are suing Glenn Colusa Irrigation District — again. Are you with us? On behalf of all NorthState residents and the environment, we have filed many lawsuits in our 15 years, and most were successful. But the bad boys never go away when so much money is made with water. And this time GCID and its companion rice growers are provided almost $300,000,000 in federal and state funds to put in the infrastructure to begin the earnest takeover of the Tuscan aquifer and other groundwater basins that we fought for so long.


View the petition:






Note: While the petition looks very long due to exhibits, the first 21 pages offer manageable reading.





					

		
												
							
									
			
				


				
					
	

		

						
Comments on 2 Revised Subbasin Groundwater Sustainability Plans

			
						

							

			
					


				

			

In April 2024, AquAlliance submitted comments for the Colusa & Corning Revised Subbasin Groundwater Sustainability Plans.





    

  • The Colusa Subbasin covers the majority of valley portion Glenn and Colusa counties.
    • 




  • The Corning Subbasin covers southern Tehama County and northeastern Glenn County.
    • 




  • View Groundwater Subbasin Boundaries map
    • 






Two excerpts from our comments are highlighted below to catch your attention. Click these links for the full comments.



















Highlights:





1) “Sadly, the energy and commitment to address the known challenges [in the Colusa Subbasin] are lacking… The Revised GSP may contend that “The GSAs have expressed a clear and firm commitment to develop and implement these Programs on a clear and specific timeline to address and prevent overdraft, groundwater level decline, and subsidence and to mitigate potential undesirable results for drinking water well users during the GSP implementation period,” but will delay domestic well mitigation until it writes a plan by January 2026 and  demand management implementation until January 2027 if it is still needed and they have a program in place. The ‘clear and firm commitment’ is just big talk for a Subbasin with people and the environment in deep trouble as AquAlliance demonstrates in these comments. Future plans, programs, monitoring, reporting, ‘preparing to implement,’ ‘evaluation of groundwater conditions,’ ‘overdraft concerns,’ mean nothing when “In particular, the GSAs have identified declining groundwater levels over the past 15 to 20 years in the Orland-Artois and Arbuckle- College City areas.” (p. 6-3) Who do the GSAs, power brokers in the Subbasin, local government, and the State of California think they are fooling?!”










2) ‘The [Colusa] Plan assumes that groundwater sustainability of the Subbasin will be achieved in part because Central Valley Project and other surface waters will be available for recharge. It fails to note that groundwater recharge alters the rights to groundwater[1] and may not be a solution acceptable to Subbasin users. It also fails to demonstrate that creating the space for recharge harms groundwater dependent farms and residential property as well as streams and habitat for myriad species. Conjunctive use with recharge has long been the plan of Glenn Colusa Irrigation District and the Bureau of Reclamation – to take over the basin and manipulate it for the benefit of moneyed interests, not the local people or environment.”





[1] Los Angeles v. Glendale (1943) 23 Cal.2d 68, 76-78; Los Angeles v. San Fernando (1975) 14 Cal.3d 199, 258-60; Stevens v. Oakdale Irrigation District (1939) 13 Cal.2d 343, 352-43; Crane v. Stevinson (1936) 5 Cal. 2d 387, 398.






					

		
												
							
									
			
				


				
					
	

		

						
IN THE NEWS: Glenn and Colusa groundwater agencies finalize new sustainability plan

			
						

							

			
					


				

			

Concerns persist about agriculture, domestic wells, and subsidence










 
By Todd Bishop for the Valley Mirror   





AquAlliance is grateful that the Sacramento Valley Mirror newspaper remains interested in reporting on local water issues, so that our efforts on behalf of the public are noticed.





Read the April 24, 2024 article below. To download the two pages of the article, click the DOWNLOAD link following.





Note:





    

  • The Corning Subbasin covers southern Tehama County and northeastern Glenn County.
    • 




  • The Colusa Subbasin covers the majority of valley portion Glenn and Colusa counties.
    • 




  • View Groundwater Subbasin Boundaries map.
    • 











BishopRevisedColusaGSPApprovedSacValleyMirror042424Download










To subscribe to the Sacramento Valley Mirror: https://www.patreon.com/valleymirror















					

		
												
							
									
			
				


				
					
	

		

						
Remembering Kim

			
						

							

			
					


				

			

by Barbara Vlamis





Kyran “Kim” Daniel Mish was born in 1952 and escaped the confines of human life in 2023.










His professional experience was mostly concentrated in the development and deployment of large-scale computational models for engineered and natural systems (see more below). My first really clear memory of Kim was at the Barris’ Durham home in the 1990s, where he almost danced around the living room as he explained how aquifers work. Part of the drama was a glass with stones in it to illustrate pores. The energy and enthusiasm were a little overwhelming at first, but contagious. Not long after that, Kim described the form of science used by California water agencies as “put your finger in an electrical outlet to see what happens!” (See footnote for later elaboration. [1])





Kim’s humor was endlessly available and entertaining in the depths of very serious discussions together about challenging local, state, and federal agencies. “Their approach is to make a laundry list of assertions … that sound technical, but that really have no substance. It’s the environmental version of what… [Stephen] Colbert refers to as ‘truthiness,’ i.e., something that is intended to sound correct, but not to be correct.”





In December 1995, Kim presented material to help the public and policy makers grasp the issues with the Butte Basin Water Users Association groundwater model (lucky to have it on video). The audience was filled with skeptics, farmers, and county government folks who thought their first steps to understand the groundwater basin were unassailable. He dazzled them into silence.





In 2008 he returned and spoke about the importance of working together on science that would shape the future. Before he moved into natural and engineered systems, Kim provided one of his favorite quotes from author William Gibson: “The future is already here. It’s just unevenly distributed.” In other words, “if you know where to look, you can see the future,” he added. He complimented the foresight of the Bidwells who made decisions about land use planning, parks, and education from which the current population benefits and lauded local organizations that “want to make things better for everybody.” 





Years later, although he lived many states away, Kim was still interested in our efforts in northern California. “There are several pithy retorts here, including the all-too-obvious realization that these statements ignore the fact that subsidence is by definition nonlinear (hence the ‘small disturbances can’t produce the problem’ — according to that view, then climate change cannot occur, either, nor can ANY irreversible phenomenon!), and the equally obvious problem that the absence of short-term evidence of subsidence doesn’t imply that it’s not happening, because the cause and the effect of subsidence in clays can be widely separated in time… just ask the folks in the San Joaquin Valley!” (2013)





Kim confided that his attachment to northern California started in his young adult years when he lived in the Salmon Mountains west of Mount Shasta. At that time, his background was in biology, so he loved hiking in the conifers and worked on the effort to stop a paved road for logging that would have devastated lands used for sacred purposes by the Karuk, Tolowa, and Yurok Indian tribes. [2]





In 2014, Kim put his talents to work to benefit the public and California during the State’s effort to construct the Twin Tunnels that planned to syphon massive amounts of water from the Sacramento River for points south of the Delta. He also evaluated the One Tunnel proposal in 2022. Of course we communicated many times during the near collapse of Oroville Dam in February 2017. “I’ve been really worried about the safety of the reservoir since the main spillway blew out last week. We’ve seen this movie before: it’s eerily similar to the decisions (and engineering gaffes) that almost took out Glen Canyon Dam about 30 years ago.”





One of his college-aged sons asked him some time ago why he worked with me so long. He replied, “I worked with you because you and I were both on the same side in these various debates. He asked me what side we were on, and my answer was ‘the side of reality.’ I told him that you wanted accurate science and engineering in these water projects, and so did I, so we found ourselves working together.” (2008)





There was a period where our friendship became more personal as we explored the pain and distress of losing loved people. It finally felt like I could contribute to this dear man during a time when great intellect was not sufficient. In closing, here is what I placed on the obituary web site: “Dear Kim, Your absence from Earth brings waves of wishes: to hear your voice, to engage with your tremendous energy and mind, to plan how to stop the next insidious water plan, to hear about your love of places and people. You are greatly missed!”










Professional Background (written by Kim Mish in 2022 with critique of the One Tunnel project):





Kyran Daniel Mish has long provided pro bono independent technical assessments about topics of relevance to California resource allocation practices. His service in these roles has been motivated by the desire to include the public interest in resource allocation decisions, and his work has involved collaborations with various environmental organizations in California.





Mish has served on the Engineering and Applied Mathematics faculty of the University of California, Davis, and in the faculty ranks of the School of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science at the University of Oklahoma. He served as the founding director of the Center for Computational Engineering at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, and although he no longer lives in California, he continues to find opportunities to contribute to public discussions on topics in engineering and science in the Golden State. Mish’s educational background is from the University of California, Davis, where he earned a B.S. in applied mathematics, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Civil Engineering.










[1] Mish, Kyran D. 2008. Commentary on Ken Loy GCID Memorandum. p. 7.
“Towards a Better Plan for Characterizing Aquifer Response





“The GCID [Glenn Colusa Irrigation District] plan is not scientific research in any recognizable form. It is more akin to Russian Roulette, in that “the experiment” amounts to acting out a proposed plan of action without due regard for the risks inherent in that plan. If we want to know what happens when we stick our finger in an electric outlet, we can either (a) just stick our finger in the outlet and thus “do the experiment” or we could instead (b) learn more about the physics of fingers and outlets and thus construct a good model for the action, but with a more realistic assessment of the risks involved. Note that only the latter approach ‘does no harm.’





“Learning how an aquifer responds to large-scale groundwater extraction by simply pumping water out of it without due attention to the risks and uncertainties involved does not constitute science, any more than jamming a finger into a wall outlet is science. The aquifer deserves better science that this, and so do the people of Northern California.”





[2] For a comprehensive history of this proposed road project, see material by Professor Emeritus JeDon Emenhiser, Department of Politics, Cal Poly Humboldt: https://politics.humboldt.edu/g-o-road-controversy-american-indian-religion-and-public-land.

					

		
												
							
									
			
				


				
					
	

		

						
Comments Submitted on Bay Delta Water Quality Control Plan

			
						

							

			
					


				

			

1.18.24: AquAlliance spent significant time submitting comments on the draft Staff Report/Supplemental Environmental Document (“SED”) for the Water Quality Control Plan for the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Estuary (“Plan”).


The State Water Resources Control Board’s plan seeks to curtail some water diversions from streams and rivers to help struggling fish and water quality (the plan has been delayed for 20 years). The SWRCB is at fault for the water quality and fish mess because over the decades they approved water diversions five times over what could ever be available.1 They finally produced this EIR equivalent that at least opines that surface water curtailment could affect groundwater use, but they have no mitigation prepared to stop groundwater damage as required by CEQA. This is where AquAlliance comes in, pointing out the plan’s failures to encourage corrections.










1 The unimpaired runoff of the Sacramento River basin is 21.6 MAF, but the consumptive use claims are an extraordinary 120.6 MAF – 5.6 times more claims than there is available water.



					

		
												
							
									
			
				


				
					
	

		

						
Lawsuit Filed Against DWR 

			
						

							

			
					


				

			

1.19.24: As we continue to fight the One Tunnel project, AquAlliance joined five other NGOs on January 19, 2024, to challenge the Environmental Impact Report in court. Our role starts with our expertise to tear into the EIR’s failure to acknowledge how it would impact groundwater in the Sacramento Valley and foothills and facilitate destructive water transfers. This particular EIR is very vulnerable to litigation since DWR didn’t even analyze the impacts from operating a tunnel – they just looked at construction impacts, which is illegal under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). 

					

		
												
							
									
			
				


				
					
	

		

						
“One Tunnel” Court Victory!

			
						

							

			
					


				

			

1.17.24: AquAlliance, other NGOs, and a few local governments succeeded in a challenge to the funding of the Newsom Administration’s One Tunnel project. This is a huge victory. The California Dept. of Water Resources (DWR) tried to issue bonds to fund the One Tunnel to avoid having the voters or legislature agree to fund it. The effort failed! 


You will recall that no matter what these massive diversion projects are called – Peripheral Canal, Bay Delta Conservation Plan, Twin Tunnels, Delta Conveyance, One Tunnel – the goal has been and is to have an easier time siphoning more water out of the Sacramento Valley and River, mostly for desert agriculture.


AquAlliance has been involved in fighting each effort since we were formed in 2009 – with significant success. Because we represent the watershed under threat and operate out of the county where the State Water Project starts (Oroville Dam), we have unique standing for court cases. Additionally, AquAlliance is the only activist NGO in California that has groundwater protection as its primary focus and is a leader in challenging water transfers.  


 To read more, go to Maven’s Notebook: 
COURTHOUSE NEWS: California judge rules state can’t issue bonds to finance Delta tunnel project

					

		
												
							
									
			
				


				
					
	

		

						
AquAlliance Speaks Out on Tuscan Water District ‘Water Grab’

			
						

							

			
					


				

			

AquAlliance Executive Director Barbara Vlamis
was quoted in the Los Angeles Times (Dec. 2, 2023):









See the full article by Staff Writer Ian James in the Los Angeles Times

















“You put in the infrastructure, you start taking over the groundwater basin for private profit, and it changes everything… It becomes this economic engine for these people that want to take over ownership.”


















Vlamis argued the area’s current overuse of groundwater, which is not as severe as other parts of the Central Valley, could easily be addressed through conservation, estimating that if growers would save about 5%, that would be enough.









Vlamis said banking water would require a drawdown of the aquifer to create storage space, which would diminish the flow of streams, threaten groundwater-dependent trees and put shallow domestic wells at risk of running dry.









“I think it is a damaging effort that could potentially destroy this region as we know it.”









Even though Tuscan Water District supporters say they do not intend to transfer water out of the area and have restrictions in place to insure that the water stays local, Vlamis said the district’s bylaws could easily be changed to allow for water to be moved out of the area, and the county ordinance simply outlines a procedure that would have to be followed. 









“Even if that’s not their intention, to transfer water out of here, all it takes is an emergency proclamation by the governor, and all local ordinances and everything are thrown out,” Vlamis said. “You may have honorable intentions, but once the state wants more water, and you’ve put in the infrastructure to facilitate this, all bets are off.”









Vlamis said she’s convinced there is a longstanding interest among state and federal water officials to “integrate” the county’s groundwater into the state’s supplies, allowing for water to be transferred out of the area.







See the full article by Staff Writer Ian James in the Los Angeles Times