Author Archives: Francine

Lawsuit Filed Against 10-Year Water Transfer Program

Massive Transfers Threaten North State Farms, Fish and Communities

Stop 10-year WaterTransfersAquAlliance filed a lawsuit in federal District Court against the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) and San Luis Delta Mendota Water Authority (SLDMWA) over their inadequate disclosure, avoidance of impacts, and mitigation of major water transfers from the Sacramento Valley through the Delta to the San Joaquin Valley. USBR and SLDMWA (Agencies) approved a 10-Year Water Transfer Program (Program) that could send up to 600,000 acre-feet of Sacramento Valley water south of the Delta – each year. 1 When combined with additional state approved transfers, the total could be over 800,000 acre-feet each year. If history is any guide, half of the transfer water may come from groundwater substitution. 2 Although widely opposed by NorthState residents and local government, the Agencies moved forward approving the use of groundwater substitution, fallowing, reservoir releases, and conservation to make the transfers possible. The Agencies proposed a thin veneer for mitigating impacts that depends only on monitoring the stressed hydrologic systems (groundwater, streams, and rivers) to produce data that will be reviewed in the future by USBR and the California Department of Water Resources (DWR). The lawsuit asks the court to declare that the Agencies’ Environmental Impact Statement/Report was arbitrary and capricious, ignored relevant new information and failed to meet minimum requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The Agencies failed to fully disclose the impacts from the Program and the numerous unknown or changing conditions that currently exist, such as where/how groundwater will be recharged and how the Program will further inhibit the USBR’s ability to meet Delta flow and water quality standards that have already been weakened multiple times in 2014 and 2015. The EIS/EIR also reached conclusions based on faith, making the assumption that existing groundwater depletions compounded by the Program might recover during future wet years. 3 AquAlliance Executive Director Barbara Vlamis explained, “Draining the last, relatively healthy watershed as a last ditch effort to prop up a failing system is madness. This Program will strain the Sacramento River Watershed and the Delta facilitating the continued abuses of growers in the western San Joaquin Valley who have already destroyed their own watershed. Let’s call it what it is – a water-grab that will exacerbate the severe impacts already caused by water exports to agricultural interests with junior water rights that chose to plant permanent crops in a desert.” AquAlliance has been joined by the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance and they are represented by the Aqua Terra Aeris law firm. Co-plaintiffs in the litigation also include Central Delta Water Agency, Local Agencies of the North Delta, and South Delta Water Agency that are represented by the Soluri Meserve law firm.

1. 600,000 acre-feet each year for 10 years is equivalent to what a city of 100,000 people would use in 200 years.
2. Groundwater substitution transfers take place when a water district sells its river water that is normally used to irrigate rice and instead continues growing rice by pumping well water. The grower makes money on both the water sale and the rice that is grown
3. FEIS/EIR page 3.3-57. “Though Sacramento Valley and other parts of California are currently noticing declining groundwater level trends, past groundwater trends are indicative of groundwater levels declining moderately during extended droughts and recovering to pre-drought levels after subsequent wet periods.”
4 The Environmental Water Account ended in 2007 (Bay Delta Conservation Plan Draft EIS/EIR 2013). The figures that continue in this row are based on a long-term contract with the Yuba County Water Agency to sell water

Additional Contacts:
Bill Jennings, CSPA: 209-464-5067; cell 209-938-9053
Osha Meserve, Soluri Meserve: 916.455.7300; cell 916-425-9914

Background

1) U.S. Bureau of Reclamation /SLDMWA 10-Year Water Transfer Program http://www.usbr.gov/mp/cvp/ltwt/ and http://www.usbr.gov/mp/nepa/nepa_projdetails.cfm?Project_ID=18361
2) Maps illustrating the groundwater conditions in the Sacramento Valley.
3) Past Water Transfers from the Sacramento Valley Through the Delta as reported in the Western Canal Water District Negative Declarations for 2010 and 2015.

Past transfers

*Table reflects gross AF purchased prior to 20% Delta carriage loss (i.e., actual amounts pumped at Delta are 20% less or more)
** Based on DWR’s measured unimpaired runoff (in million acre-feet) Abbreviations: AN – Above normal year type and BN – Below normal year type (http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/iodir/wsihist)

Groundwater-Surface Water Interaction in California’s Central Valley

Maurice Hall video6.12.2015:
From this year’s California Water Policy Seminar Series, presented by the UC Davis School of Law and the Center for Watershed Sciences, this article explains in detail how excessive groundwater pumping results in reduced streamflow in the tributaries and main stem of the Sacramento Valley River system. 

Back in the 1950s and ’60s, the Sacramento River and its tributaries were probably gaining about a million acre-feet per year on average from the groundwater. As pumping progressed through the years, the groundwater levels were drawn down… “Overall, it reduced the amount of water that was flowing from the groundwater into the Sacramento River tributaries, to the point where around 2009 … there was a million acre feet per year on average,  less water in the river than there would have been without groundwater pumping.”

Mr. Hall said they then did a model run, keeping the same rates of pumping, reservoir operations and other conditions the same as today. “The impact from the pumping that is occurring today hasn’t reached the river yet,” he said. “So in 10 – 20 years from now, there’s going to be even less flow in the Sacramento River than there would have been because of the pumping that’s happening today. It takes a while for the impacts to move through the aquifer. And that’s the case here; the impacts from today’s pumping haven’t even shown up yet in the river.”

Increased pumping is going to take years and perhaps even decades to show up at the river.

Click link to view:

Water scheme jeopardizes valley

Transfers from our region will devastate the landscape if left unchecked

– By Jim Brobeck, AquAlliance water-policy analyst – 

Jim B crop
Chico News & Review, 6.11.15: A massive water transfer scheme is moving rapidly forward out of sight of most people. In 12 of the past 14 years, Sacramento Valley water has been sold to San Joaquin Valley desert irrigators. So-called “temporary” or “emergency” water transfer/sales occurred without the benefit of comprehensive impact analysis, so AquAlliance sued the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in 2010 and 2014. The result was USBR’s agreement to disclose impacts to the economy and environment of California from 10 years of transfer/ sales, which is equivalent to what the city of Chico would use in 200 years.

If this program isn’t stopped, it will fundamentally change the Sacramento Valley.

AquAlliance assumed agencies would take seriously their role in disclosing program impacts and presenting viable alternatives. Sadly, the program’s September 2014 EIS/EIR failed to disclose the historically low Sacramento Valley aquifer levels or provide adequate analysis of escalating detrimental effects: collapsed fisheries and declining streamflow.

Marketing water, particularly during dry years, sounds reasonable only if you are unaware of the consequences. Compounding impacts from these sales is the fact that much of the water comes from “groundwater substitution”—where sellers are paid for river water and then draw water from the regional shared public aquifer system.

While California agencies are urging residents to conserve, the state and federal water agencies encourage and facilitate massive groundwater substitution transfers from the Sacramento Valley. Last month, as the giant pumps cranked up to sell water, AquAlliance filed a lawsuit in federal district court against the USBR and San Luis Delta Mendota Water Authority over their failure to disclose and avoid impacts to the communities, farms and fish of the Sacramento Valley.

The natural bounty of south-state watersheds and the Delta has been devastated by expanding irrigation to marginal lands in an otherwise arid landscape. Tulare Lake was drained. San Joaquin Valley rivers are dry by the time they reach the valley floor. Land is sinking. The speed with which groundwater levels decline is predictable in hindsight but, with foresight, avoidable.

AquAlliance needs your support to challenge the legality of this water heist. Water transfers have already destroyed the Owens and San Joaquin valleys and tipped the Delta toward collapse. Destabilizing what remains of the great Sacramento River watershed, California’s largest, is suicidal—for as goes the Sacramento River’s valley, so goes California.

Click here to view this Guest Comment at the Chico News & Review website.

North-to-South Water Transfers Encourage Inefficient Use of Agricultural Water

Comparative Water Use Efficiency of Growing Almonds in Kern County and in Butte County

Almond orchards a-floweringEven though almond yields may be larger per acre in Kern County, when using “crop per drop” as a criterion, Kern County orchards are only 39% as water use efficient as orchards in Butte County.

Click here to read our full report on the inefficiency of transferring water from north to south to grow almonds in Kern County.

 

Violations of Public Trust Lawsuit

Landmark Lawsuit Settlement Between Environmentalists and State Water Boards Strengthens Delta Protections

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is legal_victory-sm.jpg
Lawsuit filed May 2015 – Settlement secured July 2020

Enforceable transparency and analysis to replace years of failure to comply with existing water quality and flow standards.

SACRAMENTO, California — Three California environmental nonprofits secured a landmark settlement agreement with the California State Water Resources Control Board to uphold the common law Public Trust Doctrine and other legal protections for imperiled fish species in the Sacramento River and San Francisco Bay/Sacramento – San Joaquin Delta Estuary.

The lawsuit, filed in 2015 by the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (“CSPA”), the California Water Impact Network (“CWIN”), and AquAlliance, brought sweeping claims against the State Water Board. It alleged that the agency’s management of the Sacramento River and San Francisco Bay-Delta displayed an overarching pattern and practice of:

  • failure to comply with the Public Trust Doctrine;
  • failure to implement Sacramento River temperature management requirements;
  • failure to ensure that fish below dams be maintained in “good condition”; and
  • acceptance of water quality below minimum Clean Water Act standards.

Among other things, the settlement terms protecting the Sacramento and Bay-Delta include:

  • transparent evaluation of the specific Public Trust Doctrine factors the Water Board will consider in determining if new Bay-Delta Plan requirements will protect fish and wildlife;
  • a Sacramento River Temperature Management process that addresses controllable factors, including deliveries, and ensures adequate staffing, modeling and public review;
  • consideration of California Fish and Game Code section 5937, protecting fish below dams, in Bay-Delta Plan updates; and
  • transparent Public Trust analysis for Temporary Urgency Change Petitions.

> Read full Press Release

Click link to view:

Original 2015 Notice of Lawsuit Filing:

News square

On August 4, 2015, AquAlliance joined a lawsuit  that could alter the water transfers that are planned from the Sacramento Valley to desert agriculture this year and into the future. For almost a year and a half, we and our colleagues tried to sway the State Water Resources Control Board to adhere to the laws that slow water exports, to no avail. They have bent over backwards to allow the Bureau of Reclamation and the California Department of Water Resources to export more water from the Sacramento Valley to south of the Delta during these drought years using Temporary Urgency Change Petitions. To do so in 2014, the SWRCB allowed violations of laws governing water quality in the Delta and water held in Shasta and Oroville that hammered salmon from the Sacramento River. So far they are doing the same thing in 2015.

As many NorthState residents know, this valley’s present and future are tied to the laws that protect the environment. Without those laws, we have no mechanism to fight the hydrologic evacuation of this region, since we don’t have the political or economic clout to sway decision makers. The Owens Valley had its river diverted and groundwater evacuated before there were such laws. The valiant efforts of the Owens Valley Committee in 30+ years of litigation succeeded in only minimal restoration after using environmental laws enacted in the 1970s. And they still are suffering from the depletion of the surface and ground water in the Owens Valley. AquAlliance is trying to prevent damage in the Sacramento Valley from external forces before major damage is done.

AquAlliance now has two lawsuits going in 2015 to try to stop the repetition of the Owens and San Joaquin Valleys’ nightmares. The federal lawsuit over the 10-Year Water Transfer Program should alter transfers in future years and it is our belief that the new water quality lawsuit will slow or stop the water transfers this year.

Thank you for supporting our work on behalf of the communities, farms, and environment in the Sacramento Valley!

Background Material

1) The State Water Resources Control Board hasn’t always approved Temporary Urgency Change Petitions from the Bureau of Reclamation and the Department of Water Resources. In a 2005 denial of a TUCP, the SWRCB also made it clear that water quality standards in the Delta were started to protect agriculture. “The objective for salinity at the three stations in the interior southern Delta was first established in the 1978 Delta Plan for the protection of agricultural beneficial uses in the southern Delta.” [emphasis added] As it has turned out, helping agriculture in the Delta also helps fish and the reverse is equally true.

2) Plaintiff’s lawsuit alleges violations of:

  • The Bay-Delta Plan
  • The Clean Water Act
  • Central Valley Project Improvement Act
  • Delta Protection Act of 1959
  • Federally promulgated Estuarine Habitat Criteria for the Bay/Delta estuary at 40 CFR 131.37
  • Striped Bass spawning criteria between 1 April and 31 May
  • Suisun Marsh criteria
  • The Public Trust Doctrine and California case law
  • Article 10, Section 2 of the California Constitution
  • California Water Code, Code § 1435
  • SWRCB Decision -1641
  • SWRCB Decision -990
  • California Endangered Species Act
  • Section 5937 of the California Fish & Game Code
  • Section 7 of the Federal Endangered Species Act
  • Federal CVPIA doubling standard for salmon and steelhead;
  • The Governor’s 2014 Declaration of Drought Emergency
  • Plaintiffs’/Petitioners’ due process rights under both the state and federal constitution;
  • State Water Resources Control Board Resolution 68-16 (Oct. 24, 1968) (“State Antidegradation Policy”)
  • The Porter-Cologne Water Quality Control Act (“Porter-Cologne”)
  • California Water Code § 13000, et seq. (“Water Code”)
  • Title 27 of the California Code of Regulations (“CCR”) § 20090

Click link to view:

“Treading Water” Film Reveals Disturbing History

Video icon“Treading Water” is a film created by Jesse Dizard at CSU, Chico in 2013. It reveals disturbing history from the Sacramento Valley where trends in local water use and escalating attempts to transfer water are causing streams and wells to run dry. It provides a landscape view with interviews with local farmers, tribal members, fishermen, environmental activists, resource managers, and politicians.

The film was posted by KIVE, PBS in Sacramento and may be viewed on YouTube.

Drought In California Creates Water Wars Between Farmers, Developers, Residents

mic imageNPR’s Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross, 4.30.15: Fresno native Mark Arax has written about the war over water in his state for decades. Mr. Arax’s interview provides some valuable background on California’s water conflicts. However, AquAlliance has different views on some of his presentation.

TERRY GROSS: California’s drought and water crisis is creating a water war as corporate farms and orchards, small farmers, suburbs, cities and new real estate developments compete for water. My guest, Mark Arax, is writing a book about the water war. He covered the Central Valley for the LA Times and is the author of the books “West Of The West” and “The King Of California.”

Click here to listen to the interview or read the script.

Little fish’s disappearance is a big problem

Editorial squareChico Enterprise-Record, 4.23.15 – The little delta smelt is nearly extinct. You can almost hear the celebrations in the San Joaquin Valley from here.

Not so fast though.

As the drought worsens, the people vs. fish argument heats up south of the delta, whipped up by pandering valley politicians who say people shouldn’t suffer because of a little fish.

In the midst of this, the news about the delta smelt couldn’t have come at a more unfortunate time.

The state Department of Fish and Wildlife throws out nets in the delta in an attempt to count the endangered smelt, which are the size of a child’s pinkie. There weren’t many to count in the monthly trawling survey earlier this month.

The final tally: one.

Yes, one little fish.

As the San Jose Mercury News noted last week, the delta smelt were once the most plentiful fish in the delta. Now they are close to extinction in the wild, and are only thriving in hatcheries.

Good riddance, say farmers in the San Joaquin Valley.

The Farm Press Blog scoffs that farmers are suffering “based on the science of four buckets of minnows.” An attorney for the California Farm Bureau Federation laments that 20 million Californians have an unreliable water supply because of “one small little population of fish.”

Congressman Tom McClintock, a Southern Californian who once represented southern Butte County and now represents a district that stretches into the San Joaquin Valley, has never been a fan of fish or ecosystems. He’d still like to see Auburn Dam get built and just last month introduced in Congress the Save Our Water Act, which we believe has absolutely no chance of getting by the president or the courts. McClintock said the bill’s aim was to “stop the appalling practice of sacrificing tens of thousands of acre-feet of water for the comfort of fish when the human population is in immense peril.”

We’re sure some of his valley constituents eat up that hyperbole. To many of them, especially during the drought, the Sacramento River is merely a canal that delivers north state water to them.

It’s not the lifeblood of a region. It’s not a river system that supplies recreation, aquifer recharge and is teeming with fish, deer, turkeys, waterfowl and other riparian wonders.

The delta is the same way. It’s a place, not a thing.

Though some San Joaquin farmers lament the fact that water flows into the Pacific Ocean, the fact remains that the San Joaquin’s hope for a reliable water supply cannot include whatever they want from the delta.

Environmental laws and judges keep them from sucking the delta dry and ruining it like the San Joaquin River was ruined. Thank goodness.

Even if the delta smelt go extinct, that’s not the end of their worries. The smelt are disappearing because the delta is in peril. If the delta smelt go, other species will be next. It’s not just about one little, unglamorous fish. The problem of sucking too much water out of the Sacramento River and the delta won’t disappear just because the delta smelt do.

See also:  Editorial, “Little fish could be savior for overtapped delta” – 1.13.15

Important Public Water Meeting: Mon., April 13, Chico Elks Lodge

WHAT: The California Water Commission is holding a series of Public Meetings to provide information on the Water Storage Investment Program.The first public meeting will be held in at the Chico Elks Lodge. Monday, April 13, 2015. Public comments are scheduled for 7:15 pm. Click here for agenda.

WHO: California Water Commission

WHERE: Chico Elks Lodge, 1705 Manzanita Place

WHEN: Monday, April 13, 2014 – 5:30-8:30pm

In November 2014, California voters passed Proposition 1: a $7.5 billion water bond that funnels money into the State’s water supply systems. AquAlliance was opposed to Prop 1 because of provisions that were likely to fund “groundwater storage” via groundwater substitution water transfers. Our North Valley farms will have to compete for water as it flows out of the Sacramento Valley through the Delta and onto the desert farms served by Westlands Water District. Integrating Sacramento Valley aquifers into the state water supply would replace existing groundwater user rights with District ownership. Intentionally dropping aquifer levels to create “groundwater storage space” would dewater streams, strand existing wells and kill heritage valley oak trees.AquAlliance encourages you to attend this meeting to let the California Water Commission know there is overwhelming opposition to groundwater substitution water sales out of the North State.Talking points:

  1. Using Groundwater Substitution Transfers from senior water right holders to sell river water to junior contractors is an unacceptable groundwater storage strategy.
  1. Long term California drought as revealed in UC Berkeley studies conducted by Drs. Ingram, Malamud-Roam, and others cast doubt on the benefits of building large reservoir infrastructure that may remain depleted for years or decades. Is the Commission taking paleo-climate data into consideration?
  1. Scott Stine, a professor of geography and environmental studies at Cal State East Bay said, “We continue to run California as if the longest drought we are ever going to encounter is about seven years. We’re living in a dream world.” A 240 year drought occurred between 850AD-1090. After a 50 year wet respite a 180 year drought occurred between 1140AD-1320. Expanding surface storage makes no sense during extended dry periods.
  1. Groundwater interaction with streams provides flow for rivers, the Delta, and salmon. Intentional overuse of groundwater in the Sacramento Valley to meet statewide demand depletes future stream flow.
  1. Valley oaks are dependent on groundwater tables higher than 80’. Groundwater mismanagement in the southern Central Valley has extirpated natural oak groves that once thrived. River diverters participating in groundwater substitution transfers are shifting to groundwater in the Sacramento Valley during dry periods. The dropping aquifer levels threaten heritage valley oak groves.
  1. Groundwater storage projects are appropriate in the urban areas of southern California where depleted aquifer levels already exist.
  1. Groundwater storage projects in the Sacramento Valley should not include intentional aquifer overdraft meant to create storage space.
  1. The Commission must address the over-appropriation of streams in the Central Valley Watershed by awarding funds to projects that need no additional water rights permits that involve new diversions, new or changes in places of use and new purposes of use.
  1. Storage projects must define health and safety uses of public water storage in drought periods.