Author Archives: Francine

Scope and impact of Delta twin tunnels is starting to hit home

Click to see AquAlliance notes on this editorial

by Stuart Leavenworth (sleavenworth@sacbee.com)

Published Sunday, March 17, 2013

The late comedian Jimmy Durante used to do a Broadway shtick in which he led a live elephant down the street and then was confronted by a police officer.

“What are you doing with that elephant?” the policeman would ask.

Durante’s reply: “What elephant?”

As state and federal officials push ahead with their Bay Delta Conservation Plan, the unavoidable elephant in the room is the 35-mile twin tunnels they propose to build through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. BDCP supporters would prefer the media not focus so much on these tunnels. They note that the conservation plan seeks to restore 57 different wildlife species and create roughly 145,000 acres of wetlands and other habitat. The new “conveyance” system, they argue, would improve water reliability to areas south of the Delta and provide an insurance policy against earthquakes and saltwater intrusion.

Yet the footprint of these tunnels is pretty hard to ignore, especially with new details released Thursday by state and federal officials. Each tunnel would be 40 feet in diameter, and the construction shafts needed to build the tunnels would be 60 feet in diameter, bored roughly 150 feet beneath the Delta and crossing beneath the Sacramento River two times.

Boring of these tunnels would produce “tunnel muck,” as it is artfully described in Chapter 4 of the BDCP revised administrative draft. This is not just soil, but conditioning agents (such as bentonite and polymers) that would help make the job easier for massive boring machines. About 7,000 cubic yards of tunnel muck would be produced each day. Overall the project expects to generate a total of 22 million cubic yards of tunnel muck, enough to cover 100 football fields to a height of roughly 100 feet.

So what are state and federal officials going to do with all this muck?

“Before the muck, or elements of the muck, can be reused or returned to the environment, the muck must be managed, and at a minimum, go through a drying/water-solids separation process,” the report states. To do this, construction crews would deposit the muck in storage areas along the tunnel “ranging in size from approximately 100 to 570 acres. In total approximately 1,595 acres will be devoted to tunnel muck storage,” with some of the muck left there permanently.

BDCP supporters note that the project has been downsized. Originally the tunnels were designed to move 15,000 cubic feet per second of water. Now the gravity-fed twin tunnels would carry a maximum of 9,000 cfs, and only when the river is running at more than four times that flow.

Even so, the total acreage needed just for muck storage is more than six times the size of the downtown Sacramento railyard. And this is just part of the footprint. In Sacramento County, in the stretch of the river between Clarksburg and Courtland, contractors would construct three water intakes covering 2,700 acres of riverfront. Below the intakes would be a 925-acre forebay, requiring the excavation of 6 million cubic yards of earth. At the end of the tunnels would be another new forebay, of 840 acres, requiring excavation of 14 million cubic yards of earth.

At Thursday’s press conference, state Fish and Wildlife Director Chuck Bonham touted all the acres of marshes, grasslands and other habitats that would be restored under the plan. “We are talking about a restoration project potentially observable from space,” Bonham said.

Yet before all that restoration happens, an ugly construction project would be visible from space. A bucolic stretch of southwest Sacramento County would be transformed into vast industrial site, with new electric power lines, access roads, pumps, pipelines and tunnel muck storage sites.

In much of the north state, the biggest concern over BDCP has been the potential impact on water rights. One of my colleagues on the editorial board is convinced that the tunnels and export of water to Southern California “will suck Northern California dry.”

I don’t share that fear. Even with the tunnels, the State Water Project and Central Valley Project would still be subject to the Endangered Species Act, flow regulations set by the State Water Resources Control Board and court rulings on water rights. Department of Water Resources Director Mark Cowin anticipates the tunnel project would deliver an average of 4.8 million to 5.6 million acre-feet of water each year.

Depending upon which amount is ultimately diverted on an annual basis, that would be either 10 percent less than the average diversion the last two decades, or a mere 5 percent more.

Neither scenario would dry up Northern California, where we are less than efficient in our water use, especially in the city of Sacramento.

For me, the real questions about his project are at least threefold:

• Does the payoff for Southern California justify the construction impact on Sacramento County and the Delta? How much energy will be needed to construct these massive tunnels and dispose of the muck? What pollution will result, including carbon emissions in a state committed to reducing its carbon footprint?

• Can water contractors pay for it? The project is expected to cost $24.5 billion (including operations and maintenance over 50 years), but every large construction project has cost overruns. How large will they be? Will water contractors cover those or attempt to pass them onto taxpayers?

• What will be the impact on salmon? Reducing diversions in the south Delta might help endangered smelt, but new intakes on the Sacramento River could directly harm salmon and also reduce flows through the north Delta. Will those reduced flow affect their mysterious migrations back to spawning grounds in the Sacramento Valley? Can that even be scientifically analyzed?

We will get some more answers in coming weeks as new BDCP reports are rolled out. But this may not be a situation where more information will necessarily make us feel more comfortable about the 9,000-cfs elephant in the room.

© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.

Troubled Waters: Water advocates see dry monitoring wells as red flags

The recent discovery that two important Butte County water-monitoring wells have gone dry has increased concerns about proposed longterm pumping of Northstate water to Southern California.

Located in the Neal Road area, the wells measure local water quality by pumping water
up from Butte County’s main underground water supply, the Tuscan aquifer. On Jan. 29 the county’s Public Works Department informed the Board of Supervisors that the wells were dry. The information was on the board’s consent agenda, and the item was pulled by Supervisor Maureen Kirk for further discussion.

Barbara Vlamis, executive director for local water watchdog group AquAlliance, called the
empty wells “a red flag or a canary in the coal mine” that caution against proposals such as one by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to send local water south.

That proposal, still in its formative stages and known as the “North to South Water Transfer Program” (see Newslines, “Water worries,” Jan. 13, 2011), would take large amounts of water, 600,000 acre-feet per year, from California’s biggest water supply, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and send it to arid regions in Southern California over a 10-year period.

“This project is the most immediate and significant threat to our water,” Vlamis said.
She added that many local districts are also preparing to sell water to the south in other projects. “These districts think they can manage the fallout, but greed is too big a problem to manage,” Vlamis said, referring to financial incentives offered to Northstate politicians.

She explained that many dry areas south of the Bay Area and in Central California that purchase water from the north have huge political clout, such as the Westlands Water District, near Fresno, which is the largest agricultural water district in the United States. Vlamis said the temptation to carelessly sell the area large quantities of water is great due to the few political representatives found in the North State’s lightly populated rural districts.

“We’re water rich but politically poor,” she said. “Whereas places down south like Westlands are the opposite: water poor but politically rich.”

One person not surprised by the dry wells is Paul Gosselin, director of the Butte County Department of Water and Resource Conservation. He says the wells were located near fractured rock areas, which can give unreliable readings. Echoing Gosselin is Christina Buck, water resources scientist with the same department. Buck said she’s seen wells dry up here in past years, such as in 2008 and 2009. However, she said, several rainy years followed, and the wells became “wet” again in May 2012.

Vlamis cited this as a good reason to be cautious about sending water south. “The years 2010 and 2011 were good water-replenishing years,” Vlamis said. “So if it took from
2009 to 2012 for those dried wells to recover, it warrants extreme concern for exploiting this resource.”

Buck shares this concern, but said the recent dry wells are part of a downward trend in local water levels documented since 2000. She is not sure of the reasons, but says levels may have been aggravated by the drought between 2006 and 2009. Gosselin and Buck say their most pressing concern is to create a comprehensive inventory and analysis report on the specific causes of the changing water levels and sustainability.

Buck said such a report is overdue; one like it has not been generated by her department since 2001. Proposals for it are in the works, and she hopes work will begin on it “in the next few months.”

Vlamis said uncertainty as to the cause of the lowering levels represents a “smoking gun” that speaks against allowing local water to be purchased by Southern California in large quantities. Further, she warns that the North to South project may be approved before the county’s comprehensive report is finished.

However, Pete Lucero, public affairs officer for the U.S. Department of Reclamation’s MidPacific Region, said that finalization for the project is at least a year away, as an environmentalimpact report will probably not be complete until the end of 2013. After that, public comment and review will be solicited before the final details are worked out, he explained.

Still, Vlamis will be making her case on the possible dangers of the North to South project at Chico State’s Sustainability Conference March 7.

“If we don’t know why our water levels are declining or how long it takes to replenish the
groundwater, then we must exercise caution,” Vlamis said.

Click here to view the Chico News & Review article (Feb. 7, 2013):

[Note: There are some factual errors and misunderstandings in the article, but the general information is good and AquAlliance appreciates the coverage.]

Plaintiffs Prevail in Challenge to Federal Water Transfers

August 2011:

AquAlliance, the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance and the California Water Impact Network sued the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Bureau) in 2010 to protect the economy and the environment of the northern Sacramento Valley. The plaintiffs prevailed in August 2011 because no water was transferred over the two year project period and the comprehensive environmental review that was sought is being developed (see 10-Year Water Transfer Program).

The Bureau’s Environmental Assessment (EA) and Findings of No Significant Impact (FONSI) for the 2010-2011 Water Transfer Program revealed plans to export 395,000 acre-feet of Central Valley Project (CVP) and State Water Project (SWP) water to buyers south of the San Francisco Bay Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta. To replace the water sold to San Joaquin Valley growers in low-priority water districts, the plan would have permitted Sacramento Valley surface water right holders to substitute 154,237 acre-feet of ground water to continue rice production. The plaintiff groups alleged that the EA/FONSI violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) because, among other things, it:

  • Failed to support the Bureau’s proposed finding of no significant impact,
  • Contained a fundamentally flawed alternatives analysis, and
  • Inadequately analyzed the impacts from implementing the two years transfer program.

The lawsuit sought comprehensive NEPA environmental review for the water transfer program and, as mentioned above, will be released soon. Repeated water transfer projects in the last decade have all occurred without the benefit of thorough federal or state environmental analysis, which would require the establishment of baseline conditions, comprehensive monitoring, and the disclosure of impacts.

READ PRESS RELEASE

Feds sued over north-south water transfer plan Chico Enterprise-Record July 2, 2010

Chico Enterprise-Record July 2, 2010: 

Three environmental groups, including Chico-based AquAlliance, Thursday, filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation calling for environmental review of plans for a 2010-11 north-to-south water transfer.

The planning documents call for up to 395,000 acre feet of water each year, moved through both the federal Central Valley Project and California’s State Water Project.

While the deals would be for two years, AquAlliance and co-plaintiffs, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance and the California Water Impact Network, have said in court documents that repeated water transfers over the past decade have never included a full federal or state environmental analysis.

This would require a “baseline conditions, comprehensive monitoring and the disclosure of impact,” the lawsuit states. The concern is that the transfer will continue, perhaps each year, leaving the Sacramento Valley exploited “in the same disastrous condition as the Owens and San Joaquin valleys,” AquAlliance Executive Dircetor Barbara Vlamis said in a press statement.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Comments on the Draft Environmental Assessment and Findings of No Significant Impact for the 2010-2011 Water Transfer Program

Submitted January 19, 2010:

AquAlliance, the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, and the California Water Impact Network (“the Coalition”) submitted comments and questions for the Draft Environmental Assessment (“EA”) and Findings of No Significant Impact (“FONSI”), for the 2010-2011 Water Transfer Program (“Project”). We also provided comments about the purpose and need for the 2010-2011 state and federal water transfer programs that are mirror images of the 2009 Drought Water Bank.

CLICK HERE TO READ COMMENTS

 

Comments on Delta Stewardship Council’s recirculated Draft Programmatic EIR

Submitted January 14, 2013:

Comments of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA), California Water Impact Network (C-WIN), and AquAlliance to the Revised Draft Delta Plan Program Environmental Impact Report

The RDPEIR for the Delta Plan Project Fails as a Programatic EIR:

A. The RDPEIR Fails to Provide an Adequate Project Description
B. The RDPEIR Fails to Provide an Adequate Disclosure of the Environmental Setting of the Project
C. The RDPEIR Fails to Provide an Adequate Impact Analysis
D. The RDPEIR Fails to Properly Consider the Public Trust
E. The RDPEIR Fails to Properly Consider Climate Change
F. The RDPEIR Fails to Properly Consider Available Science
G. The RDPEIR Fails to Properly Mitigate Impacts
H. The RDPEIR Fails to Provide Adequate Alternatives
I. The RDPEIR Fails to Provide an Adequate Cumulative Impact Assessment

CLICK HERE TO READ COMMENTS

Editorial: Be skeptical of water promises

Chico-Enterprise Record, Dec. 4, 2012: 

Our view: A conference last week in Chico served as a reminder that if an area loses its water rights, it loses much more than that.

If history has taught us anything about water in California, it’s that everybody should be extremely skeptical when somebody who wants to take your water says, “Don’t worry.”

That point was driven home again last week in Chico at a two-day water conference hosted by AquAlliance.

Water managers and biologists spoke about promises made and promises broken. Despite assurances that fisheries and river ecosystems would not be harmed, stories about the health of the Trinity River, Mono Lake, San Joaquin River and more prove otherwise.

Those examples are important for us in the north state to remember. After all, we have water. Most of the state does not. People on the outside see water flowing down the river and see dollar signs. They hear about our massive underground aquifer and think of it as water going to waste.

State and federal water managers trying to craft a delta conservation plan or trying to compensate for water lost through court cases would like to tap into our water. They say, of course, that the north state would not be harmed, that fish and soils would not suffer in the least.

That is, of course, what they said about the Owens Valley and other more recent examples, such as the Trinity River. We should be careful about not falling for the same promises.

Imagine a north state with significantly less water. It would cut into agriculture production, which is a driving force in our economy. Green rice fields and almond orchards could become fallow dirt.

Less water also would mean fewer visitors — and ecotourism is a growing force in our economy, whether it’s canoeing and kayaking, salmon fishing, birdwatching or people visiting farms and wineries.

The natural beauty of the north state is what draws many people to settle here. Shipping more water south could detract from the unique natural setting.

And don’t try to convince us that could never happen. We’ve seen it too often — and people spend years trying to pick up the pieces.

Tom Stokely, for example, has fought for the Trinity River watershed for decades. He spoke at last week’s conference about his long fight. The federal government decided in the 1960s that it would ship a good portion of the Trinity River’s flow east, over mountains and into the Sacramento Valley through a series of tunnels and reservoirs rather than let all of that water flow into the ocean north of Eureka.

That brought more water to “our” river (so more could be sent to San Joaquin Valley farmers) but nearly killed “their” river.

Because of the efforts of North Coast Indian tribes and people like Stokely, some water has been restored to the Trinity. The river’s legendary salmon and steelhead runs have made a comeback. There is, however, a long way to go. They would like to see all water stay in the Trinity River watershed. It’s a lifelong fight.

It’s worth remembering that people in Trinity County, or Mono County or along the San Joaquin River corridor didn’t have much say in the matter. The government just said, “This is what we’re doing.” We all need to be vigilant if we hear something similar about our water.

Water Conference 2012

 

Water for Seven Generations: Will California Prepare For It?

Thursday, Nov, 29 & Friday, Nov. 30 – Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., Chico, CA

This prestigious conference is brought to you by AquAlliance and will be held on Thursday, Nov, 29 and Friday, Nov. 30th  at Sierra Nevada Brewing Company in Chico. Sponsors include the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, the California Water Impact Network, the Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment, and Sierra Nevada Brewing Company.

To register and pay online, visit our Registration page, or download and print the Registration form and mail it in with your check.

 

Water Transfer Challenged in Court

Demanding Kern Water Districts Entice North State Sales…

May 8, 2012 – Chico, CA – AquAlliance filed a lawsuit against Butte Water District (BWD) to challenge the obfuscation of impacts, both short and long term, from water transfers out of the northern Sacramento Valley to Kern County water districts. The lawsuit seeks compliance with environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

BWD proposes to transfer 16,850 acre-feet (“af”) of Feather River Water (about 60% of the City of Chico’s annual demand) to State Water Project Contractors Dudley Ridge Water District, Kern County Water Agency, and Palmdale Water District. BWD will accomplish this by idling rice fields (3,350 acres) and/or by ground water substitution (5,350 af), which allows a grower to sell surface water while still producing rice. This project continues a decades-old pattern that defers the establishment of baseline conditions, fails to conduct comprehensive monitoring, and denies the potential for project specific and cumulative impacts. The BWD project is also part of a much larger 2012 plan to transfer 250,000 af of north state water from the area of origin to south of Delta interests (BWD Initial Study/Negative Declaration p. 30).
AquAlliance alleges that the project’s environmental review violates CEQA because, among other things, it: Fails to support BWD’s finding of no significant impact, Fails to comply with the most essential review and disclosure requirements of CEQA , thereby depriving decision makers and the public of the ability to consider the relevant environmental issues in any meaningful way, and Inadequately analyzes the project level impacts and the cumulative impacts from the planned 250,000 af water transfers.
“Water contractors south of the Delta continue to see the Sacramento River’s watershed as the last exploitable solution to continue business as usual,” stated Barbara Vlamis, AquAlliance’s executive director. “Our lawsuit seeks compliance with that most basic of all environmental and moral laws: comprehensive analysis and full disclosure of impacts and alternatives,” she concluded.
CONTACT INFORMATION
AquAlliance
Barbara Vlamis, Executive Director
P.O. Box 4024, Chico, CA 95927
(530) 895-9420
###

ORGANIZATIONAL BACKGROUND
AquAlliance was founded in 2009 to protect waters in the northern Sacramento River’s watershed to sustain family farms, communities, creeks and rivers, native flora and fauna, vernal pools, and recreation.

SOME BACKGROUND
State Water Project Contractors Seeking Water in 2012 from Butte Water District and Others Dudley Ridge Water District (4.8 % of the total water transfer), Kern County Water Agency (93.2% of the total water transfer), Palmdale Water District (2.0% of the total water transfer)

Some History
Water transfers from the Sacramento Valley are not just one or two year transfers as often claimed, but many actions in multiple years by state and federal agencies, sellers, and buyers without the benefit of comprehensive environmental analysis under CEQA. It is important to highlight that the BWD project does not stand in isolation, but is part of ongoing programs made up of water transfers in eight out of ten years (BWD Initial Study/Negative Declaration p. 30) and a much larger effort to cure the ills of California’s past mistakes by mining more water from its last, somewhat healthy watershed: the Sacramento River watershed. Here is a partial list of projects and programs:
  • 1991, 1992, and 1994 Drought Water Banks.
  • The Sacramento Valley Water Management Agreement was signed in 2002 and the need for a programmatic environmental review was clear and initiated, but never completed. BWD is a signatory to the Agreement.
  • In 2000, the Governor’s Advisory Drought Planning Panel report, Critical Water Shortage Contingency Plan promised a programmatic CEQA document on a drought-response water transfer program, but it was never undertaken. BWD has participated in Drought Water Bank Transfers.
  • Sacramento Valley Integrated Regional Water Management Plan (2006). BWD serves on the Joint Powers Authority.
  • Northern Sacramento Valley Integrated Regional Water Management Plan (under development)
  • The Delta Stewardship Council’s Plan.
  • The Bay Delta Conservation Plan.
DWR, the state’s overseer of the State Water Project, has ignored its statutory responsibility to provide programmatic CEQA review for water transfer for over a decade and only deals with the issue when sued (2009 Drought Water Bank). Rather than follow state law, DWR provides its contractors with guiding documents for individual project review at http://www.water.ca.gov/watertransfers/.
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