Author Archives: Francine

Would Sites reservoir become a ‘biological wasteland’?

Foes say $5 billion project to severely degrade water quality

by Dave Waddell

James Murphy’s ranchland, which he’s owned for 35 years, would be under water if the long-discussed Sites reservoir becomes a reality.

photo courtesy of Sites Project Authority
A conceptual rendering of the Sites reservoir west of Maxwell.

If the Sites Project Authority seeks to acquire Murphy’s property to build the reservoir, he’s going to make it as difficult for them as possible.

“I don’t want to sell my land; there’s no reason for me to sell,” said Murphy, a retired rancher who leases his 1,600 Sites-area acres for cattle grazing. “If they condemn it, they’ll have to tear it out of my hands.”

The proposed reservoir is being promoted as means of capturing water in big storms for use during California’s inevitable dry stretches. Sites’ timeline has the project being reviewed by the California Water Commission in 2021 and becoming operational in 2029.

Among Sites’ benefits would be providing water for agriculture, human consumption, recreation, and to help fish and wildlife, its supporters say. Critics of the Sites proposal say it would harm rather than help the environment – potentially causing deteriorations in water quality that are alarming, unexamined, and likely to eventually drown the $5 billion-plus proposal.

Sites is owned by the authority, a public-private partnership of counties and local water agencies formed in 2010. As proposed, Sites would divert water from two existing canals, as well as from a new underground piping system to bring water from the Sacramento River, 14 miles to the east, during periods of peak runoff. The idea is to return the water in the pipeline to the river in dry times for multiple uses, including to aid migrating Chinook salmon.

The project possesses bipartisan political backing, a seeming rarity these days, including the blessings of the Trump administration. Momentum is seen in highway signs touting Sites that have popped up in the Sacramento Valley.

The proposed reservoir would be located about 8 miles west of the Colusa County community of Maxwell in a mountain valley once described as a “natural bath tub.” Sites’ location is about a 90-minute drive both from Sacramento to its south and from Chico to its northeast.

photo courtesy of Sites Project Authority
Sites map

Those who oppose the project attack what they see as woefully inadequate study to date on Sites’ impacts, with its general manager acknowledging at a congressional hearing last year that the draft environmental impact report (EIR) was speeded up in order to move the project along.

photo by Karen Laslo
Policy analyst Jim Brobeck: Sites would become a “biological wasteland.”

Some environmentalists opposed to a Sites reservoir question how it can deal with water-quality issues to the satisfaction of California regulators while still penciling out financial advantages for investing water agencies.

Jim Brobeck, a policy analyst for the Chico-based environmental group AquAlliance, goes so far as to predict that Sites, if built, will become a “biological wasteland.” AquAlliance fights what it sees as threats “to the hydrologic health of the northern Sacramento River watershed,” according to its website.

“The project has been considered since the middle of the last century and has never moved forward because it is not feasible economically, environmentally, technically or financially,” argues Brobeck. “But dry years inspire hope in leaders and the public that ‘new water’ can be found in the Sacramento Valley Watershed to meet the demand from the San Joaquin Valley.”

Two sprawling valleys, the Sacramento and the San Joaquin, comprise California’s Central Valley, which roughly stretches 450 miles from Redding to Bakersfield.

Murphy, the retired rancher, said he isn’t losing any sleep over pleas for more water from San Joaquin Valley growers.

“I’m not donating to these big farmers out in the valley,” said Murphy, who lives in Arbuckle. “I don’t think I owe them anything. I’m 82 years old and I want to keep what I’ve got.”

photo courtesy of Sites Project Authority
Location of proposed reservoir.

The 17,000 total acres that would need to be acquired to build Sites is mostly ranchland owned by about 25 people. Jim Watson, general manager of the Sites Project Authority, said use of eminent domain “does not have to be adversarial” and can include tax advantages for selling land owners.

“With the property owners, it’s what works best for them,” Watson said. “The acquisition process has a little more complexity and depth than most people realize.”

Water titans invest

While the state and federal governments are Sites’ largest financial supporters, investors currently include 21 local water agencies, of which 11 are in the Sacramento Valley. Two titanic water players — the Fresno-based Westlands Water District and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California — have bought into Sites, with Metropolitan in February committing $4.2 million for project planning.

That has occurred at the same time some Sacramento Valley water agencies have reduced their Sites’ stakes, due mostly to cost concerns.

Roger Patterson, assistant general manager for the Metropolitan Water District, said the district bought what amounts to a 10 percent ownership of Sites’ water after being encouraged to invest by other project partners. Most significant from Metropolitan’s perspective is that Sites, in its plan to provide water for environmental benefits, could relieve some of the strain on state and federal projects caused by the competing demands for California’s water.

“We want to see the project get built. It’s a good project,” said Patterson, who previously headed up the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation division that operates Shasta Dam.

In the midst of a drought in 2014, Californians passed Proposition 1, which includes state bond financing for water storage projects. Last year, the state Water Commission awarded $816 million to Sites in Prop. 1 funding – more than any other project but only about half the amount it originally sought. At the time, Watson characterized the funding level as “an opportunity lost” to provide additional cold water from Sites to assist salmon populations trekking the Sacramento River.

As for the federal government, Watson pegs the Bureau of Reclamation’s current total commitment to Sites at “over $1 billion towards construction costs and represents over 100,000 acre-feet per year” that would be used principally to help the salmon.

“This water is intended to benefit salmon runs by having Sites reservoir operate to enable Shasta (Dam) to maximize its cold water pool – especially in dry years,” Watson said.

A basic cost-benefit comparison of the Sites plan with another longtime proposal in the north state to increase water storage – raising Shasta Dam by 18½ feet – shows Sites would yield much less bang for the buck. Sites would provide a maximum of 500,000 acre-feet per year at a projected cost of $5.2 billion to build. The plan to raise Shasta Dam, which also has advanced during the Trump administration, would add up to 634,000 acre-feet in peak years for a purported price tag that is much less: $1.4 billion. (One acre-foot equals 326,000 gallons.)

Still, a bipartisan political push for Sites is ongoing in Washington, D.C., as two veteran north state politicians – Reps. Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale, and John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove — continue to seek tax funding for the project. In February, the two congressmen introduced the Sites Reservoir Project Act (HR 1453) that would direct the Bureau of Reclamation to finish a feasibility study of the proposed reservoir and, if Sites is deemed feasible, provide additional funding and technical aid. Watson told ChicoSol that Reclamation is “working to finalize” the feasibility report this year.

Wikimedia photo
First congressional district Rep. Doug LaMalfa
Wikimedia photo
Third congressional district Rep. John Garamendi

Boosting Sites’ chances at least in the short term is that David Bernhardt, a former lobbyist for both the oil industry and the Westlands Water District, has been promoted to the top of President Donald Trump’s Department of Interior. Claims have mounted against Bernhardt alleging use of his Interior positions to help Westlands, which is a big backer of raising Shasta Dam.

Draft EIR accelerated

Watson was hired to manage Sites in 2015 at a reported beginning salary of $225,000. He previously worked for the Westlands Water District. At a congressional hearing on Feb. 14, 2018, in an exchange with Rep. LaMalfa, Watson described the project’s environmental strategy while noting that 33 agencies had invested $18 million up to that point in Sites.

photo courtesy of Sites Project Authority
General Manager Jim Watson

“We used that money to accelerate the project, specifically the environmental document,” Watson told the House Subcommittee on Water, Power and Oceans. “We also took a strategy different than the state or (federal governments) by not trying to do a litigation-proof environmental document. Get what has been known and collected over the last 15 years … out for public comments and then advance the project by incorporating and responding to the public’s comments.”

The AquAlliance’s Brobeck said nearly 1½ years have passed since some highly critical comments about the adequacy of the project’s draft EIR were submitted, with no response yet from Sites.

Sites reservoir’s so-called “footprint” would ultimately inundate and denude a watershed of about 15,000 acres.

“I think the Sites project is … unfeasible, but continuing to plan (and) produce glossy promotional events gives politicians and water marketers the PR gain that they are doing something,” Brobeck said.

Watson told ChicoSol recently that Sites provided a relatively generous 150 days to respond to the draft EIR. Sites’ response to comments on the EIR will be provided in 2019, he said.

“That is going to start this year,” Watson said. “It’s time to respond to the comments. … We’ve received some very good comments on various topic areas.”

At capacity, as envisioned, Sites reservoir’s so-called “footprint” would ultimately inundate and denude a watershed of about 15,000 acres. It’s a landscape described by Brobeck as a mix of “oak woodlands, grassland, wetlands, riparian habitat, and croplands.”

“Once you flood something and hold water once, it kills the vegetation,” Brobeck said. “It’s going to be dead for any trees and any stabilizing roots for a long time. … And when it’s not full it’s even worse,” as accelerated runoff and extreme erosion “turn the footprint into a biological wasteland.”

photo courtesy of Sites Project Authority
Area where reservoir would be built.

Brobeck argues that water flowing to the Pacific Ocean is not “wasted,” as LaMalfa and others frequently contend, but rather needed to improve the environmental health and counter the devastation to the fisheries of the San Francisco Bay Delta Watershed.

Mineral levels high in water

Supporters of Sites say the project would save precious water for use in dry times, including for crop irrigation, domestic water consumption, and helping fish and wildlife. Foes, however, predict it would produce declines in water quality that could harm living things and degrade Sacramento Valley agriculture.

The AquAlliance points to a 27-page response from Jerry Boles of Chico that addresses what Boles sees as numerous shortcomings related to water quality in the draft EIR produced for Sites in 2017. Boles is a former chief of the water quality and biology section of the Northern District of the state Department of Water Resources office in Red Bluff.

While in that role, Boles conducted tests in what would be the “source waters” for a Sites reservoir and found “high concentrations of a number of metals.” These substances, described as “the bad metals” by the AquAlliance’s Brobeck, are mostly naturally occurring. They include aluminum, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, iron, lead, manganese, mercury, nickel, selenium and zinc. The metal concentrations “exceed many water quality criteria and standards” and would detract from all of the benefits that Sites purports to provide, Boles wrote.

Sites’ Watson said he’s aware of concerns about selenium in the soils below the Coast Range where the reservoir would be located. To some Californians, selenium is associated with the killing and deforming of wildlife in the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley in the 1970s. Surplus ag water with high levels of selenium was the culprit at Kesterson, which, like the Sites’ site, is located on the western edge of the Central Valley.

Watson told ChicoSol that Sites could provide water for existing Sacramento Valley wildlife refuges along the Pacific Flyway, as well as to fields adjacent to those refuges “to extend their reach.”

“Initial studies show the selenium (at Sites) is not at levels that would create a health hazard,” Watson said. “But we have to do additional studies to convince ourselves” there are no dangers.

Murphy, the longtime ranch owner, said he’s not aware of any health problems ever from his livestock drinking from area creeks.

“My cattle drink out of it and there’s nothing wrong with them,” Murphy said. “They all do pretty good on it.”

Due to its soil composition, the canyon in which Sites would be located is less conducive to crop growing than the more fertile Sacramento Valley lands to the east. As proposed, the reservoir would be created by the damming of what Watson described as two “seasonal” creeks – Funks and Stone Corral. The often sizzling summer temperatures on the west side can mix with some ferocious winds, which would heighten evaporation in a Sites reservoir and increase the mineral toxicity of its water, critics say.

Watson contends that the project offers “tremendous value for the salmon runs” in being able to pipe cold water to the Sacramento River at critical times to help the fish. That benefit assumes that Sites would be like other large Central Valley reservoirs that “stratify” – meaning the water is colder at lower depths. Watson said Sites would have the capacity to access that colder water to aid the salmon, while sending its warmer water out to farming operations.

However, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), which has regulatory authority over how much river water Sites could extract, says the project’s water temperature assumptions need more study.

“Most large reservoirs in the Central Valley receive runoff from snowpack, which is largely absent from the Funks and Stone Corral watersheds,” the CDFW said in a less-than-encouraging Jan. 12, 2018, letter responding to the draft EIR. “In addition, the proposed Sites Reservoir will be located in a shallow canyon, which will create a large reservoir with a large surface area making it more vulnerable to mixing from high winds.”

Chief among the CDFW’s worries in its 24-page letter are the potential impacts of water diversions to declining salmon populations. Spring-run Chinook salmon have been listed as endangered by the federal and state governments for 20 years.

While the consultants who prepared the draft EIR found there would be “no cumulative impacts” from Sites, the “CDFW considers that the additional extraction of water … would exacerbate concerns and generate cumulatively considerable impacts.”

The report by Boles, the retired water quality official, argues that, given the conditions, water released from Sites to the Sacramento River will be too warm or otherwise unsuitable for supporting cold-water fisheries.

Boles contends that “the little analyses presented in the EIR misconstrues, misinterprets, and ignores water quality data that amply demonstrate” the potential for major environmental impacts from Sites. The water-quality section of the EIR draft, Boles writes, “must be completely rewritten with an objective analysis of the data and potential adverse impacts to water quality both within the (Sites) reservoir and to downstream resources in the Sacramento River.”

Watson equated his job as Sites manager with the peeling back of an onion, examining one issue at a time.

“If you find a fatal flaw, the project off-ramps,” Watson said. “So far, we haven’t found one.”

Dave Waddell is a contributor to ChicoSol. This story was reported and written with support from Ethnic Media Services.

View article at http://chicosol.org/2019/05/28/sites-reservoir-become-biological-wasteland/.

ChicoSol journalists capture 5 state awards

Waddell honored for police shooting, Sites stories

ChicoSol contributor Dave Waddell has won four honors, including two first-place awards, and ChicoSol Editor Leslie Layton was named a second-place winner in the 2019 California Journalism Awards competition.

photo courtesy of Sites Project Authority
A conceptual rendering of the Sites reservoir west of Maxwell.
Dave Waddell’s first-place story was supported by an Ethnic Media Services fellowship.

The results were announced Tuesday by the sponsoring California News Publishers Association, which cancelled its planned spring awards gala because of coronavirus risks.

Waddell captured top honors in the in-depth reporting category for a series of stories on law enforcement killings in Butte County. He also placed first in land-use reporting for an extensive story on the proposed Sites reservoir.

Dave Waddell

A judge in the land-use category lauded the depth of the Sites article: “One story tells you everything. Strong reporting, great quotes and you linked nearly the whole state with one topic.”

Layton’s runner-up award came in the feature-writing category for a story about Chico attorney Sergio Garcia’s 25-year journey to U.S. citizenship. A contest judge praised the story’s relevance, clarity and organization.

Two other of Waddell’s entries – in the investigative reporting and public service categories – garnered fourth-place awards for several stories in 2019 related to law enforcement shootings.

In the public service competition, a judge wrote that “ChicoSol went above and beyond an initial news story. The ongoing nature of the story and keeping the issue in the public’s eye is at the very heart of great journalism.”

View article at http://chicosol.org/2020/04/01/chicosol-journalists-capture-5-state-awards/.

“Vernal Pool Landscapes: Past, Present and Future”Available

Vernal Pool Landscapes: Past, Present and Future is the newest book, Number 20, from Studies from the Herbarium, California State University, Chico.

Edited by
Robert A. Schlising,
Erin E. Gottschalk Fisher,
C. Matt Guilliams and
Barbara Castro

This book is a collection of articles derived from talks presented at the vernal pool landscapes conference, “Vernal Pools Landscapes: Past, Present and Future,” convened by AquAlliance, in Chico, CA, April 11-12, 2018.

Information about this book and how to order is on the Chico State Herbarium website: https://www.csuchico.edu/herbarium/studies/book-list.shtml

California Files Lawsuit to Block Trump Administration Delta Water Rules

BACKGROUND – By AquAlliance

In October 2019 Newsom pledged to join fishing groups in court to sue the federal administration’s attack on California’s environment: “…Gov. Gavin Newsom promised to sue the Trump administration to block stepped-up federal water diversions from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to agribusiness and urban areas further south.”[1] However, once Fresno based Westlands Water District threatened to abandon voluntary negotiations with the state to restore the Bay-Delta ecosystem, months passed without a lawsuit. The December 24, 2019 Los Angeles Times editorial pressed Newsom, “The Governor said he would sue the Trump over water diversions from the delta. Why hasn’t he done it yet?” Still no lawsuit. In January AquAlliance initiated a campaign to contact the Governor to press him to fulfill his pledge that would also protect NorthState rivers, groundwater, and species. Countless people accepted the challenge.
 
Pressure from the LA Times to concerned Californians seems to have helped. “We are thrilled that the Governor initiated the lawsuit to confront federal permits that allow increased water exports. The permits were approved despite what federal biologists confirmed: elevated exports will be a disaster for salmon, steelhead trout, and even killer whales, which rely in part on salmon for food,” said AquAlliance’s executive director, Barbara Vlamis. “Not only will the litigation strive to protect vulnerable fish species, but it will also stave off threats to NorthState groundwater that supports communities, family farms, and the environment,” she continued.
 
The new federal rules could allow additional exports annually of 600,000 acre-feet of water from our region[2] – enough water for Chico for 30 years – and potentially kill every single salmon in the upper Sacramento River for three years in a row. The Feather River would also be seriously affected, allowing Oroville Dam to reach what is called “dead pool” where there is so little water that none
can be released. What could that do for fish and local communities?


[1] LA Times Editorial 2019. Newsom can’t have it both ways on California water. December 24, 2019.
[2] REMINDER – 600,000 acre-feet is the same amount the feds sought in the 10-Year Water Transfer Program. In 2018 AquAlliance’s litigation stopped the Program.

——————————————————————————————————————-

NEWS ARTICLE by Alexandra Hall – February 21, 2020

A day after President Trump visited Central Valley growers to celebrate providing more water to farms, California sued his administration to block the new rules that would do so.

The contentious new rules govern how much water can be pumped out of the watersheds of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, which flow from the Sierra Nevada to the San Francisco Bay, controlling irrigation for millions of acres of farmland in the country’s biggest agricultural economy, drinking water for two-thirds of Californians from Silicon Valley to San Diego, and the fate of endangered salmon and other fish.

President Trump ceremonially signed a memo on federal water infrastructure plans at a rally on Feb. 19, 2020 in Bakersfield. (David McNew/Getty Images)

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco, argues that pumping more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to farms would drive endangered populations of delta smelt, Chinook salmon and steelhead trout to the brink extinction.

“California won’t silently spectate as the Trump administration adopts scientifically challenged biological opinions that push species to extinction and harm our natural resources and waterways,” said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who filed the suit in partnership with the state’s Environmental Protection and Natural Resources agencies.

The rules have been under fire for more than a year, as President Trump first ordered them to be prepared with unprecedented speed, then removed and replaced the federal biologists who had concluded the rules would threaten endangered salmon. Last fall, when the Trump administration announced the plan, officials couldn’t promise it would, in fact, deliver more water to agriculture.

Ernest Conant, regional director for the Bureau of Reclamation, says the plan will have to be in place for awhile before he could say whether it will give more water to farmers.

“It could very well in certain years decrease it,” he said.

The rivers that feed the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, as well as the Delta itself, are home to a variety of state and federally protected fish species, whose numbers have been dwindling since humans began building dams and reservoirs to control flooding and send water throughout the state.

Two massive networks of dams and canals determine how much water gets taken out, with one system run by the state and the other run by the federal government.

“Our goal continues to be to realize enforceable voluntary agreements that provide the best immediate protection for species, reliable and safe drinking water, and dependable water sources for our farmers for economic prosperity,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement Thursday. “This is the best path forward to sustain our communities, our environment and our economy.”

On Wednesday, Trump visited Bakersfield to fete the rule change, and signed a memo that goes further, directing “the Secretaries of the Interior and Commerce and the Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality to help deliver and develop more water supplies in California’s Central Valley,” according to a U.S. Interior Department press release.

‘Four More Years’

On a stage adorned with a giant American flag, stacks of produce boxes and large blue tractors on either end, Trump addressed an audience of local supporters and growers who stand to benefit from the directive.

“I’m going to be signing a very important piece of legislation that is going to give you a lot of water and a lot of dam and a lot of everything,” Trump told excited members of the audience. “And you’ll be able to farm your land — you’ll be able to do things you never thought possible.”

Trump was joined onstage by California Republican Reps. Devin Nunes of Tulare and Tom McClintock of Elk Grove, as well as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and other active and aspiring local Republican politicians. At one point, Trump called up former Central Valley Republican Rep. David Valadao, who was ousted by a Democrat in the 2018 midterm elections and is now running to regain his seat.

The event, in a hot, crowded hangar at Meadows Field Airport in Bakersfield, had all the signs of a campaign rally. Chants of “four more years” rang out from a crowd of well over a thousand supporters wearing red “Make America Great Again” hats, “Women for Trump” shirts and “Trump 2020” swag.

In an effort to show he had fulfilled his 2016 campaign promise to deliver more water to Central Valley ranchers, Trump brought several local farmers on stage to talk about the importance of water to the region’s agricultural economy and laud the president’s support of America’s farming families.

The day before the event, officials with the federal Bureau of Reclamation signed a record of decision that formally adopted the biological opinions unveiled by the Trump administration last year, dictating how much and when water can be pumped out of the Delta.

Battles Ahead

It also set the stage for more court battles between the administration, on one side, and environmental groups and the state of California on the other. Environmental groups have fought to limit pumping because of the danger posed to endangered fish.

The administration’s revised biological opinion was unveiled in October 2019, after federal scientists, who had found the Delta water plan would jeopardize endangered salmon, were removed from the project.

A coalition of environmental groups, including the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations and Natural Resources Defense Council sued the administration in December in an effort to stop the plan.

“These new rules sacrifice the Bay-Delta and its most endangered species for the financial interests of the President’s political backers and Secretary Bernhardt’s former clients,” NRDC said in a press release following Trump’s visit Wednesday. “The Newsom Administration has the tools it needs to protect California from Trump’s latest assault on the environment, and we’re looking forward to working with the Governor to do so.”

Kate Poole, senior director of the Nature Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that if the administration’s plan goes into effect, it will cause significant harm and possibly the extinction of salmon and other species in the Delta.

“What he signed was actually just a memorandum that doesn’t really do a whole lot other than say they’re going to try to further increase water deliveries even beyond what these biological opinions do. And they’re going to pursue more water storage,” Poole said.

Trump’s Supporters: He ‘Gets Things Done’

Farmers and other local residents who waited in a long line of ticket holders to see Trump in Bakersfield were ecstatic that he would make time to revisit the Central Valley. Many told KQED they are pleased with the president’s actions on water and his performance overall, as a leader who “gets things done.”

“We’re here to support the Trump administration and their efforts to help us get more local water supply to our growers,” said Aaron Fukuda, general manager of the Tulare Irrigation District.

“These biological opinions that we’re looking at, we believe they improve our habitat and bring more water down to our farmers. It’s a win-win for everybody.”

Jim Erickson, director of the Madera Irrigation District, and a fourth-generation farmer who grows almonds, olives, grapes, pistachios, oats and prunes, agreed.

“It’s going to give us more flexibility, give us some more water, which we are all in dire need of in California,” Erickson said.

“He came out, he said he was going to work on this, he listened and he’s doing it,” Erickson added, referring to Trump’s 2016 campaign visit to Fresno when he committed to delivering more water to local ranchers. “I’m hopeful that [the state will] back off and realize that this is good for all of us and keep the economy going here in California.”

Central Valley politicians also reacted to Trump’s actions.

State Sen. Andreas Borgeas, R-Fresno, said he appreciated Trump visiting the San Joaquin Valley and the federal government “finally taking action to provide more water for valley farmers.”

“The ball is now in Gov. Newsom’s court to provide clean, reliable and ample water supplies to valley farmers and communities,” Borgeas said. “The state must ensure that infrastructure and storage are a top priority. It’s simple: no water, no farms, and no food.”

Two freshman Democratic congressmen who flipped their districts in the 2018 midterm elections took a more diplomatic stance, rather than committing to one side of the issue.

“The biological opinions needed to be updated with better, newer science,” TJ Cox and Josh Harder said in a joint statement, “We would prefer the parties work together in a meeting room rather than square up as rivals in the courtroom. … We stand ready to help all parties reach a resolution in any way we can.”

This story includes additional reporting from Adam Beam of the Associated Press. View article online at KQED News.

Gov. Newsom’s threat to sue Trump upends peace talks on California water wars

By Ryan Sabalow and Dale Kasler

Printed December 21, 2019

Even before he was sworn into office, Gov. Gavin Newsom threw his weight behind a series of tentative deals, brokered by his predecessor, that were intended to bring lasting peace to California’s never-ending battles over water and endangered fish.

The deals, designed to reallocate water from the state’s major rivers, have yet to be finalized a year later.

Now, one of the nation’s most powerful farm irrigation districts says it will back out of the agreements completely if Newsom follows through with a pledge to sue President Donald Trump over a federal plan to pump more water to farmers from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the fragile estuary on Sacramento’s doorstep.

The agreements are intended to resolve a more than decade-old dispute over how much water should be left in the state’s major rivers to prop up endangered fish populations. Those same rivers also supply California’s massive farm belt and cities from San Francisco to San Diego. It’s one of the most contentious, complicated issues facing the new governor.

Last week, Tom Birmingham, the general manager of the Westlands Water District, told Newsom’s top environmental policy appointees the massive Fresno-based water district was going walk to away from the water-sharing deals if Newsom sues Trump.

“The state’s threat of litigation places those far-reaching changes at risk, and until the issues that gave rise to this threat are resolved, it will be impossible to reach a voluntary agreement,” Birmingham said in a December 10 email to Wade Crowfoot, secretary of the Natural Resources Agency, and Jared Blumenfeld, secretary of the state Environmental Protection Agency. “At this point, the ball is in the state’s court.”

Jeff Sutton of the Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority in Willows, a major Sacramento Valley irrigation district, made a similar threat to state officials the same day. Neither Sutton or Birmingham could be reached for comment. A Newsom spokeswoman said the administration remains committed to brokering a deal.

On Thursday, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a longtime ally of the farmers in Westlands’ district, waded into the debate by posting a letter to the Trump and Newsom administrations on her official Twitter account, urging the factions to work together.

“I’m worried that we’re on a disastrous course for California’s water management that will harm our communities and environment,” she tweeted. “There’s only one way to avoid this potential crisis, and that’s for ⁦‪(Newsom) and (Interior Secretary David Bernhardt) to work together.”

The new threats significantly complicate the tentative deals brokered by former Gov. Jerry Brown shortly before he left office. His administration described them as a grand water-sharing agreement that would bring an end to the dispute between farmers, cities, fishermen and environmentalists over how much water should be left the state’s two most important rivers, the Sacramento and San Joaquin, which flow into the Delta and out under the Golden Gate Bridge.

Under Brown’s proposal, farm irrigation districts and cities would surrender water to prop up fish populations and kick in about $800 million for habitat restoration projects. The state said it would contribute $900 million to the projects. The farms and cities agreed to the plan because they felt it was less onerous than a dramatic restriction on water use favored by the State Water Resources Control Board.

Newsom, who had just been elected governor, said at the time the “voluntary agreements are preferable to a lengthy administrative process and the inevitable ensuing lawsuits.” This week, the administration continued to stand by the deals. Newsom’s Natural Resources Agency spokeswoman, Lisa Lien-Mager, said in an email Wednesday that the tentative settlements “create more opportunities for species to survive and thrive.”

With the threat last week, Westlands has aligned itself even more closely with Trump and his aims for California’s water system, which would send more water from the Delta to Westlands. The water district already has close ties to the president — their former chief lobbyist is Bernhardt, Trump’s Interior secretary.

Fish populations at risk

From the start, Brown’s agreements have been controversial. Environmentalists argued the plan didn’t go nearly far enough. The State Water Resources Control Board last December, just before Brown left office, sided with environmentalists and voted in favor of a more aggressive plan to increase flows in three key San Joaquin Valley rivers, in spite of Brown’s compromise.

Environmentalists say that for far too long, too much water has been sucked from the state’s rivers by farms and cities up and down the state. For instance, in some summers nearly 90 percent of the water in the Tuolumne River is diverted to farms and the city of San Francisco, leaving precious little for imperiled cold-water native fish like salmon and steelhead.

The board said it would revisit its ruling if a settlement was ever finalized.

Last week, a consortium of major environmental groups said the settlement talks aren’t progressing nearly fast enough and they urged the water board to “move forward rapidly” on a similar flow plan for the Sacramento River and its tributaries in order to save fish populations.

Newsom, meanwhile, has made numerous overtures to farm interests since taking office in an effort to the get settlements finalized. He started by replacing the chair of the water board, Felicia Marcus, who was viewed by farmers as tied too closely to the environmental movement.

Since then, negotiations among the various parties to the settlements have continued behind closed doors, and little has been said publicly beyond a July 1 white paper posted on the Natural Resources Agency’s website.

The document reports “substantial progress” had been made but also made clear that lots of work remained: Environmental reviews, for example, wouldn’t be finalized until 2021.

Keeping the negotiations on track also was central to Newsom’s decision to veto a bill in September that was backed by some of the state’s most influential environmental lobbyists. He infuriated environmentalists by vetoing Senate Bill 1, which would have used state law in an attempt to block every environmental initiative launched by the federal government since Jan. 20, 2017 — the day Trump took office.

Newsom said the bill would have derailed the settlement discussions. Westlands and other California water exporters feared SB 1 would create a new legal barrier that would have prevented California and the federal government from working together to manage the state’s fisheries and water supplies.

Westlands a ‘bully’

At the heart of the debate are the two massive Delta pumping stations near Tracy that supply water to irrigation districts like Westlands and to the state’s major cities as far south as San Diego. One set of pumps is run by the state; the other by the federal government. Environmentalists say decades of pumping have ruined populations of salmon, smelt and other species.

As Newsom has tried to balance these forces, the Trump administration had been moving ahead on its own Delta pumping plan designed to send more water to Westlands and other farm districts, fulfilling a pledge Trump made to San Joaquin Valley farmers while campaigning in Fresno three years ago.

The plan, developed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service, would overhaul the rules governing the Delta to allow more water to be pumped south to San Joaquin Valley farms such as Westlands.

On Thursday, the Trump administration released its final environmental impact statement on the pumping plan, saying it will “optimize water deliveries and power production for California communities and farms in an environmentally sound manner.”

Last month, Newsom’s administration said Trump went too far, and he promised to sue to protect the environment.

“As stewards of this state’s remarkable natural resources, we must do everything in our power to protect them,” Newsom said in a prepared statement at the time.

Roger Patterson of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California — who’s been involved in the negotiations and received copies of Westlands’ email — said he doesn’t believe the talks are doomed.

Patterson said he’s been told separately by Birmingham, the Westlands general manager, that his email threatening to back out of negotiations was intended to prod state and federal officials to figure out a compromise.

The process “has had a lot of bumps over the last year,” said Patterson, assistant general manager of Metropolitan. “It’s hard stuff, and I don’t think anybody’s saying they’re giving up on the process.”

But Doug Obegi, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Westlands’ threat to walk away from the talks — so soon after threatening to walk during the SB 1 debate — amounts to the farm-water agency trying to “bully the state into backing away from fighting the Trump administration.”

“It does feel like we’ve seen this dance before,” Obegi said.

Full article: https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/environment/article238511218.html

See https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article236506123.html for the article about the release of the Biological Opinions.

Action Alert! Call Governor Newsom – Weekly

Action Alert

Repeated calls are needed once a week, every week until the Governor keeps his promise to sue the Trump Administration over plans to increase water exports from the Sacramento River watershed and Delta. Please select a date and time every week to keep pressure on the Governor.

(916) 445-2841

The message points are:

  • We need Governor Newsom’s leadership to sue the federal government over the biological permits issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service as he promised to do last November. This is in keeping with the 65+ times the state has already challenged the Trump administration.
    Summary – Sue the federal government over the biological permits issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service as the Governor promised to do last November.  
  • We need Governor Newsom’s fortitude to stand up to known bad actors like Westlands Water District that have already destroyed the San Joaquin River and its groundwater basin. The Delta is in free-fall. Secret discussions to reach so-called “voluntary agreements” are a ploy to string along the Newsom administration like it did with past administrations while ecosystems, communities, and hundred-year old family farms suffer.[1]
    Summary – Stand up to known bad actors like Westlands Water District. The Delta is in free-fall. Secret discussions to reach so-called “voluntary agreements” are a ploy to string along the Newsom administration.
  • We need Governor Newsom to leave California with a new water legacy that turns away from exploitation and manipulation for the benefit of very few people/companies/corporations and toward regeneration, protection, and health that benefits over 99% of Californians, the majority of whom treasure the environment.
    Summary – Give California a new water legacy. Turn away from exploitation and manipulation for the benefit of very few people/companies/corporations and toward regeneration, protection, and health that benefit over 99% of Californians.

Background

It has been three months since, “…since Gov. Gavin Newsom promised to sue the Trump administration to block stepped-up federal water diversions from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to agribusiness and urban areas further south.”[2] New federal permits will allow increased exports despite what federal biologists confirmed: the elevated exports will be a disaster for salmon, steelhead trout, and even killer whales, which rely in part on salmon for food. Nothing, of course, is said about where the water will actually come from – which can only be NorthState groundwater basins.

The new rules would allow additional exports of 600,000 acre-feet of water from our region[3] and potentially kill every single salmon in the upper Sacramento River for three years in a row. The Feather River would also be seriously affected, allowing Oroville Dam to reach what is called “dead pool” where there is so little water that none can be released – what will that do for fish and local economies?

Westlands Water District is the puppeteer pulling the strings of state and federal politicians and agencies. It has been a devilish player in the water world for decades, but now it has an added benefactor: Westlands’ former lobbyist, David Bernhardt is now the Secretary of the Interior. It is under his leadership that the Interior Department engineered the new destructive water diversion plan and pumping permits. To do this he corralled fish agency management to rewrite the draft permits written by biologists that demonstrated how devastating increased exports from the Sacramento Valley and Delta would be to fish.

In November 2019 Newsom pledged to join fishing groups in court to challenge this latest Trump administration attack on California’s environment. Westlands was furious, threatening to abandon voluntary negotiations with the state to restore the Bay-Delta ecosystem. Westlands has toyed with voluntary agreements for years, but never produced a credible proposal. The discussions have inhibited state action to require for more flows in NorthState rivers and the Bay-Delta to rebuild our salmon and other species. [4]

Californians are in danger of witnessing species extinctions and permanent damage to NorthState rivers and groundwater.

[1] Sabalow 2019 December 21. Sacramento Bee “Now, one of the nation’s most powerful farm irrigation districts says it will back out of the agreements completely if Newsom follows through with a pledge to sue President Donald Trump over a federal plan to pump more water to farmers from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the fragile estuary on Sacramento’s doorstep.”  https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/environment/article238511218.html

[2] LA Times Editorial 2019. Newsom can’t have it both ways on California water. December 24, 2019.

[3] REMINDER – 600,000 acre-feet is the same amount the feds sought in the 10-Year Water Transfer Program. In 2018 AquAlliance’s litigation stopped the Program.

[4] The state hasn’t updated flow standards for the Sacramento River and Bay-Delta in 25 years although by law it is required every three years.

AquAlliance Joins Comments on USBR Central Valley Project Final Cost Allocation Study

Re: Conservation, Fishing and Tribal Comments on Bureau of Reclamation Mid-Pacific Region December 2019 Central Valley Project Final Cost Allocation Study (CAS)

CLICK HERE to view full Comments document.

January 2, 2020

Brenda Burman, Commissioner
Bureau of Reclamation
1849 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20240-0001

There are four over-arching and fundamental flaws with the Bureau of Reclamation’s CVP Final Cost Allocation Study:

  1. Reclamation’s proposal makes a mockery of a Supreme Court determination about Reclamation’s program.1 The Supreme Court, in 1958, in a well-known case involving the Reclamation program in California described the purpose of the Reclamation Act as providing, “the greatest good to the greatest number of people.” The Bureau of Reclamation, in the pending Cost Allocation Study, inverted that principle and instead is providing the greatest financial good to a few people.
  2. Reclamation overturns the “user pays” principle pledged by water users. Reclamation ignores the public pledge by water users that “beneficiaries pay.” Instead, they design a cost allocation system that relieves water contractors (recipients of subsidized water from Reclamation’s dams, reservoirs, pumping stations and canals) of substantial portions of the very costs they previously agreed to pay.
  3. Reclamation’s proposal uses regulatory reform as a platform to impose hidden tax responsibilities on taxpayers in California and throughout the Nation. The Bureau of Reclamation’s pending Cost Allocation Study methodology is, in effect, a secret, undisclosed and unauthorized tax on everyone, but select California water users. The precise size of the “water tax” is unknown, but suffice to say, it involves potentially millions of dollars.
  4. Reclamation requests comments on a proposal, yet key portions are knowingly withheld during the comment period. The Reclamation proposal is an administrative act of public deception. During the comment period, the Bureau of Reclamation has been withholding key documents, attachments, and supporting documentation essential to Study analysis. This undermines the integrity of this comment process. We are left with no choice, but to believe that your Agency is knowingly and willfully withholding – hiding – critical documentation, information and analysis.

We request that you order the withdrawal of this CVP Final Cost Allocation Study. Attached to this letter is a summary of previous and some additional detailed comments, including links to previous comment letters submitted by the signatory groups. Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

1 Ivanhoe Irrigation Dist. v. McCracken, 357 U.S. 275 (1958)

Opinion: Bottled Water Is Sucking Florida Dry

The state’s aquifers are shrinking, yet corporations want to appropriate even more of them.

By Michael Sainato and Chelsea Skojec
15 September 2019

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Florida has the largest concentration of freshwater springs in the world, but they are being devastated by increasing pollution and drastic declines in water flow. Some springs have dried up from overextraction; others have shown signs of saltwater intrusion and harmful algae blooms.

At least 60 springs discharge from the Floridan aquifer into the Santa Fe River, which runs 75 miles through north-central Florida. This aquifer is the primary source of drinking water in the state. The state and local governments have continued to issue water bottling extraction permits that prevent the aquifer from recharging.

The answer to this problem is simple: No more extraction permits should be granted, and existing permits should be reduced with the goal of eliminating bottled water production entirely in Florida. At the very least, corporations should be taxed for the water they now extract free of charge. That revenue can be used to pay for water infrastructure projects.

CLICK HERE to read the full article.

Eye of the Storm: AquAlliance, Allies Prepare for Next Wave of Water Fights

By Evan Tuchinsky, Chico News & Review
May 23, 20219

Barbara Vlamis is smiling. Often, the executive director of the Chico-based advocacy group AquAlliance wears a steely expression, as her work involves David-versus-Goliath battles against powerful interests—namely, government agencies and water brokers. Now, she’s satisfied, even a bit celebratory.

Last spring, Vlamis and groups allied to AquAlliance notched a legal victory regarding environmental impacts of transferring water from the northern Sacramento Valley into the Delta for 10 years. (See “Marching on,” Newslines, March 28, 2018.)

The past few weeks have brought more good news—and grins.

“[For] different reasons,” Vlamis said gleefully.

First, she and colleagues in two partner groups, the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance and the California Water Impact Network (CWIN), met with officials in the administration of the new governor, Gavin Newsom. They left feeling heard and, as validation, found issues they discussed in an executive order issued by Newsom 11 days later.

That decree, signed April 29, directed four state departments to “develop a water resilience portfolio”—in other words, a sustainable plan factoring in climate change—“that meets the needs of California’s communities, economy and environment through the 21st century.”

The first action Newsom ordered echoed a point in the aforementioned meeting: assess supply versus demand. CWIN has conducted this analysis, as has UC Davis, but the state government has not. Carolee Krieger, executive director of CWIN, said both studies determined that legal rights to northern Sacramento Valley water exceed the amount available by 550 percent. The water advocates shared this data with the governor’s officials.

“We’re very pleased we’re being accepted as valuable people to talk to,” Vlamis said.

Days later, Newsom really pleased the alliance. May 2, he confirmed a policy shift announced in February by officially abandoning the twin tunnels his predecessor, Jerry Brown, had championed for the Delta. That project, formally known as California WaterFix, would have taken Sacramento River water south through two massive diversion tunnels. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California pledged to defray much of the $19 billion construction cost.

Newsom withdrew permit applications and instead called for officials to evaluate the feasibility of one tunnel, which Vlamis said the L.A. water district “has always claimed was not viable.” May 7, the state Department of Water Resources (DWR) further sealed the twin tunnels’ fate by rescinding bonds to finance the project.

These actions rendered moot three lawsuits AquAlliance and its partners had pending.

“That’s another victory, waiting out Gov. Brown essentially,” Vlamis said. “We have to see what they come back with, what their analysis is, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction.”

Krieger also is bullish about the latest developments. Speaking by phone from Santa Barbara, where CWIN is based, she voiced even more enthusiasm than Vlamis.

She, Vlamis and Bill Jennings of the fishing association met with two top officials at the California Natural Resources Agency: then-Undersecretary Thomas Gibson (now deputy secretary and special counsel for water) and Deputy Secretary for Communications Lisa Lien-Mager.

“I was absolutely elated by the end of the conversation,” Krieger said, “because I felt like they actually listened to what we were saying, heard what we were saying and took us seriously. [It’s the] first time that I’ve had that experience with anyone in government, and I’ve been doing this [advocacy work] for 30 years.”

The water accounting work conducted by CWIN found an average of 29 million acre-feet flowing unimpaired through the watershed and 153.7 million acre-feet worth of claims—“5 1/2 times more claims than water [that] exists,” Krieger said. “Of course, when they can’t get it out of the rivers, they’re going to try to get it out of the ground” through pumping aquifers.

“That’s why what Barbara is doing with AquAlliance is so critical. Even the state agencies that we’ve talked to don’t quite understand how the contractors south of the Delta are gaming the system with water claims because they haven’t done the quantification work to show it’s so oversubscribed.”

Vlamis said the Natural Resources Agency officials got a clear picture of the water transfers already taking place and existing groundwater conditions in the north valley.

“It’s awfully nice to have an administration interested in listening to engaged voices that have not been welcome in the past,” she added.

The possibility of a Delta diversion, via a single tunnel, seems remote because both Krieger and Vlamis estimate a feasibility study taking several years to complete.

That doesn’t mean their fights are over.

After winning in court last year over the 10-year water transfers, the state unexpectedly restarted the process by releasing an environmental report for public comment Feb. 1. Vlamis had comparable concerns with the new plan—namely, how it addresses impacts associated with pumping water from underground during dry years. AquAlliance submitted its comments during the 45-day period and awaits the state’s response, prepared to sue if necessary.

“What Barbara has done is put [officials] on notice that they can’t just suck the Tuscan aquifer dry like what’s happened in the San Joaquin, the Kern and the Tulare basins,” Krieger said. “We can see the results, the subsidence, where that has happened.”

Meanwhile, in November, they expect another suit against the state to have its hearing. AquAlliance and its partners have challenged the California State Water Resources Control Board on its practice of granting waivers of environmental rules to allow for more water during drought years.

Click here to view article at newsreview.com.