Author Archives: Francine

How you can stop Sacramento from raising your water rates and property taxes

By Susan Shelley | Los Angeles Daily News
Published August 29, 2018 at 11:26 am

On Thursday, August 30, at 8:00 a.m., an obscure committee in Sacramento will hold an informational hearing that will commit you, your children and your grandchildren to paying higher rates and higher property taxes to cover the cost of the proposed boondoggle known as WaterFix.

Under state law, the Department of Water Resources can finalize a long-term contract for water from the State Water Project through a unique process that doesn’t require a vote of the Legislature or any legislative committee. The DWR simply sends over a copy of the contract, the Joint Legislative Budget Committee holds an informational hearing, and 60 days later, the contract can be finalized.

In this case, the DWR wants to extend contracts for water from the State Water Project all the way to the year 2085.

Why? Because a massive capital investment is needed to pay for the WaterFix twin-tunnel project, estimated to cost $17 billion. The money will be borrowed from Wall Street investors by selling long-term bonds, and the state’s contract for supplying water has to be extended far enough into the future so that the rates paid by water customers can be promised as security. The higher the level of borrowing, the longer the contract has to run to make the math work.

Unless that hearing on Thursday is postponed, the 2085 contract extension will be finalized before Gov. Jerry Brown leaves office, committing the next governor and the next three generations of Californians to pay the debt.  Read More

Can this be stopped?

  • Call Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon at 916-319-2063.
  • Call Senate Pro Tem Toni Atkins at 916-651-4039.
  • Call Committee Chair Holly Mitchell at 916-651-4030.

Tell them the extension of the State Water Project contracts to finance WaterFix must wait until the next governor takes office, or at least until the contracts are completely written. Urge them to call off the Thursday morning hearing of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee.

You can find the names and contact information for your own state representatives at
findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov. Call them, too.

Susan Shelley is a columnist for the Southern California News Group.
Susan@SusanShelley.com. Twitter: @Susan_Shelley

Pay Up, Shut Up

From California Water Impact Network —
Click here to view full article and links to other stories and documents.

Brown Administration Plan Would Force Homeowners to Pay for Unneeded Water  Project

As the old adage has it, “You pays your money and you takes your choice.” Except when there is no choice — then you just pay. That’s the situation now facing California property owners, who recently learned that they may be burdened by unlimited new property taxes to finance a public works boondoggle that will provide no palpable benefits to rank and file citizens.

The Bay Delta Conservation Plan is an initiative by the Brown administration that has nothing to do with conservation. It calls for construction of two massive subterranean tunnels through the heart of the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta to deliver water to San Joaquin Valley agribusiness and southern California urban water districts. Final cost with interest and anticipated overruns: $67 billion or more.  Read More

The Water Crises Aren’t Coming—They’re Here

By Alec Wilkinson, Esquire Magazine, 8.23.18

For eons, the earth has had the same amount of water—no more, no less. What the ancient Romans used for crops and Nefertiti drank? It’s the same stuff we bathe with. Yet with more than seven billion people on the planet, experts now worry we’re running out of usable water. The symptoms are here: multiyear droughts, large-scale crop failures, a major city—Cape Town—on the verge of going dry, increasing outbreaks of violence, fears of full-scale water wars. The big question: How do we keep the H20 flowing?  READ MORE: The Water Crises Are Here – Esquire Sep2018

Marching on: Nonprofit notches another win in long battle to protect North State water

By 
March 8, 2018

Eight years ago, Barbara Vlamis launched AquAlliance, a Chico-based nonprofit that, according to its website, “formed to challenge threats to the hydrologic health of the northern Sacramento River watershed.”

Vlamis, who’d spent the previous 17 years as executive director of the Butte Environmental Council, opened the doors Jan. 5, 2010. She closed them on Jan. 6.

No, AquAlliance didn’t fold in 24 hours. Quite the opposite: She found herself with more work than she could handle.

In those first 24 hours, Vlamis learned that the federal Bureau of Reclamation had just released an environmental review for a two-year water transfer—the process by which rights-holders to surface water (such as Sacramento River flow) can sell that water, with the option to meet their own needs via groundwater (underground flow, pumped through wells). She had just 10 days to submit comments.

“We blasted them,” Vlamis told the CN&R this week. “We found an attorney who would take this case on, pro bono, and we sued them. And, in this case, this is where the bureau finally acknowledged they have to do more robust environmental review.”

Apparently not “robust” enough: AquAlliance has sued the Bureau of Reclamation again over environmental-impact reporting, this time for a 10-year water transfer. That suit also names the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority— designated as the state’s lead agency for the proceedings. (Vlamis said her team challenged that designation in court, and lost.)

AquAlliance rallied the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance and Delta water districts as lawsuit partners. They filed in May 2015; their case went to District Court Judge Lawrence J. O’Neill in Fresno.

Last month, O’Neill released a 133-page ruling mostly in favor of AquAlliance, essentially ordering the bureau and water agency to beef up their review. Deeming the environmental reports “at least in some part unlawful,” the judge set a March 16 deadline for response.

Erin Curtis, the bureau’s Mid-Pacific Region spokeswoman, told the CN&R that “we are planning to come back to the judge with our plan of how we will address the issues identified with the [environmental review].” Jon Rubin, interim executive director of the water authority, did not respond to a request for comment.

Vlamis’ concern about water transfers traces to 1994. Districts in the North State had been selling surface water and substituting ground water—“pretty much off the radar of everybody,” she said. That year, the volume reached over 100,000 acre-feet from southern Butte County districts and rice farmers.

Whether from drought or the additional tapping, if not both, groundwater levels dropped. North Valley orchards felt the impact first, then homes with shallower wells.

Vlamis refers to those water transfers as “the big experiment that didn’t work” because of the collateral impacts. People adversely affected approached her, while with BEC. Farmers remain staunch supporters, now backing her work with AquAlliance.

The original two-year transfer she fought never took place. The plan drew local outcry, with 200 people packing the Chico Masonic Lodge for a public meeting (see “Water worries,” Newslines, Jan. 13, 2011). Looking back, Vlamis called the turnout “a dynamic expression of this region’s upset.”

The 10-year transfer plan spurred action because she and AquAlliance partners felt the environmental review fell short in disclosure, analysis and mitigation. In other words, the bureau and water agency did not offer enough specific information on impacts and how to offset impacts, primarily in three regards: climate change, groundwater and the giant garter snake.

Should the agencies appeal O’Neill’s ruling, Vlamis said she and her lawsuit allies already have half the funds needed; they’ll raise the other half.

“What does this [litigation] mean and do for people of the North State? It slows this nefarious process down,” she said, “and it will force the agencies to face what we’ve literally been trying to tell them since 1994; that you can’t extract massive amounts of water from some place and not hurt other people and the environment.”

Read original article online at newsreview.com.

Minute by minute: What if Oroville Dam’s spillway had failed one year ago?

2.12.18: On the anniversary of the Oroville Dam disaster, Sacramento Valley citizens of all political stripes have retained a deep distrust of the California Department of Water Resources. This article from the Sacramento Bee describes the scenario that came close to occurring on the night of Feb. 12, 2017 when the “emergency spillway” began to crumble, threatening the people of Oroville with a deadly 30’ wall of debris-laden flood water. Read the full article here.

Significant Legal Win for North State: 10-Year Water Transfer Program Failed Analysis and Disclosure

The federal district court in Fresno issued a strong order February 15, 2018 supporting many of the claims made by AquAlliance and co-plaintiff partners. The lawsuit was filed in May 2015 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.

AquAlliance Executive Director Barbara Vlamis stated, “AquAlliance is elated that the court found in favor of many of our legal arguments that seek to protect the communities, environment, and groundwater dependent farmers in the Sacramento Valley as well as Delta farmers and fish. This ruling exposes the danger posed by the 10-Year Water Transfer Program’s water-grab that would benefit agricultural interests with junior water rights growing permanent crops in a desert.”

Click link to read:

Final verdict on Oroville Dam: ‘Long-term systemic failure’ by the state, regulators

January 5, 2018
By Dale Kasler & Ryan Sabalow
dkasler@sacbee.com

The forensic team investigating the February emergency at Oroville Dam blasted the California Department of Water Resources on Friday, saying the dam’s owner and operator did a poor job of designing, building and maintaining the structure and neglected safety while focusing on the “water delivery needs” of its customers to the south.

Citing a “long-term systemic failure” by both DWR and federal regulators, the group of independent investigators released its final report Friday on the nearly catastrophic fracture in the dam’s main flood-control spillway in early February, which eventually forced the evacuation of 188,000 downstream residents.

Click link to view:

 

SAVE THE DATES! Vernal Pool Landscapes: Past, Present, and Future – April 11-12-13, 2018

Photo from the 2014 vernal pool conference field trip at Arroyo Chico property, Chico, California.

Vernal Pool Landscapes: Past, Present, and Future is a conference that will be held in Chico, California on Wednesday and Thursday, April 11th and 12th, 2018 at the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company in Chico.[1] Eminent scholars, agency representatives, and other professionals will present research and case studies regarding plant and animal species dependent on vernal pool landscapes, conservation efforts, legal cases, and management techniques that have been used to enhance the economic and biological viability of certain lands.

Field trips will take place on April 13, 2018. The number of participants is limited.

Registration will be available starting in December and will be placed on the AquAlliance web site along with program updates at: www.aqualliance.net.

[1] Known as one of the premiere venues for Americana and roots music on the West Coast, the Big Room is Sierra Nevada’s beautiful live music and event venue located at our Chico, California brewery. With just 350 seats, the Big Room has gained a reputation for an intimate, small venue setting, and over the years, has hosted recording artists from all over the country. If you haven’t seen a Big Room show, we encourage you to check out this truly unique concert experience. https://sierranevada.com/brewery/california/big-room

 

Federal Water Agency Failed to Disclose Funding for Twin Tunnels

9.8.17: The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation failed to reveal significant funding for the Twin Tunnels. The Office of the Inspector General for the Interior Department stated that, “…USBR did not disclose the full cost of its participation in the BDCP, subsidized CVP water contractors, and converted $50 million in Federal funds from reimbursable to nonreimbursable without documentation to support its determination that the funds should be nonreimbursable.”

The Bureau is the same federal agency that AquAlliance is suing over their plans to transfer in ten years more water from the NorthState than the City of Chico would use in 200 years [see Lawsuit Filed Against 10-Year Water Transfer Program]. AquAlliance also filed its first lawsuit over the Twin Tunnels in August 2017 [see Lawsuit Filed Against Twin Tunnels (aka WaterFix)].

Click links for:

DWR still makes missteps with communication

It took a few months, but the state Department of Water Resources finally admitted to poor communication in the wake of the Lake Oroville spillway disaster.
Now the state agency is back to its old ways — if it ever changed at all.

DWR’s ham-handed approach to the public and even other government agencies was bothersome early on, but not surprising to anyone who has paid attention for a few years.

This is a public agency prone to telling other public agencies not to talk to the public. From slapping a gag order on participants in a relicensing agreement 11 years ago to ordering workers not to talk to anyone about an accident at the Hyatt Powerplant under the dam eight years ago, DWR has established a pattern that didn’t change with this crisis.

Beginning before the evacuation, DWR wasn’t forthright with information or the acting director was making comments that upset people. In public meetings much later, DWR officials apologized for a lack of transparency and poor communication and vowed to do better.

There’s still a lot of room for improvement.

Four incidents in the past two weeks provide proof.

  • After 10:30 p.m. on a Tuesday night, Aug. 15, our night editor heard on the scanner a report of firefighters being called to a fire at the spillway. We couldn’t get information that night before press start. The next day, reporter Andre Byik sent a text message to Bill LaGrone, the head of Oroville’s police and fire departments, asking if he knew anything. It was the first he had heard of a fire at the spillway.

Fortunately, he was sitting in a weekly meeting where government agencies involved in the Oroville spillway response share and compare notes. The fire never came up, and at a meeting like that it should, so LaGrone finally raised the question.

He was told a portable generator caught fire at the dam’s spillway parking lot. Cal Fire-Butte County responded, and a city fire truck was called off before it arrived.
Not mentioning the fire was certainly an error of omission.

  • Some individuals said they felt pressured by DWR to not sign a letter asking the federal government to delay relicensing of the Oroville project until more is known about the causes of the spillway collapse. It’s a valid request, but DWR has been itching for years to get a new license.
  • The DWR has verbally come out against this request for a delay with the DWR making subtle threats to some of the signatories,” said Oroville Chamber of Commerce CEO Sandy Linville. “ However, we stand unwavered in our resolve that we want our safety to be paramount above anything else.”As it should be.
  • The DWR dumped spawning gravel in the Feather River so adult salmon this fall will have a place to lay eggs. A lot of the gravel was washed away in the spillway flooding, leaving a silty bottom not conducive to spawning.It’s just a fraction of what needs to be done for fisheries to repair environmental damage from the spillway. DWR says it will do much more if it gets a license.
    Wait. Shouldn’t DWR be fixing the environmental damage regardless?
  • After we ran a story about the latest report by the Board of Consultants looking into the causes and solutions after the spillway failure, headlined “ Board of Consultants has concerns about temporary roller compacted concrete,” DWR public affairs assistant director Erin Mellon emailed us to take exception to our use of the term “concerns.”She said using the term “concerns” was subjective, and added, “ To say everything noted in these memos is a concern is overstating it.”

    She also said we should have highlighted the positive things the consultants said about the work being done at the spillway.

So DWR has time to critique nouns by reporters but not enough time to report a fire at the spillway construction site? This gets more alarming all the time.