By Walt Shubin, 1.6.17
Special to The Sacramento Bee

A decade ago, environmentalists and the federal government agreed to revive a 150-mile stretch of the San Joaquin River, an ambitious effort aimed at allowing salmon to again swim up to the Sierra Nevada foothills to spawn. [Gary Kazanjian, The Associated Press]

Like other farmers in the San Joaquin Valley, I paid close attention last fall when the State Water Resources Control Board released a proposal that more freshwater flow from the Sierra stay in the San Joaquin River system on its journey to the Delta

The water board is proposing that a mere 40 percent of the flow in rivers feeding the San Joaquin – the Merced, Tuolumne and Stanislaus – make it to the Delta. Board Chair Felicia Marcus said action was long overdue to reverse loss of water quality and salmon runs.

It’s no surprise to me that Central Valley water districts, and parts of the Bay Area that get their water from the Tuolumne, raised a great hue and cry over this small step toward rational water use.

But not every farmer thinks the board went too far. In fact, this lifelong Valley farmer knows it hasn’t gone far enough to restore the balance and save the river.

Growing up in the Fresno area, I witnessed the unparalleled destruction of the San Joaquin River. I’m old enough to remember seeing San Joaquin spring-run Chinook salmon – once the largest run in the state – come up the river before dams were built and water diversion wiped out these amazing creatures.

I watched for decades as Friant Dam took every last drop of water from the San Joaquin upstream of its confluence with the Merced and left many miles of the state’s second-largest river completely dry. And I saw how farm runoff polluted with fertilizers and pesticides replaced the diverted water, representing the lion’s share of the river’s flow for long periods of the year.

These conditions led to the San Joaquin being named America’s Most Endangered River in 2014.

It’s not too late to revive the San Joaquin, her tributaries and their fisheries, but it will take more than returning 40 percent of the flow, which isn’t enough of a change from the status quo – only a third of the water now reaches the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Scientists from fish and wildlife agencies, conservation groups and the water board agree that it will take between 50 and 60 percent of the river’s flow to do the job.

Residents of the San Joaquin Valley and the Bay Area, quit your bellyaching!

It’s clear that we are living beyond the limits set by Mother Nature. The same insatiable greed for water that devastated Valley rivers, water quality and salmon runs has led us to mine groundwater so intensely that some communities have trouble getting water, and the earth’s surface is rapidly subsiding. Requiring more water to remain in rivers will recharge our aquifers and make farming more sustainable in the long run.

In my younger days, I farmed 200 acres along the San Joaquin River, and I still farm 20 acres of organic raisins 4 miles from the river. I know from experience that water levels in my well and my neighbors’ wells rise when there’s more water in the river.

Everyone who uses the San Joaquin must play a part in repairing it. My fellow farmers must recognize that living in our area’s semi-arid climate imposes limits on how much we can irrigate. Bay Area residents and businesses that used money and smarts to reduce water use by more than 30 percent during the drought must recognize they can do even more by recycling water and storing it underground.

We Californians pride ourselves on being good environmental stewards. What better test of our commitment than to follow the science, learn to live within nature’s limits and make the San Joaquin a great river again?
Read more here.

By Adams Keats, San Jose Mercury News. 12.27.16

Sen. Dianne Feinstein and San Joaquin Valley agribusiness would have us believe that bureaucratic red tape and blind adherence to environmental laws are holding back the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project, preventing water from being delivered to thirsty farms and cities.

Aside from pushing a false conflict between farms and fish, this thinking is flawed for another reason: It grossly overstates the amount of water capable of being produced by the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project.

The fundamental problem for water contractors dependent on Bay-Delta water supplies is not that the fish are getting too much water, but rather that the water isn’t there. Big Ag knows this full well because it baked this fact into the State Water Project contracts.
State Water Project contractors hold contracts for about 4.2 million acre-feet per year of project water (often referred to as “Table A Water”). Yet, as the Department of Water Resources admits, because much of the system was never built out — including several proposed dams that were taken off the table by Gov. Ronald Reagan when he protected several rivers as Wild and Scenic. So the State Water Project can only reliably produce between 2 and 2.4 million acre-feet per year. The difference is known as “paper water,” and the fact that the contracts are based on so much imaginary paper water is one of the main reasons the Bay-Delta ecosystem is collapsing.

The contracts are based on artificially inflated numbers because the “entitlements” set expectations high and put pressure on the state to actually deliver that amount of water.
These numbers present a false story of extreme hardship by the contractors, who even in the best years seem to only get half of the water they contract for. They put pressure on elected officials and provide false justification for bills like Feinstein’s.

Feinstein’s rider to the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act calls for project officials to “provide the maximum quantity of water supplies” to contractors. More likely than not, that “maximum quantity” is going to start with the imaginary 4.2 million acre-feet.

Some years the State Water Project delivers the full 4.2 MAF. But the extra water comes from the mouths of the fish and the birds in the Bay-Delta ecosystem, from the hundreds of family farms in the Delta, and from California’s sustainable salmon fishing industry. These interests have proven to be a poor match against wealthy San Joaquin Valley agribusiness.

We need to rid the contracts of this paper water. As long as the system keeps promising double what it can deliver, there will never be enough water for anybody.
The state is currently negotiating with the water contractors for the extension of the contracts, which are set to expire starting in 2035. Although the latest drafts contain the paper water numbers, they can still be changed to finally bring the contracts out of fantasy land and into reality.

There is no good public policy reason to leave the inflated numbers in the contracts. It is time to break the cycle.

All water users – including birds and the fish that support the $1.4 billion salmon industry in California – are “entitled” to fair and sustainable access to what resources we have.
Gov. Jerry Brown and other state officials should demand the Table A amounts be reduced to reflect reliably deliverable water and set the State Water Project on the road to a functioning, sustainable future.

Adam Keats is a senior attorney at Center for Food Safety working on water supply and privatization issues. He wrote this for The Mercury News.

11.25.16, Chico Enterprise-Record: The upcoming Donald Trump presidency will reshape people’s lives in ways large, small or not at all, depending on each person’s circumstances. But we can think of nothing that can affect our entire region more than Trump’s position on water.

As is the case with many issues, it’s hard to know exactly where Trump stands.

The indications we get so far from the president- elect, however, have us concerned the Sacramento Valley could become a much larger version of the Owens Valley. The Sacramento- San Joaquin Delta region has good reason to worry as well.

Back in May, Trump made a campaign stop in Fresno. The drought has hit hard in the lower half of the state, much worse than up here. Trees are dying in the Sierra and farmland in the valley is being fallowed because of a lack of water.

Trump has a way of telling a crowd what it wants to hear, and since he was speaking to farmers in Fresno who see their livelihood at risk, he told them, “ There is no drought” and promised that if he were elected, he would “open up the water.”

Both of those statements are so incorrect and incoherent, it’s hard to know where to begin.

Rainfall totals prove that, particularly in the southern half of the state, there is indeed a drought. Rain gauges don’t lie. As for “opening up the water,” what does that mean? We have to assume Trump believes he can move water from a place that has it ( here) to a place that doesn’t (there).

Maybe as president he can, but federal courts have made it clear the federal government can’t just bypass the delta and harm the fragile ecosystem there without regard. Until he changes judges in the courts.

Meanwhile, the tired old fish vs. people argument is far too simplistic. The simple answer, however, always appeals to a politician.

When it comes down to that question, of course people are more important than fish. But if the delta and the lower stretches of the Sacramento became salty holding basins, if delta and north valley communities were sacrificed so that San Joaquin Valley farmers can continue to grow orchards in a desert, if north state water rights were stolen so a more populous area of the state could prosper, then it’s not a matter of fish vs. people. It’s a matter of people vs. people.

Maybe those were just words — campaign promises to get votes. But a couple of developments in the aftermath of Trump’s big win are telling.

First, Trump has appointed a former lobbyist for the San Joaquin Valley’s giant Westlands Water District to lead the transition team overseeing the Interior Department. That lobbyist, David Bernhardt, has been trying to convince Congress to take more water out of the delta and ship it south.

Second, Trump appointed Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Visalia, to his transition team. Nunes hosted a big fundraiser for Trump, so he was rewarded. Nunes is pushing a bill that would increase water deliveries to farmers south of the delta. That bill is supported by all House Republicans from California, including Doug La-Malfa, R-Richvale.

LaMalfa maintains the bill would preserve north state water rights and deliver more water to farmers in the San Joaquin Valley. Guess what loses? Fish, the delta ecosystem and the environment. No more releasing water at key times for endangered salmon. No more worrying about fish they think are insignificant, like the delta smelt. Farming comes first.

Even farmers up here, where there is abundant water, know they can’t pillage the environment in order to grow crops. If LaMalfa, Nunes, Trump and the rest of the beltway insiders don’t care, we hope local farmers do.

They need to keep a close eye on water developments, or our water rights will be the next to go.