Newsom Suspends Environmental Laws to Store More Delta water

February 16, 2023 By Alastair Bland 4 Comments

Facing an onslaught of criticism that water was “wasted” during January storms, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday suspended environmental laws to give the go-ahead to state officials to hold more water in reservoirs.

The governor’s executive order authorized the State Water Resources Control Board to “consider modifying” state requirements that dictate how much water in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is allowed to flow into San Francisco Bay. 

In January, after floodwaters surged into the bay, farm groups, Central Valley legislators and urban water providers complained that people and farms were being short-changed to protect fish. They urged state officials to store more water in reservoirs, which would increase the supply that can be delivered this summer to farm fields in the Central Valley and millions of Southern Californians.

Environmental activists say Newsom’s order is another sign that California is shifting priorities in how it manages water supply for humans and ecosystems.

They said the order will likely harm Chinook salmon and Delta smelt. Large numbers of newborn Chinook salmon have perished in recent drought years — the result of low flows in the Sacramento River and its tributaries.

Doug Obegi, a water law attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, called Newsom’s order the latest action in “a breakdown of law and order in the Delta.” In every critically dry year since 2012, Obegi said, the state’s flow rules and water export restrictions have been waived.

“Now, it seems, we’re going to start waiving them in average years,” Obegi said, adding that it’s the first time that the state has waived Delta outflow standards in a year that isn’t designated critically dry. 

“The executive order seems to signal the governor’s intention to put his thumbs on the scale in favor of extinction in the Delta.”

The state water board’s Delta flow rules are designed to help enforce the federal and state Endangered Species Acts, which protect Chinook salmon, green sturgeon, Delta smelt and longfin smelt.

Changing the rules is “like having a speed limit in a school zone except when you’re in a hurry,” said Jon Rosenfield, science director of the San Francisco Baykeeper. 

“We’ve got a violation of water quality standards, a petition (by a state and federal agency) to waive those standards, and a governor’s executive order encouraging the board to waive those standards through his executive order. 

“There’s not much difference between a world without environmental laws and a world where, at the stroke of a governor’s pen, environmental laws are eviscerated,” he said. 

But farm groups and water suppliers said the governor’s action could bring needed balance to the Delta.

Sarah Woolf, a farmer in the Westlands Water District in the San Joaquin Valley, said that in the past several years, her family has fallowed roughly half of their land. Her family received zero allocation of Delta water in the last two years and relied almost entirely on groundwater. 

Saying that the regulations can be too rigid in dry years, Woolf said the governor’s order could provide flexibility in better managing water supplies.

“We’re hopeful that this results in more water supply for a higher percentage of the contract water we are able to receive,” she said.

Randy Fiorini, a Merced County farmer, said farmers and other water users are routinely deprived of water to protect environmental resources. Now, he said, the governor is tipping the balance in the other direction. 

“This gives us the chance to capture as much water now as we possibly can,” he said. 

Newsom’s order says: “To ensure adequate water supplies for purposes of health, safety, the environment, or drought resilient water supplies, the Water Board shall consider modifying requirements for reservoir releases or diversion limitations in Central Valley Project or State Water Project facilities.”

His order adds that to enable those actions, two state laws — Water Code Section 13247, which requires state agencies to comply with all water-quality rules, and Public Resources Code, Division 13, which ensures environmental quality, and its regulations — “are suspended.”

The order means it’s likely that the water board will allow more water to be stored later this year in Lake Shasta and Lake Oroville, the state’s largest reservoirs, plus more water to be pumped south into San Luis Reservoir in the San Joaquin Valley. Oroville as of today contains 115.6% of its historic average and Shasta is at 88.1%. Because of the boost from the storms, the state recently announced that growers and water providers would get 30% of their requested allocations from the state aqueduct — the highest amount for January in six years.

The order also aims to streamline and increase groundwater recharge projects.

In an immediate response to Newsom’s order, the state Department of Water Resources and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on Monday jointly petitioned the state water board to loosen the Delta flow rules “to ensure the availability of an adequate water supply while also ensuring protection of critical species and the environment.”

Water board officials said in an emailed statement to CalMatters that they “are reviewing the request carefully, in coordination with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.” They said the agency’s decision will come “within the next week.”

Newsom has been under heavy criticism in recent years for using his emergency power to issue orders for handling COVID-19, the death penalty and other state issues.

Newsom said in the order that he hopes to help “maintain critical flows for fish and wildlife.” 

Storing more water could “protect cold water pools for salmon and steelhead” later in the year, the order says. During drought, low reservoir levels can lead to lethally warm water for salmon when they spawn in the summer and fall. Holding water in reservoirs now may help the ecosystem later with improved water quality, enhanced flows and cold water for reproducing salmon. 

But Rosenfield and Obegi said fish need substantial flows now. High river flows push young salmon along in their spring journey from the Central Valley to the ocean, while reduced flows lead to higher mortality.

Put in place decades ago, the Delta flow regulations at stake now are designed to help juvenile salmon reach the ocean and protect the Delta from seawater intrusion, which can occur when flows from the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers are reduced. Many environmentalists say the flow rules aren’t strong enough to protect fish, while some water user groups say they allow too much water to flow into the ocean.

Triggered by January’s conditions, the rules require that 29,200 cubic feet per second of water flow through the Delta through most of February. But last week, state and federal agencies unveiled a forecast saying flows could drop to 15,000 cubic feet per second. Environmental groups objected in a Feb. 10 letter to the state water board, warning “that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the California Department of Water Resources appear likely to violate the minimum Delta outflow requirements.” 

Three days later, Newsom issued his order. 

Newsom’s order points out that heavy rains in 2021 were followed by the driest January through March in over a century. A similar pattern, he said, is emerging now, with the December and January storms followed by a dry February, so more water needs to be held back in reservoirs to protect cities and farms from another drought-plagued summer.

“[T]he frequency of hydrologic extremes experienced in the State is indicative of an overarching need to continually reexamine policies to promote resiliency in a changing climate,” Newsom stated.

As of Feb. 14, Delta outflow was measured at 18,000 cubic feet per second, which is just 61% of the flow required under the water board’s restrictions.

Click here to read the full article in CalMatters

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: , ,

Emails Reveal Tensions in Colorado River Talks

January 31, 2023 By Kathleen Ronaynie and Felicia Fonseca 2 Comments

Competing priorities, outsized demands and the federal government’s retreat from a threatened deadline stymied a deal last summer on how to drastically reduce water use from the parched Colorado River, emails obtained by The Associated Press show.

The documents span the June-to-August window the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation gave states to reach consensus on water cuts for a system that supplies 40 million people annually — or have the federal government force them. They largely include communication among water officials in Arizona and California, the major users in the river’s Lower Basin.

Reclamation wanted the seven U.S. states that rely on the river to decide how to cut 2 million to 4 million acre-feet of water — or up to roughly one-third — on top of already anticipated reductions. The emails, obtained through a public records request, depict a desire to reach a consensus but persistent disagreement over how much each state could or should give.

As the deadline approached without meaningful progress, one water manager warned: “We’re all headed to a very dark place.”

“The challenges we had this summer were significant challenges, they truly were,” Chris Harris, executive director of the Colorado River Board of California, said in an interview about the early negotiations. “I don’t know that anybody was to blame, I genuinely don’t. There were an awful lot of different interpretations of what was being asked and what we were trying to do.”

Scientists say the megadrought gripping the southwestern U.S. is the worst in 1,200 years, putting a deep strain on the Colorado River as key reservoirs dip to historically low levels. If states don’t begin taking less out of the river, the major reservoirs threaten to fall so low they can’t produce hydropower or supply any water at all to farms that grow crops for the rest of the nation and cities like Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Phoenix.

The future of the river seemed so precarious last summer that some water managers felt attempting to reach a voluntary deal was futile — only mandated cuts would stave off crisis.

“We are out of time and out of any cushion to allow for a voluntary plan,” Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, told a Bureau of Reclamation official in a July 18 email.

As 2023 begins, fresh incentives make the states more likely to give up water. The federal government has put up $4 billion for drought relief, and Colorado River users have submitted proposals to get some of that money through actions like leaving fields unplanted. Some cities are ripping up thirsty decorative grass, and tribes and major water agencies have left some water in key reservoirs — either voluntarily or by mandate.

Reclamation also has agreed to spend $250 million mitigating hazards at a drying California lake bed, a condition of the state’s water users agreeing to cut their use by 400,000 acre feet in a proposal released in October.

The Interior Department is still evaluating proposals for a slice of the $4 billion and can’t say how much savings it will generate, Deputy Secretary Tommy Beaudreau said in an interview.

The states are again trying to reach a grand bargain — with a deadline of Tuesday — so that Reclamation can factor it into a larger plan to modify operations at Hoover Dam and Glen Canyon Dam, behemoth power producers on the Colorado River. Failure to do so would set up the possibility of the federal government imposing cuts — a move that could invite litigation.

Figuring out who absorbs additional water cuts has been contentious, with allegations of drought profiteering, reneging on commitments, too many negotiators in the room and an unsteady hand from the federal government, the emails and follow-up interviews showed.

California says it’s a partner willing to sacrifice, but other states see it as a reluctant participant clinging to a water priority system where it ranks near the top. Arizona and Nevada have long felt they’re unfairly forced to bear the brunt of cuts because of a water rights system developed long ago, a simmering frustration that reared its head during talks.

Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton’s call for a massive water cut in testimony to Congress on June 14 was a public bombshell of sorts. A week earlier, with a heads-up from the federal government, the Lower Basin states talked about collectively, with Mexico, cutting up to 2 million acre-feet during a meeting in Salt Lake City, the emails and interviews showed.

But as the weeks passed and proposals were exchanged, the Lower Basin states barely reached half that amount, and the commitment was nowhere near firm, the emails showed. Adding to the difficulty was not knowing what Mexico, which also has a share of the river, might contribute.

In a series of exchanges through July, Arizona and California each proposed multiple ways to achieve cuts, building on existing agreements tied to the levels of Lake Mead, factoring in the water lost to evaporation or inefficient infrastructure, and fiercely protecting a priority system, though it was clear negotiators were becoming weary.

The states shared disdain for a proposal from farmers near Yuma and southern California to be paid $1,500 an acre foot for water they conserved. Former Central Arizona Project general manager Ted Cooke responded by suggesting the farmers make it work at one-third of the price, which still was higher but closer to going rates.

In late July, Harris, of California, emailed a proposal to the Bureau of Reclamation outlining scenarios in the range of 1 million acre feet in cuts, saying it was imperative negotiators be able to “declare some level of victory.”

“Otherwise,” he wrote, “I genuinely believe that we are at an impasse, and we’re all headed to a very dark place.”

But ultimately, Arizona and Nevada never felt that California was willing to give enough.

“It was futile, it wasn’t enough. We did not trust that California was going to come through on their piece of it,” Cooke said in an interview.

By then, Reclamation privately told the states — but didn’t acknowledge publicly — that it backed away from the supposed mid-August deadline, officials involved in the talks said. Beaudreau, the deputy Interior secretary, said in an interview the deadline was never meant to create an ultimatum between reaching a deal and forced cuts.

But state officials said when it became clear the federal government wouldn’t act unilaterally, it created a “chilling effect” that removed the urgency from the talks because water users with higher-priority water rights were no longer at risk of harsh cuts, Arizona’s Buschatzke said in an interview.

“Without that hammer, there was a different tone of negotiations,” he said.

Today, the Interior Department’s priority remains ensuring Hoover Dam and Glen Canyon Dam have enough water in them to maintain hydropower, and the department will do whatever is necessary to ensure that, Beaudreau said.

The Upper Basin states of New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado — which historically haven’t used their full supplies — are looking toward the Lower Basin states to do much of the work.

Reclamation is now focused on weighing the latest round of comments from states on how to save the river. Nevada wants to count water lost to evaporation and transportation in water allocations — a move that could mean the biggest volume of cuts for California — and some Arizona water managers agree, comment letters obtained by the AP show.

But disputes remain over how to determine what level of cuts are fair and legal. California’s goal remains protecting its status while other states and tribes want more than old water rights taken into account — such as whether users have access to other water sources, and the effects of cuts on disadvantaged communities and food security.

Click here to read the full article at AP News

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: , ,

Could the Pacific Ocean be California’s Savior?

December 14, 2022 By Dan Walters 8 Comments

From the earliest exploration by European explorers of what became California, its position on the western coast of the North American continent has been its most important attribute.

Its coastline allowed that exploration and the development of outposts while most of the continent was still a mysterious wilderness. It fostered the 1849 gold rush that hastened California statehood. Its beaches drew millions of visitors. It made California the arsenal and staging point for World War II’s Pacific Theater and, finally, it became a focal point of global oceanic trade.

Could California’s coastal waters now become its savior, ending ever-increasing shortages of water and electrical energy that threaten the state’s economic and societal future?

Yes it could, but only if California’s political and civic leaders overcome their tendency to muff big public works — as symbolized by the bullet train’s history of over-spending and under-performing, decades of foot-dragging on much-needed water storage projects, and crippling bottlenecks at the state’s ports.

Finally, after decades of dithering, California’s Byzantine bureauracy is finally warming up to desalination of seawater as a vital piece of the state’s water supply, although it still resists big projects that could have real impact on shortages as it does in other water-short nations.

Meanwhile, California is just beginning to grasp the potential of offshore windmills to generate huge amounts of renewable electrical energy that would help close the state’s current supply gap, fill enormous new demands, and meet the state’s ambitious goals for ending its dependence on fossil fuels.

Last week, the federal government conducted auctions for windpower development rights on two oceanic sites, one 20 miles west of Morro Bay and the other off Humboldt County.

Advocates believe the sites could generate up to 8 gigawatts of electrical power, about one-sixth of the state’s current peak power demand on hot summer days and about a third of the state’s goal of 25 gigawatts of offshore windpower by 2045.

“Offshore wind is a critical component to achieving our world-leading clean energy goals and this sale is an historic step on California’s march toward a future free of fossil fuels,” Newsom said in a statement.

However, given the state’s sorry record on big-impact projects, will it really happen? Will we, as state plans now suggest, really see offshore power begin to flow into the grid within 10 years?

Don’t count on it.

The floating platforms to support the immense windmills, anchored in more than 2,000 feet of water, face critical attention from environmental groups and a phalanx of federal and state regulatory hurdles. They also would require onshore support facilities in coastal communities where resistance to development is culturally ingrained, plus cables to bring the power to shore and extensive expansions of transmission facilities to tie into the grid.

The time frame to make all of this happen, as the state assumes in its overall plan to shift California to renewable electric power, is very short. We’re now 22 years into the 21st century and supposedly all of this would occur in just 23 more years — simultaneously with many other elements of decarbonization, such as shifting to battery- or hydrogen-powered cars and trucks and eliminating natural gas in homes, business and industry.

It would take an immense cultural change in the state’s governing apparatus to make it all happen by the designated deadline, a sense of urgency, a unity of purpose, and much more managerial competence than California has mustered in the last half-century.

Click here to read the full article in CalMatters

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: , ,

6 Million Southern Californians Face Unprecedented Order to Conserve Water

April 28, 2022 By Rachel Becker 7 Comments

Unprecedented water restrictions are in store for about 6 million Southern Californians, a sign of deepening drought in counties that depend on water piped from the state’s parched reservoirs. 

The Metropolitan Water District’s board voted unanimously today to require six major water providers and the dozens of cities and local districts they supply to impose one of two options: limit residents to outdoor watering once a week or reduce total water use below a certain target.

The water providers must have plans to police their customers, and if they fail to impose the restrictions, they could face fines of $2,000 for every extra acre-foot of water that exceeds their monthly allocation limits, starting in June, according to Metropolitan.

The restrictions target parts of Los Angeles, Ventura and San Bernardino counties that rely heavily on water from drought-stricken Northern California rivers transported south via the State Water Project.

“At this time, a third of our region, 6 million Southern Californians in parts of Los Angeles, Ventura, San Bernardino counties, face a very real and immediate water stress challenge,” said Metropolitan Water District General Manager Adel Hagekhalil. “Today these areas rely on extremely limited supplies from Northern California. And there is not enough supply available to meet the normal demands in these areas.”

Cutting back outdoor watering to one day a week would be a big change for the arid, densely populated areas, where many people irrigate their lawns and gardens. 

Southern Californians have heard for decades about the dangers of drought, but per-person residential water use has increased in the past two years, despite the severe drought. Experts say conservation wavers in the region because restrictions are largely voluntary — and their water never seems to run out. 

“This is insane but not unexpected,” Peter Kraut, a council member from the San Fernando Valley city of Calabasas told the Metropolitan board, which is composed of 38 city and local district officials. “I’m appalled that a change this drastic is happening in such a short period of time.”

“This plan will result not just in brown grass but in killing countless trees. The damage to our environment will take decades to repair,” Kraut added.

Today’s mandate is the first outdoor watering restriction imposed by the giant water-import agency, which supplies 19 million people in California. More stringent restrictions may come later, Metropolitan officials warned: The water providers must also prepare to ban all outdoor watering as early as September, if necessary, as California suffers one of its driest periods on record.

The six affected water suppliers are Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Las Virgenes Municipal Water District, Upper San Gabriel Valley Municipal Water District and Three Valleys Municipal Water District — all in Los Angeles County — and the Calleguas Municipal Water District in Ventura County and the Inland Empire Utilities Agency in San Bernardino County.

About 13 million other Southern Californians are unaffected by the order because they aren’t as dependent on water imported via the State Water Project. They receive imports from the Colorado River, which largely are sent to Orange, San Diego and Imperial counties.

Metropolitan has been working to increase the number of customers who can receive Colorado River water to reduce reliance on the hard-pressed state aqueduct. The Colorado River, however, also is facing extreme drought, and deliveries to California, Nevada and Arizona are being cut back under an agreement signed by the states in December.

How much each agency must curtail customers’ water use under Metropolitan’s order depends on how much each relies on the state aqueduct compared to other sources, such as  groundwater or recycled sewage.

Water agencies are still figuring out the details. Some local water providers urged the board at today’s meeting to let them continue watering sports fields and parks more frequently so the turf doesn’t dry out.

Two of the six depend almost entirely on state aqueduct supplies — the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District, which serves 75,000 residents west of Los Angeles, and the Calleguas Municipal Water District, which supplies 19 agencies and cities in southeast Ventura County. 

Some communities served by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Inland Empire Utilities Agency and the Upper San Gabriel Valley Municipal Water District have other sources that may buffer the blow of the new mandate. Los Angeles DWP spokesperson Ellen Cheng did not respond to multiple inquiries about which parts of the city will be affected. 

Some of the affected agencies, such as Las Virgenes in Calabasas and nearby western Los Angeles County cities, already have cracked down on residents by imposing new escalating rates and penalties, with mixed success. Others, including Los Angeles DWP, which has limited outdoor watering to three days a week since 2009, have not added any new restrictions during the current drought.

Click here to read the full article at CalMatters

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: , , ,

California Doesn’t Need Another Water Bond

October 21, 2018 By Joel Fox 10 Comments

WaterIt feels every election Californians are voting on another water bond — and passing them. This November Proposition 3 is on the ballot, placed there through the initiative process. The state has plenty of unspent water related bonds. Shouldn’t we use the billions authorized for past water bonds yet expended before adding more billions to the state debt?

This bond would generate $8.89 billion for a number of water related projects including water quality, watershed and fisheries improvements, surface water storage and more at a total cost to taxpayers of $17.3 billion once the bonds are paid off with interest 40 years later. It’s hard to complain about the initiative’s goals but the costs should be put into context.

Since 2000 California voters have approved $31 billion in water and environmental projects using general obligation bonds. That’s money that comes out of the general fund used for all other services the state provides and GO bonds have first call on general fund revenues. About $10 billion of the $31 billion has not been allocated. That includes $4 billion that voters okayed as recently as the June primary election. In 2014, voters passed a ballot measure to reallocate unsold water-related bonds and authorized $7 billion for water purposes. Few have been sold by the state.

Citing a 2017 state treasurer’s report, the California Taxpayers Association notes that California has $83.24 billion in outstanding general obligation bond debt, with another $38.61 billion in authorized but unissued debt. If all bonds are sold, California would have $121.85 billion in general obligation bond debt, equivalent to nearly as much as the 2017-18 general fund budget. (Emphasis added.)

When do we say stop and use the resources at hand?

Of course, water is important to California’s quality of life. Water has been an important and contentious issue since the state was born and still is today. Just consider the fight that is brewing over Jerry Brown’s proposed tunnel project. But, by continually passing water bonds, especially those placed on the ballot through the initiative process, there is no overall management plan to deal with water issues.

Do voters consider the size of the state’s bond debt when voting on measures such as Prop 3? Hardly. If the proposal sounds good they support the idea and vote yes.

Californians should be concerned with water issues. But let’s spend money already authorized and let’s have better planning before jacking up the state’s general obligation debt.

This article was originally published by Fox and Hounds Daily

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: , ,

California’s leaky bucket theory of public improvement

August 6, 2018 By Jon Coupal 1 Comment

The Tehama-Colusa Canal transports water to irrigate northern California agriculture and communities.

Unfortunately, Californians have come to expect significant levels of waste and incompetence when it comes to government programs. Just last week, we learned that the “new” $290 million computer system for the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration — in the works for over a decade — was having significant problems with tax filers trying to submit their quarterly returns. Despite California being home to Silicon Valley and the best high-tech minds on the planet, the State of California has a sorry history of failure when implementing big computer projects.

Although Will Rogers famously said it’s good that we don’t get all the government we pay for, Californians surely want more value for the outrageous level of taxation under which they are burdened. Other states provide better and higher levels of public service with much smaller tax burdens.

If one is carrying a bucket of water from a trough to a burning barn, it is best to have a bucket that doesn’t leak. If not, you’ll arrive at the fire with an empty bucket. When Sacramento carries taxpayer dollars to some popular project or program, they do so with a leaky bucket that virtually ensures that few dollars go to the intended target.

A story in the Sacramento Bee caught our eye last week about 2014’s Proposition 1, a $7.1 billion water bond measure approved by the voters. Not surprisingly, the bond measure was widely supported by a broad range of interest groups and received only token opposition. Given the high priority water has in the hearts and minds of Californians, such support is understandable.

However, much of the support for that bond was driven by the need for increased water storage, especially surface water storage, i.e., dams. So, although the measure passed fully four years ago, where are we on the construction of the promised projects and how much funding will they receive? In other words, how much leakage is going on here?

The biggest surface water project to be financed is the Sites Reservoir, in an area north of Sacramento, designed to store water from the Sacramento River.  For water users, especially in agriculture, the Sites project has been on the top of their wish list for decades. The good news is that the project will get the lion’s share of the $2.7 billion of Prop 1 proceeds dedicated to water storage. But the California Water Commission, which has been openly hostile to new dams, only awarded $816 million of the $5.2 billion cost of the project. And even that paltry amount was awarded after political pressure was exerted on the Commission which had originally recommend zero dollars for new surface water storage. …

To read the entire column, please click here.

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: , , ,

California’s Water Storage Failure is Another Example of Dysfunctional Political Leadership

June 21, 2018 By Ed Ring 6 Comments

Lake Shasta Water ReservoirIn 2017, when cracks appeared in the Oroville Dam’s spillway, more than 180,000 Californians faced the prospect of floods. The emergency came a few years after Californians had overwhelmingly approved Proposition 1, a ballot measure to spend $7.1 billion on water-storage projects. In the drought-stricken Golden State, where runoff from rain and snowmelt races uselessly into the Pacific Ocean, the proposition won wide support, with voters approving it, two-to-one. But four years after passage, the state water commission has yet to assign a dime of funding for storage.

California once performed miracles in building infrastructure to quench the thirst of its residents and agricultural producers. In the 1960s, Governor Pat Brown oversaw construction of the San Luis Reservoir, capacity 2 million acre-feet. Approved for construction in 1963, it was completed by 1968—five years from start to finish. Those days are long gone. Any surface-storage project now faces years of litigation from environmental groups such as the powerful Sierra Club. At every stage in the construction process, delays of months or years ensue to resolve well-funded lawsuits launched under every conceivable pretext, from habitat destruction to inundation of Native American artifacts.

Nevertheless, the California Water Commission has finally announced its plans to fund new projects with the money from Proposition 1. Many Californians were surprised to learn that the proposition’s fine print stipulated that only a third of the money was ever intended to fund water storage. The rest is earmarked for other projects, ranging from habitat restoration to levee upgrades. Neither the commission nor most of the applicant agencies offer clarity as to how much additional storage the projects will add to California’s normal water supplies in an average year.

Clearly, some of the projects will make a tremendous difference to California’s parched water economy. The proposed Sites Reservoir, to be built just west of the Sacramento River, promises a capacity of nearly 2 million acre-feet; it alone could contribute a half-million acre-feet or more to the state’s water supply even in drought years, and much more in years with normal rainfall. Similarly, the Temperance Flat Reservoir will expand an existing reservoir on the San Joaquin River. Propitiously located south of the delta, this 1.3 million acre-foot construction could contribute 250,000 acre-feet or more to California’s water supply, even in drought years.

To appreciate how much capacity these two projects would add, consider that California’s total residential water consumption — indoor and outdoor combined — is only 4 million acre-feet per year. None of the other proposed projects comes close to matching these two, but in any case, it will be years before this new infrastructure can capture one drop of rain or runoff. The Sites Reservoir application anticipates completion by 2029; the Temperance Flat Reservoir, by 2033. Constant litigation, combined with years of legislation empowering unions and state agency bureaucrats to slow construction, have quadrupled the time required to build — and sent costs soaring. In 2018 dollars, Pat Brown’s San Luis Reservoir cost $672 million; the Sites Reservoir is projected to cost $5.2 billion — seven times as much, for a nearly identical facility.

To eliminate politically contrived shortages, Californians should embrace an all-of-the-above strategy to increase water supplies. They should select projects that yield the best return on investment while they take a hard look at what’s driving construction costs out of sight. Proposition 1 was a mandate to solve a solvable problem — store runoff to eliminate water scarcity. But California legislators have dragged their feet on implementation, betraying their constituents and exemplifying the state’s dysfunctional political culture. When it comes to water issues in California, not just quality of life, but life itself, is at stake.

Ed Ring co-founded the California Policy Center in 2010 and served as its president through 2016. 

This article was originally published by City Journal Online

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: , , , ,

Recent Years Prove We Need More Water Storage

April 10, 2018 By Dan Walters 5 Comments

Lake Shasta Water ReservoirThe first thing to remember about precipitation in California is that it’s unpredictable, as the past several winters have once again shown us.

Several years of severe drought ended in the 2016-17 winter with near-record rain and snow storms that filled the state’s badly depleted reservoirs.

The 2017-18 “water year,” as hydrologists call it, began with what seemed to be a return to drought but then, in March, the state experienced a steady stream of storms that added to the Sierra snowpack upon which Californians are so dependent.

It may not have been a “March Miracle” on the scale of 1991, when the mountains were virtually bereft of snow until one month of heavy storms ended the deficit. But what happened last month was at least a minor miracle, increasing the snowpack to more than 50 percent of average.

Combined with leftover storage from the previous year, California will enter the warmer months, when precipitation is rare, with fairly healthy water reserves.

Not only have the past several years demonstrated anew that “normal” is alternating periods of wet and dry, they also underscore just how dependent California is on its massive array of reservoirs, canals and other waterworks.

It collects water during the wet periods, as it did in 2016-17, and releases its reserves to maintain human life, wildlife and economy when conditions turn dry. Life as 39 million Californians know it would be impossible were it not for the state’s water system that federal, state and local governments maintain.

The state’s hydrologists believe that climate change will have a massive effect on our water supply in future decades, perhaps making the peaks and valleys of precipitation steeper and deeper and likely making more of it rain and less of it snow.

If, indeed, we will be getting more rain and less snow, it will degrade the snowpack as the state’s largest and most important reservoir. And that means we need to replace the snowpack with more manmade storage, allowing us to capture more winter rains that otherwise would flow to the ocean.

The need for more storage has been evident for decades, and although Southern California’s water agencies, particularly the Metropolitan Water District, have been diligent about adding it, Northern California, where most of the rain falls, has been negligent.

The last state water bond issue contained several billion dollars to jumpstart planning for new storage projects, particularly the off stream Sites reservoir on the west side of the upper Sacramento Valley and the Temperance Flat project on the San Joaquin River.

Together, they would add just over 3 million acre-feet of storage, or almost the equivalent of a new Lake Oroville.

However, state water officials have been somewhat lackadaisical about moving these projects along for reasons best known to themselves.

Meanwhile, there’s some movement on a long-standing proposal to raise Shasta Dam and expand Lake Shasta’s storage, now 4.5 million acre-feet – a project that is much more controversial because of its effects on land local Indian tribes consider to be sacred.

The recent drought was by no means the first. Gov. Jerry Brown’s first governorship four decades ago saw a very severe one. And it won’t be the last.

If we continue to drag our feet on building more storage, we will pay the price, and it will be a steep one.

 is a columnist for CALmatters

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: , ,