CA: Plan to release more delta water stirs controversy

Monterey Herald ^ | 11/30/04 | Juliana Barbassa - AP

[NormsRevenge]

FRESNO, Calif. - A plan to increase freshwater pumping from the delta is pitting Central Valley farmers who want the water for their crops against environmentalists and delta farmers who fear the move will undermine years of fishery and water quality restoration efforts.

The proposal would increase the amount of water pumped out of the San Joaquin-Sacramento river delta, a fragile ecosystem that already supplies water for 22 million Californians as far south as Los Angeles and irrigates millions of acres of Central Valley farmland.

The increased flow would help stabilize the amount of water delivered to farmers in the western half of the Central Valley, giving them the ability to better plan for long-term or higher-value crops, farmers in the region said. Those farmers, who have had their water flows limited over the past decade as water was diverted to wildlife refuges, say it is time they get the water they were promised.

But environmentalists say the move could reverse years - and millions of dollars worth - of ecosystem restoration work. Reducing fresh water flows to the delta could affect its water quality by increasing its salinity and temperature, which among other things could threaten the salmon that have been slowly returning to the region's rivers, advocates say.

Opponents of the plan also say it undermines a decade of cooperation under CalFed, a state-federal water management program designed to balance the water supply demands of urban and rural users with environmental considerations.

"This is an old-fashioned water grab," said Barry Nelson of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Since 1992, CalFed has overseen the spending of about $500 million in state and federal funds to reverse some of the damage that 150 years of mining and water diversion did to the delta. The effort has helped restore the delicate balance between fresh water from the mountain rivers and salt water from the San Francisco Bay that is essential to salmon and other species of marine and plant life.

The restoration effort has brought back a naturally reproducing salmon population that had almost disappeared. In the early 1990s, only a few hundred winter-run Chinook salmon were making their way through the Golden Gate Bridge, through the delta and up Sierra Nevada rivers like the Tuolumne, Merced and Sacramento. Now, thousands of fish fight the currents to make their way up the rivers every winter.

At the center of the current controversy is the state-operated Harvey O. Banks pump, nestled in the hills near Tracy. The linchpin in California's Byzantine plumbing system, it currently sucks more than 4 billion gallons of water a day out of the delta. The proposal would increase its pumping limit by up to 25 percent.

For the past 12 years, water agencies that serve farmers in the Central Valley have endured federally mandated water cutbacks so that water quality could be improved and fisheries could be restored in the delta, said Tupper Hull, a representative of Westlands, an agency that delivers delta water to nearly 600,000 acres of farmland.

Growers working about 1 million acres in the western valley have been getting only between 40 percent and 70 percent of their water allotment, while nearly 1 million cubic feet of water they had relied on annually was used for wildlife restoration.

"The impact of that was felt down in the Central Valley," said Jeff McCracken, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Reclamation. "It's been very hard to give them the water they need."

Now, farmers are pointing to the increased numbers of salmon swimming up Sierra Nevada rivers, and saying it's time for state and federal agencies to send them their share of water.

An increased flow of fresh water from the delta would give Central Valley farmers a more reliable water supply, they say.

"It would let us do better planning, and it would give us more confidence to invest in higher-value crops," said Jean Errotabere, who farms 3,500 acres of lettuce, almonds, garlic and other crops in the Westlands.

But environmental groups and farmers who work the low-lying islands inside the delta's meandering canals want the water cutbacks to Central Valley farmers to remain in place. They worry that the increased pumping will affect the delicate ecological balance of the delta.

That could degrade water quality, kill thousands of endangered fish and further alter river flows, said Nelson of the NRDC.

Water quality is "absolutely a question of survival" for delta farmers, said Dante John Nomellini, who represents the Central Delta water agency. The agency serves about 120,000 acres of farmland in western San Joaquin County.

It doesn't make sense to take more water out of the delta while water quality is still a worry for farmers, urban users and environmentalists in the region, Nomellini said.

"We could blend this into a workable solution that could be beneficial to the exporters, the people in the delta and the fish and wildlife," he said. "But there's a lot of work to be done."

Further irking environmentalists and delta farmers is how the plan for the increased pumping was made. In an open letter last month, 21 groups argued that the negotiations leading up to the current pumping deal considered only the interests of the powerful urban water and irrigation districts in southern and central California.

Delta farmers felt left out of the process, Nomellini said. CalFed, he said, has "simply been a mechanism to foster more exports."

But Katherine Kelly, the chief of the bay-delta office at the California Department of Water Resources, said the pumping plan would not proceed if it didn't meet the agency's commitment to water quality and wildlife restoration, as well as stringent federal and state environment regulations. An environmental impact report on the plan is scheduled to be released in February and the increased pumping could begin within three years.

"If impacts are too high or costs are too high," Kelly said, "we would have to come up with better ways of doing things."

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

We need the water, we paid for it!

[vpintheak]

Enviro-wingnuts once again proving their stupidity. People can starve and die as long as all the salmon can spawn. I am all for nature, trust me, but I choose people over animals 10 times out of 10.

[Strategerist]

Umm...it's people vs. people really. Not people vs. Salmon.

[B4Ranch]

Time to make some calls.

[B4Ranch]

>>The linchpin in California's Byzantine plumbing system, it currently sucks more than 4 billion gallons of water a day out of the delta. The proposal would increase its pumping limit by up to 25 percent.<<

I'll go for this but only if the promise flood the LA Valley.

[Dinsdale]

Pardon me but when did the farmers pay for the water or the water system?

What are they paying an acre foot today?

Does that price reflect even the cost of operating the water system or is it a federal subsidey for CA farmers?

Water should be sold to the highest bidder by the current holder of the water right, simple as that (fish and game departments hold water rights for fish/fishermen). Anything else is socialism. N California will not allow any new dry season water rights to be established by S California, the flow is spoken for.

Water rights in 30 seconds, IANAL, you 'establish' a water right by putting the water to good use, you 'perfect' it by continuing to use it for a period of years, precedence is by date. No water left during dry season therefor you can't establish use. You must purchase water from exsisting holder. Selling rights in perpetuity is controversial.

It makes no sense for the federal government to be subsidising water to grow rice in the desert at the same time it is paying Georgia farmers not to grow rice!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

It makes no sense for the federal government to be subsidising water to grow rice in the desert at the same time it is paying Georgia farmers not to grow rice!

Right on!

I'm in Southern California.

[ExtremeUnction]

It makes no sense for the federal government to be subsidizing water to grow rice in the desert at the same time it is paying Georgia farmers not to grow rice!

Ya, But..! A deal's a deal!! I think the CA farmers have a deal with the feds that was signed long ago. But it's still the law. Like it or not, the farmers are a big piece of the pie. Fair and Square. I think our country's business practices were in part based on that principle.

[farmfriend]

Rights, farms, environment ping.
Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.

[hedgetrimmer]

"We've got an invasive species problem all right - they're called humans," says Walter Hecox, an economics professor who specializes in sustainable development at Colorado College in Colorado Springs.

--I just thought the readers on this thread might want to know the real reason they want to take away the water.

[Pro-Bush]

Looks like Northern California farmers are getting the shaft to satisfy Los Angeles' requirements for water.

[Arthalion]

While I can sympathize with the farmers, the situation has changed too much to ever allow them their full allotments back. If you pull to much fresh water from the Delta for ag, you don't just hurt fish with the resulting saltwater intrusion. The delta has pumping stations that feed Central Valley farmers, Central Valley cities, and (of course) the ever thirsty LA basin. The amount of water flowing into the Delta is finite, and pulling too much out for any one of those groups will disrupt the other two. More than 80% of the natural water flow into the Delta is already captured upstream by CVP dams and diverted to the major Valley cities, the farmers in the eastern and central portions of the valley, and into the SF Bay Area as drinking water, the meager flows that are left simply aren't enough to allow the west valley farmers, the LA politico's, and the west valley towns to pull as much as they would all like.

The only way the Westlands farmers can hope to get more water on a regular and sustainable basis would be to convince the upstream water districts to release more flow into the Delta from their dams, and that just aint gonna happen.

The odd thing about Westlands is that most of the area is natually desert and has a soil that isn't particularly good for farming without large amounts of imported water, but these people insist on growing their irrigation-intensive crops in their sandy soil. Rather than plant flood-irrigated cornfields, high-profit melon fields, or hectares upon hectares of tomatoes, these farmers should be looking at planting drip irrigated orchards and other low-water crops that have reasonable profit margins and can survive well on the water allotments they are currently getting. The more water-intensive crops are grown in other parts of the valley where water is more available, but this land was originally described by explorers such as John C Fremont as an "uninhabitable, dry wasteland" that even the Indians avoided because of its lack of water. IMO, it's unreasonable of the farmers there to expect that the cities to their north and south, not to mention the people and farmers in and around the Delta itself, should suffer a loss in water quality simply because these desert dwellers want to waste water on high margin, water intensive crops.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!!!

[Carry_Okie]

We need the water, we paid for it!

The historic prices Central Valley farmers have paid for water don't even cover the cost of electricity to pump it.

[Carry_Okie]

The odd thing about Westlands is that most of the area is natually desert and has a soil that isn't particularly good for farming without large amounts of imported water, but these people insist on growing their irrigation-intensive crops in their sandy soil.

Not to mention the selenium that leaches out of it, hits the clay layer, runs off into wetlands, and poisons migratory birds. The Federal government has spent over a billion dollars to fix that mess with no end in sight.

It never was good farmland. Not a few of these guys just use farming to hold the water rights necessary to develop into housing. It's been a taxpayer-funded scam since the beginning.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks for the info.

[Penner]

Not to mention the selenium that leaches out of it, hits the clay layer, runs off into wetlands, and poisons migratory birds. The Federal government has spent over a billion dollars to fix that mess with no end in sight.

The peripheral canal would have solved this problem but the enviro whackos stopped it. Instead of the runoff being transported to the bay where it would be diluted, it gets dumped into a "wetland" where the selenium (an element found in nature) builds up to toxic levels.

It never was good farmland. Not a few of these guys just use farming to hold the water rights necessary to develop into housing. It's been a taxpayer-funded scam since the beginning.

Yeah, better buy a house in Huron before it's too late!

[Carry_Okie]

The peripheral canal would have solved this problem but the enviro whackos stopped it.

Explain to me how the Peripheral Canal would have had any effect over 50 miles uphill and to the south.

Instead of the runoff being transported to the bay where it would be diluted, it gets dumped into a "wetland" where the selenium (an element found in nature) builds up to toxic levels.

Oh, and I take it that the taxpayers were supposed to pump in billions for the piping and the canal? Give me a break. If the farmland was that good then private investment in the plumbing would have been profitable.

Yeah, better buy a house in Huron before it's too late!

It's simply a matter of time.

[Arthalion]

Yeah, better buy a house in Huron before it's too late!

The development doesn't have to be local because it's the establishment of the RIGHTS that's important. In case you hadn't heard, the state of California now requires that all major housing developments identify their water source before development plans can be approved, and this requirement is spawning a thriving sub-industry centered around reselling ag water to developers. I've seen several projections that in 15-20 years the value of the WATER spread on the fields in California will exceed the value of the crops grown from it.

For farmers in districts like Westlands, their historic water rights could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars over the next decade, but that value is supressed by the fact that they cannot show reliable DELIVERIES from those rights. If they can increase the flow and have it maintained for the next ten years or so, the farmers stand to make a killing when the north valley developers come knocking.

The housing developments fueled by Westlands water won't cause a land boom in Huron or Coalinga, but it will continue to drive development in areas like Patterson, Tracy, and Diablo Grande.