This page includes a a selection of news articles and opinions at the intersection of California agriculture and water. Check back for up-to-the-minute news on policy, practices, and opportunities for technical or cost-share support. The opinions expressed here are intended to communicate a wide array of perspectives on the issues and do not necessarily reflect the views of CAWSI or its partner organizations.
Water package | Salmon vs. Jobs | NRCS News Release | Water Briefing | Water package | Dolman Interview | Water Deal | Stealing Water | Stock Ponds |
Water package for parched San Joaquin Valley set to be unveiled
mdoyle@mcclatchydc.com
Published Friday, Feb. 26, 2010
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is expected today to unveil an ambitious-sounding package of irrigation deliveries, water transfers, farm loan guarantees and other programs targeting the parched San Joaquin Valley.
Crafted amid intense political pressure, the package is supposed to alleviate farmers’ distress while still protecting fish. Some key California lawmakers said late Thursday they were pleased by the effort, though others still want more detail.
“I’m heartened by this,” Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Thursday night.
The comprehensive package is expected to accompany what is normally a routine water allocation announcement, where the federal Bureau of Reclamation declares how much water farms and cities can expect. Last February, the bureau announced farmers south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta would receive nothing. That later increased to 10 percent of historic deliveries.
This year, lawmakers have been demanding that farmers receive up to 40 percent of their historic deliveries. If necessary, Feinstein said she would offer an amendment rewriting environmental decisions in order to deliver the increased water.
Feinstein said Thursday there now appears to be “a good likelihood” that the administration actions being announced today will go a long way toward her goal. The precise details were being tightly held until today.
“I’m very hopeful,” added Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer.
Feinstein and Boxer spoke as they departed an extraordinary closed-door session that amounted to a high-level California water summit. Three Cabinet secretaries, both of the state’s senators and more than a half-dozen House members convened on Capitol Hill for more than 90 minutes to hash out the state’s immediate water woes.
In part, the session held in the underground Capitol Visitors Center permitted Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Council on Environmental Quality chief Nancy Sutley to sketch out their plans for easing California’s pain.
In part, the session allowed members to keep the pressure on. Democratic Rep. Jim Costa of Fresno reminded the administration officials of the 40 percent unemployment that’s brutalized some San Joaquin Valley towns, while Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, cited the predator fish and other non-irrigation causes for the decline of some endangered Delta species.
Farmers have been leery, with Westlands Water District General Manager Tom Birmingham predicting Wednesday that the initial water allocation will again be zero, just like last year. One possibility is that the Bureau of Reclamation’s initial allocation, while low, will be accompanied by expectations that the other actions being taken will bring total water deliveries up toward the 40 percent mark.
© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.
Salmon vs. Jobs
Twelve Democratic lawmakers have written Senator Dianne Feinstein urging her to withdraw her proposal to temporarily divert more water from the California Delta to the Central Valley for farming. The lawmakers say pumping more water south would seriously endanger salmon populations. Farmers maintain that they need the water to save jobs. Listen to Dave Iverson on KQED discuss the issues
California NRCS Announces Sign Up for Conservation Program in Russian River
DAVIS, CA, February 8, 2010 – Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) State Conservationist Ed Burton announced a $1-million special initiative to conserve water in the Russian River and its tributary streams during important life cycle periods of salmon.
The NRCS in Sonoma and Mendocino counties is accepting applications for its Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) for practices that reduce the amount of water diverted for irrigation and frost protection of vineyards and orchards. The deadline for applications is February 26, 2010.
Burton said, “Farmers in this area have expressed their commitment to taking a voluntary approach to water conservation. This EQIP initiative will support their efforts with best management practices that include wind machines, microsprinkler systems, sprinkler head control modules and the use of weather stations for determining the best time to apply water without waste.”
Federal studies have shown that direct pumping from rivers and streams during cold snaps and times of low-flow have had significant impacts on salmonid populations, sometimes resulting in large fish kill events. Agricultural producers in the Russian River watershed have been working to find ways to reduce stress on salmonid populations while irrigating and protecting crops from frost.
United States Department of Agriculture, 430 G Street, Davis, CA 95616, (530) 792-5644 • www.ca.nrcs.usda.gov
CONTACTS:
Charlette Epifanio (707) 794-1242, ext 105
Jeff Raifsnider (831) 754-1595, ext 105
Roney Gutierrez (530) 792-5649
Water briefing provides little encouragement
California Farm Bureau Federation
Issue Date: January 20, 2010
By Kate Campbell
Assistant Editor of Ag Alert
Hope was in shorter supply than water at a briefing on the state’s water supply situation last week. More than 200 farmers and local leaders showed up at the Los Banos Fairgrounds to hear from state and federal officials about the impact of the continuing drought, low reservoir levels, regulatory inflexibility, crippling court decisions and dwindling options for those who grow irrigated crops—particularly on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley.
Most of all, farmers wanted to know how much irrigation water will be available to support crops during this year’s growing season.
Officials warned farmers that the first water allocation estimate from the federal Central Valley Project, due next month, could be as low as the initial 5 percent estimate made by the State Water Project. But they also pointed to the hope that storms generated by the El Niño weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean would bring rain and snow to California in coming weeks.
The current water situation includes reservoirs that are at less than half of average capacity for this time of year, a rate of pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta for water storage that has been throttled back to about 40 percent of operating capacity, a current snowpack for spring runoff that stands at about 70 percent of average, and the state Department of Fish and Game count of protected delta smelt that stands at the lowest level since studies began in 1967.
“The people in this room are angry and frustrated because they’re seeing their livelihoods from irrigated agriculture vanish,” said Tom Birmingham, general manager of the Fresno-based Westlands Water District. “We’re experiencing unbelievable levels of unemployment and there’s a need for social services well beyond the need of any other communities in California.”
Farmers urged officials to build more reservoirs to store water during wet years, but it’s the current crop year that worries them. Farmers and valley lawmakers said the federal Endangered Species Act should be relaxed, so more water can be stored and available during the summer.
“More important is the short term now, because we have farmers on the brink of going out of business,” said Earl Perez, who buys CVP water to grow several crops on the west side of Stanislaus County.
Other farmers are fallowing land, with as much as a half million acres in the San Joaquin Valley going idle last year.
Farmer Laurian Bettencourt of Gustine tells officials during a briefing on the state water crisis in Los Banos that farmers need flexibility to move excess water from their own operations to those who need it, especially during severe shortages.
Gustine farmer Laurian Bettencourt told officials that he has excess water on his farm, but regulations prevent transfers between farmers in different water districts.
“I want to help my neighbor,” Bettencourt said. “He’s had to fallow 400 acres, but I can’t move my water to him. That just seems wrong.”
Some farmers with limited water alternatives are simply selling out, including one Mendota-area farmer who told Ag Alert® that he just got tired of fighting
The Los Banos briefing included an update regarding a National Academy of Sciences review of the science behind the biological opinions on salmon and delta smelt, which restrict water movement through the delta.
At the request of the U.S. departments of Interior and Commerce, the National Academy of Sciences agreed to conduct the review and issue a report by March 15 that focuses on the assumptions used to operate the state and federal water projects. The academy will convene at the University of California, Davis, Jan. 24-28 to gather information.
“We’re seeing some progress with the National Academy of Sciences review of the underlying science of the biological opinions that have resulted in reduced levels of water going into storage, because we believe there are other factors affecting the ecology of the delta besides the water transfer pumps,” said Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, who hosted the briefing with Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno.
Among those attending were officials from the U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Department of Commerce, California Department of Water Resources and local water districts throughout the San Joaquin Valley.
Cardoza said the Bureau of Reclamation is being urged to improve the ability to transfer water by completing a long-term, multi-year water transfer program and an intertie canal project connecting the CVP and state water systems, while providing more federal dollars for water conservation, and improving and expanding a number of dams and reservoirs to increase efficiency and storage capacity.
“Our farmers can no longer shoulder the entire burden for the delta’s problems. It’s important that we find other solutions. Doing more of the same (curtailing the water transfer pumps) is not the answer,” Cardoza said.
David Nawi, a senior advisor to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, said he has opened an office in Sacramento and will be focusing his attention full-time on the state’s water crisis, which he said is an indication of the Obama administration’s commitment to helping address the state’s water crisis.
But the Interior Department decided not to proceed with an experimental plan known as the Two Gates Fish Protection Demonstration Project, which would have tested the benefit of installing two moveable gates to keep fish away from the delta pumps.
In a December letter to the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority, which has been working to gain approval for the project, the Interior Department said it would not approve the Two Gates project. The department cited what it called major, unanswered questions and cost estimates that escalated from $29 million to $60 million to $80 million.
Farmers had hoped the project would be operational by this year.
California Farm Bureau Federation Director of Water Resources Danny Merkley said the Los Banos briefing reinforced the need to enhance the state’s water system.
“We’re not managing our system properly, including keeping it current with changing precipitation patterns, increasing urban and environmental demands, technology and infrastructure, so we can capture water and then efficiently move it when needed for the ecosystem, urban uses, and food and farm production,” Merkley said. “The longer we wait, the longer it will take to resolve this crisis.”
(Kate Campbell is an assistant editor of Ag Alert. She may be contacted at kcampbell@cfbf.com.)
Water package: Sealing the deal
swiegand@sacbee.com
Published Sunday, Nov. 29, 2009
Just before midnight, he saw it falling apart.
Months of delicate negotiations and hardball confrontations; of meticulously drafted legislation that was torn up as soon as the ink was dry, only to be rewritten; of interminable hours in closed-door meetings and impromptu hallway huddles.
A potentially monumental step toward easing a water crisis that had been decades in the making was close.
And yet an incongruous move by ardent environmentalists to kill a decidedly pro-environment bill was threatening to derail the entire package.
“Incredible,” a frustrated Senate President Darrell Steinberg muttered to no one in particular from his desk near the back of the state Senate chambers. “Incredible.”
Wrestling with California’s water system is like working a Rubik’s Cube: As soon as a couple of sides are aligned, the others go out of whack.
To reach agreement among the myriad elected officials, geographic regions and special interests on any one aspect of water in the state is an impressive feat.
Earlier this month, elected officials, special interests and Capitol aides assembled a potentially landmark package of solutions designed to overhaul California’s crumbling water system.
It will take years to ascertain whether the package of water system reforms will work. But that they were even agreed to – in an atmosphere suffused with bitter partisanship and decades-old regional rivalries – is nothing short of a political miracle.
Here’s how it happened, based on interviews with legislative and Schwarzenegger administration officials and staff, lobbyists and other interest group representatives, and on reporters’ notes taken during the months of negotiations and final days of voting.
The Bee agreed not to identify specific sources in order to provide readers a candid view of how in private meetings they pulled together a deal that will frame the state’s water decisions for the next generation.
Prologue to a deal
In recent years, the state’s water fight has centered on three issues: building more storage, i.e., dams; restoring the vital but fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta ecosystem; and moving water in the North to the South.
One day in the fall of 2007, state Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, broached an idea.
What if proposed water projects – from dams to Delta restoration – were ranked in terms of their benefit to the public, rather than just pursued piecemeal for those who would pay for the project and get the water from it?
Steinberg’s approach would emphasize that all of California had a stake in managing what is a finite resource, and would give everyone a place at the bargaining table.
The idea went nowhere, a casualty of partisan and regional bickering. But Steinberg had planted a seed in the Capitol.
The following year, another seed was planted by a pair of unlikely political allies.
The state’s Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and its senior Democratic U.S. senator, Dianne Feinstein, decided to try to broker a water plan based on Steinberg’s idea.
The two leaders put together a committee of lobbyists, legislative staff and administration officials to draft a package of measures that addressed all of the key issues – dams, Delta restoration, moving water around – instead of one piece at a time.
Like Steinberg’s first idea, it died a partisan and special- interest death. But also like Steinberg’s idea, the Feinstein- Schwarzenegger package approach struck a chord under the Capitol dome, and continued to echo into 2009.
Now or never
As the new year dawned, California’s water problems were multiplying. Drought conditions dragged on, while federal court decisions and bureaucratic mandates cut supplies to Central Valley farmers and the thirsty South.
In addition, the prospect of a lame-duck governor and elections in 2010 added to the political pressure to get something done in 2009.
Steinberg, who had formally become Senate president pro tem in December 2008, vowed to have a water deal in place by the end of the year.
“People do not expect miracle fixes,” he said, “but they do expect us to get going.”
The state’s crippling budget deficit pushed water planning – and everything else – to the Capitol’s back burners. But behind the scenes, progress was being made.
With the assent of Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, Steinberg put together two bipartisan, bicameral working groups of legislators.
For months, the groups met on Monday and Wednesday evenings in closed-door sessions to hear outside water experts and draft bills.
Outside the Capitol, meanwhile, coalitions of special interests formed and re-formed.
In the past, water deals had been pecked to death by similar disputes among the flocks of disparate interest groups – sometimes even when they agreed on the basics.
In 2008, for example, a deal that would have provided financing for water storage fell apart when the sides couldn’t agree on whether the annual funding would be automatic, or would need to be approved again each year by the Legislature.
This time around, the Latino Water Coalition, a group of Central Valley elected officials, farmers and farmworkers that had been created in part by the Governor’s Office, was putting heat on the Legislature’s 24 Latino members to support a water package.
At the same time, a split deepened between environmental groups over issues that included the possibility of a canal through or around the Delta.
And politically powerful urban water districts were vying with equally powerful farm interests for position at the bargaining table.
But by October, the number of seats at the table had narrowed to five.
Threats and bluffs
It’s a time-proven axiom of California government that legislators rarely produce results without deadlines – and sometimes not even then.
Despite a frantic post-midnight effort, the Legislature’s regular session had concluded Sept. 12 with no water deal.
“We made more progress in the past few months than has been made on water in the past 40 years,” Steinberg insisted as the evening ended. “It may take a little longer, but I have every confidence we are almost there.”
But lawmakers now lacked a deadline to make a deal. So Schwarzenegger, who had already warned that he would not sign a package of policy bills if it lacked a bond proposal, created his own deadline.
In early October, he threatened to veto all of the 700-plus bills on his desk if a water package wasn’t done by Oct. 11, the last day he had to sign or veto bills before they became law without his signature.
The threat irked legislators, particularly Steinberg, who angrily told Schwarzenegger he didn’t need a threat to finish work he had started years ago.
But whether as a result of the threat or in spite of it, the governor, Steinberg, Speaker Bass and GOP leaders Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth of Murrieta and Assemblyman Sam Blakeslee of San Luis Obispo began a seven-day marathon of meetings in Schwarzenegger’s office complex.
The quintet of elected leaders – referred to as “the Big Five” – hammered out a compromise between mammoth water bond proposals by Steinberg and Sen. Dave Cogdill, R-Modesto.
They debated in excruciating detail issues as seemingly minute as whether to use “shall” or “may” in one sentence of a 128-page bill, or the potential legal ramifications of the term “reasonable use.”
Negotiations sometimes bogged down over changes Hollingsworth and Blakeslee wanted as a price for putting up the Republican votes needed to pass the bond proposal, which required two-thirds legislative approval.
One example was a GOP desire to “lock in” the powers to be granted a council that would oversee management of the Delta, by spelling them out in the bond proposal.
If approved by voters, they argued, the powers couldn’t be changed by the Democratic-dominated Legislature in future years. But Schwarzenegger refused, arguing that maximum flexibility would be needed for solving future water problems.
In an exchange in his cigar tent that occupies the open-air patio in the governor’s suite, Schwarzenegger angrily warned that if the demands weren’t curbed, he would reverse an earlier pledge and approve the policy portion of the package and dump the bonds.
That, in turn, angered Blakeslee, who got into a heated argument with Susan Kennedy, Schwarzenegger’s chief of staff, about the governor’s threat to “decouple” the bonds from the policy bills. (It didn’t help that Schwarzenegger had also vetoed two of Blakeslee’s bills.)
“In Sacramento, whether you’re on the right or the left or the center, people need to know that when you shake their hand, you can rely upon their word,” Blakeslee told a Bee reporter a few days after the Big Five meetings ended.
About 5 p.m. on Oct. 11, the last day for Schwarzenegger to sign bills, the five reached a tentative deal. It was so tentative, however, that the legislative leaders refused to allow the administration to announce that an accord had been reached, or was even near completion.
Nonetheless, the governor relented on his mass-veto threat, and called a special legislative session to ratify the plan.
Now came the hard part.
Buffalo and helicopters
Legislative leaders figured they had a one-week window near the end of October to work around various vacations and other lawmaker absences and set a vote on the water plan.
In the weeks following the tentative deal reached in Schwarzenegger’s office, it became clear that delay beyond the end of 2009 could result in the package falling apart.
Some of the environmental groups (in water-speak shorthand, “enviros”) that had backed the plan were having second thoughts, worrying that in his eagerness to close a deal, Steinberg had made too many concessions.
At one point in the Big Five negotiations, Steinberg agreed to language that would limit what could be used as legal evidence that a water district wasn’t meeting its conservation goals. When enviros found out and balked, however, the chastened senator was forced to, in the words of one enviro, “put the toothpaste back in the tube.”
Representatives of water districts and agricultural interests (dubbed “water buffaloes”) were likewise nervous. They feared language in the bills would threaten water and property rights.
Nervous jokes about “water police” in “black helicopters” became prevalent. After the topic was raised at one meeting in the governor’s conference room, Kennedy had four remote-controlled toy helicopters flown in. The prank cut the tension but didn’t allay the fears.
‘It’s a circus’
By the late afternoon of Nov. 2, legislative leaders figured they had their water-package ducks in a row – or as much as they were going to be.
“I’m feeling some momentum here,” Steinberg said. “Now’s the time to go.”
But last-minute amendments to the package created confusion as well as dissent, as evidenced by one harried lobbyist talking on his cell phone in a Capitol hallway.
“I can’t tell you where we are on this (bill),” he said into the phone, “because we don’t know what’s in it … it’s a circus right now.”
For example, what was a $9.4 billion bond proposal when it left the Governor’s Office had become a $9.99 billion package by the time it reached a hastily called Senate committee hearing.
“Our goal has always been to keep it under $10 billion,” Sen. Cogdill explained with a more-or-less straight face.
By midnight, it was clear the package was not going to sail through the two houses.
Several pieces of the five-bill package moved rather easily through the Senate. But a bill to increase penalties for illegal diversion of water and increase the state’s enforcement efforts was stalled behind an unlikely roadblock.
Conservative Republicans had joined with four Northern California Democrats in the Senate to stall the measure.
The balking Democrats and other legislators were being lobbied hard both by water agencies that disliked the idea of facing steeper fines for illegal water diversions, and some environmental groups that were pursuing a risky strategy.
Because the bills were “linked” – meaning if one failed, they all did – enviros who opposed the package were trying to torpedo it by opposing one of its strongest environmental elements.
The strategy infuriated Steinberg, who alternately cajoled and berated his recalcitrant colleagues. He watched disgustedly as a dozen roll calls came up short of the 21 votes the bill needed.
Shortly after midnight, despite fears the package’s fragile support would crumble if the process dragged on, Steinberg and Bass decided to call it an evening and adjourned their houses.
Parsing the pork
The following evening, and well into the next morning, the stalemate on the illegal diversion bill continued, even as other parts of the package moved from the Senate to the Assembly.
Around 2 a.m. on Nov. 4, Steinberg huddled with Kip Lipper, his top water consultant, and Assemblyman Jared Huffman, the San Rafael Democrat who had been the Assembly’s point person on the water deal.
Along with Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, who had authored the diversion bill, they agreed that the only way to move things along was to weaken the measure enough – in part by removing a provision that called for fines of up to $5,000 a day on water scofflaws – to attract some Republican votes for both the diversion bill and the bond.
At a 4 a.m. meeting in Huffman’s office, the enviros who had supported the package reluctantly agreed to go along with the weaker version and fight for a stronger measure in January. Blakeslee also agreed to the compromise. Republicans put up 15 votes in the Assembly and five in the Senate, and the bill was out.
That left the bond bill.
When it exited the Senate, the bond measure contained $9.98 billion worth of proposed spending on water projects – and $10 million for a project that had little or nothing to do with water.
The money had been included by Steinberg to help construct a tolerance center in Sacramento that he had been trying to get built for years.
Few in the Capitol knew the earmark was in the bill, until a Bee story revealing it was published on the paper’s Web site just after midnight.
The revelation raised a ruckus on the Assembly floor. Assemblyman Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks, asked with some acidity about the relationship between the state’s water system and a tolerance center.
“All I’m trying to do is parse the pork,” Niello said.
Embarrassed and exhausted, Steinberg agreed to eradicate the earmark.
But there was still plenty of pork to go around. To lure votes, more than $1 billion in pet projects were added to the bond measure.
There was money for bike trails at Lake Tahoe, interpretive centers in Huntington Beach and agricultural research at California State University campuses. There was money to tear down dams on the Klamath River and build one up in San Diego County.
In the end, the bond proposal set to go before voters next year had swelled to $11.1 billion.
But the deal was done.
Shortly before 6 a.m., Steinberg rose, somewhat unsteadily, to his feet for one last speech.
“The Legislature has accomplished something together that many people believed could not be accomplished,” he said. “It proves the process works.”
Then they went home.
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Know Your Lifeboat: An Interview with Permaculturist Brock Dolman
November 18, 2009
by Marita Prandoni
Brock Dolman is a permaculturist at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (OAEC) based in Occidental, California. He is a member of the Sowing Circle Intentional Community and is Director of the OAEC’s WATER Institute (Watershed Advocacy, Training, Education, & Research) and Permaculture Design Program. He also co-directs OAEC’s Wildlands Biodiversity Program. Read more
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The great water deal of 2009: Historic?
November 11, 2009
By Peter Schrag
Published on California Progress Report
On the rare occasions when the biggest players in Sacramento blow kisses to one another for a historic achievement, the object of the celebration deserves a hard second look. It happened again last week when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, legislative leaders and a gaggle of other politicians and lobbyists reached the great water deal of 2009. He wanted to congratulate all concerned, said the governor “for this historic accomplishment.”
Like many other big deals in Sacramento in recent years, this one, too, was composed in large part of black boxes, deferrals, fudges and borrowing — $11.1 billion in general obligation bonds in this case— for large water projects, some as yet unspecified, plus a fair amount of pork having little to do with water. How many billions have we put on the credit card since 2004, when the governor declared that we’d tear it up?
But if the bonds are approved by the voters next year, the borrowing and the $800 million the bonds will take out of the state’s already deficit-burdened general fund each year will be just one item on a long list of misplaced priorities, calculated ambiguities, and missed opportunities.
From 30,000 feet, the agreement, in the form of five bills, touches nearly all the major issues in California’s complex water picture: flood control, protecting the fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta ecosystem, securing more water for the big San Joaquin Valley growers, many of them suffering the effects of a severe drought, reducing water consumption, monitoring and replenishing the state’s overdrawn ground water and addressing the increasingly severe effects of global warming.
Given the interests involved, reaching political agreement on them all would have taken a political miracle, and there was no miracle here. As the back-room negotiating proceeded, many of the most promising parts of the bills were watered down (you should pardon the phrase) to the point where the good intentions turned into toothless enforcement machinery and ambiguous policy priorities.
There’s not much question about who the biggest winners are going to be. “Farm leaders,” said the Fresno Bee, “were all smiles as they celebrated passage of proposals they had pushed for years without success.” In Valley talk, “farmers” means mostly the big growers, particularly the 600 San Joaquin Valley agribusinesses in the powerful Westlands Water District. Collectively they “farm” some 600,000 acres. These are not little family farmers.
We don’t yet know whether the deal will lead to the construction of a peripheral canal to take Sacramento River water around the ecologically overstressed Delta, for delivery to those growers and to Southern California cities. Nor do we know how much of the new storage capacity will be the costly surface dams the growers love and how much will go into the Valley’s depleted underground aquifers.
What we do know is that the deal did little to guarantee effective ground water monitoring by the state or to require more efficient use of water by agriculture, which still consumes roughly 80 percent of the state’s water. It aims to reduce urban water use by 20 percent but requires no similar effort by growers. And it’s still the taxpayers who’ll have to pay off the bonds – with interest a total of as much as $22 billion — not the farmers, developers and flood plain property owners who will be the major beneficiaries.
The legislation calls for the creation of a seven-member Delta Stewardship Council that’s supposed to develop a comprehensive long-term management plan for the Delta and coordinate the countless federal, state and local agencies involved in California water policy.
But given the enormously complex issues involved in managing the Delta and the many players involved, there’s no telling how the Council will work or whose interests it will represent. And since Delta issues are now compounded by the effects of global warming, which is likely to raise sea levels and increase the intrusion of salt water into the Delta, even as the Sierras – historically the state’s largest reservoir — get less snow and thus will store less water, the questions and problems of Delta management will only grow more difficult.
Maybe the most divisive of the current questions is about construction of the peripheral canal, a project approved during the administration of former Gov. Jerry Brown. It was blocked in 1982 by a voter referendum backed by an odd combination of environmental groups, Bay Area water interests and growers opposed to an environmental measure to which the canal bill was linked..
So last week, the governor and the five legislative leaders in Sacramento ducked, leaving the choice in the Delta Council’s black box and allowing all concerned the hope that in the end things will come out their way.
Tellingly, the enviros are divided, with the Sierra Club and the Planning and Conservation League opposed and the Environmental Defense Fund, believing that the deal will lead to environmental restoration of the Delta, in strong support.
“It is important to realize,” said an EDF press handout, “that the legislation does not authorize a peripheral canal. It does assure, however, that a canal will only be built if important habitats are restored, water exports from the Delta are biologically sustainable, and the beneficiaries of those exports pay the full cost of construction, including environmental mitigation.”
But as Carl Pope, the Sierra Club’s executive director wrote last week, “The governor’s proposal continues excessive reliance on outmoded water-storage solutions, lowers the emphasis on protection provided by existing law for the health of California’s waterways, does almost nothing to enhance local self-reliance on water supplies, and fails to guarantee commonsense reforms of water policy.” That may be even truer for much of agriculture.
Early in October, California Treasurer Bill Lockyer warned about the increasingly large share that debt service is taking out of the general fund, rising from “the current 6.7 percent to 10 percent or more by the middle of the next decade unless the budget improves,” thus cutting ever more deeply into education, health services and other programs. That “makes the case for user-funding for most water system improvements …compelling, both as a matter of equity and fiscal prudence.”
But the combination of drought, the resulting federal cuts in water flows to agriculture and legislators’ desperate need to improve their dismally low approval ratings made even a bad deal politically more attractive than no deal. Lockyer might as well have been in Kansas.
Water is a fixed – and probably declining – resource. The only way it can be stretched is by conservation, recycling of waste water and by more efficient use. This deal takes the first baby steps in that direction, but only by promising more goodies to agriculture and by taking most of the money to pay for it not from the beneficiaries but from schools, universities, the old and the sick, and from the taxpayers, present and future. Next November, when they get to vote on the bonds, they’ll have the last word on that.
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Who Is Stealing California’s Water?
November 4, 2009
By Peter Gleick
Pacific Institute
We must stop pretending that water is free and unlimited, available to anyone who can put a siphon in a river or drill another groundwater well.
What do I mean by stealing water? I mean people extract water from our rivers and streams without a right to do so. Legal water rights are managed by the State Board. Water rights permit and license holders are required by the California Code of Regulations to file reports with the State Water Board on their water diversion and use amounts. Fewer than 70 percent of permit holders actually submit these reports. There is no penalty for failure to file a report and, worse, no verification of the numbers reported. Further, information is not available to compare face value of water rights to actual use. Some, perhaps many, rights holders are likely taking more than their right allows.
Moreover, the State Board does not have authority over the earliest water rights claims — so-called Pre-1914 rights — and the Board estimates that there are approximately 1,600 unreported Pre-1914 and riparian diversions in the Delta. How much water are these diverters taking? No one knows, or looks, or measures. The story is even worse for groundwater. Percolating groundwater is not subject to the State Water Board’s permitting system (as though it was magically different from surface water. It isn’t.) and, in most of the state is not regulated by any other public agency. How can we sustainably manage what we don’t even measure? Where is our groundwater going? What is the effect of this groundwater use on surface flows? Who knows?
As bad as things are for understanding existing rights and use, there are thousands of water users extracting water with no rights at all. Or so we think. Why don’t we know?
Water Number: Eight. There are only eight people statewide with responsibility for policing water theft and rights violations at the State Water Resources Control Board, and even they have other demands on their time. Republicans (and some Democrats), in the recent debate over water legislation, opposed increasing that number to around 30, and also opposed more stringent requirements that water uses be measured and reported.
Why? Because a small number of powerful people, though not most of us, and certainly not the environment, benefit from our ignorance on this issue. If actual water uses were limited to those allowed by water rights, some of us suspect that there would be a lot more water left in the rivers or available to junior water rights holders. Maybe a part of the problem with water in California, and part of the problem with the health of the Delta fisheries, is water theft, not just over-allocation and inefficient use. Wouldn’t it be nice to know?
But this would require — gasp! — actually measuring and monitoring all water use, from surface sources to groundwater. And it would require enforcing water rights. What radical concepts. It is time for Californians to demand that we stop pretending that water is free and unlimited, available to anyone who can put a siphon in a river or drill another groundwater well. When these things are left unregulated, or as badly regulated as they are now, we rob current and future generations.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dr. Peter Gleick is president of the Pacific Institute, an internationally recognized water expert and a MacArthur Fellow.
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Islands in a Sea of Grass: The Unexpected Life of Stock Ponds
By Kathleen M. Wong
April-June 2007
Bay Nature
The platonic ideal of a California pond is nestled in the hills near the high point of Briones Regional Park. On this summer’s day, the Sindicich Lagoons are soothing oases amid a canvas of yellow fields and bright sky. Thick shocks of grass, a stand of vibrant green sedges, even a copse of willows line the larger pond’s verdant shores. In an otherwise still landscape, the lagoon is a nexus of animal activity. A dozen preening American coots and resting mallards are ruffling the otherwise placid waters. A safe distance from shore, western pond turtles cling to half-submerged logs to warm their reptilian blood. Flame-red dragonflies slice the air in staccato bursts in search of insect prey. Near the water’s surface, turquoise damselflies have joined their needlelike bodies to mate. Together they hover over the water, he clasping her head to ward off other suitors, she placing eggs atop wisps of algae. Meanwhile, moist soil at the water’s edge has attracted mud-dauber wasps seeking nest material. One after another, they scrape together balls of soft soil and buzz out of sight. The whir of insect wings has pulled a western bluebird to the pond’s wire fence, in hopes of catching a few easy meals.
Things are no less hectic underwater. Backswimmers—black soybeans with legs—are windmilling their way through the clear water. Fly, mosquito, and beetle larvae wriggle by, dodging juvenile newts out to catch a meal. Among the sedges, garter snakes swim along in hopes of snaring an unwary California redlegged frog tadpole.
In the often-arid hills of the inland Coast Ranges, ponds are magnets for animals large and small throughout the year. In spring, gumball-size Pacific tree frogs converge to lay masses of eggs. On warm summer nights, raccoons feel about with blackgloved paws for late-hatching tadpoles. During Indian summers, ground squirrels, deer, and cattle stop by seeking water and greener forage, with predators such as cougar and coyote close behind. As the weather turns cold, shorebirds migrating from their arctic nesting areas stop to rest and refuel with a pond snail or two.
Perhaps the most spectacular event at many California ponds is the annual pilgrimage of breeding California newts. The first big rains of winter propel these retiring creatures from the uplands toward local pools in a poky stampede. Though slow of foot and tender of flesh, most of these hand-size amphibians will survive the journey, which can be as long as a mile. Their defense is the weapon of choice for the meek: poison. California newts carry tetrodotoxin, one of the most potent neurotoxins known; a few micrograms are enough to fell a human. It’s the same substance that makes pufferfish sushi an occasionally fatal thrill.
Steve Bobzien, a biologist with the East Bay Regional Park District, has watched garter snakes regret a newt entrée on several occasions. “I’ve watched them go into paralytic convulsions,” he says. “They spat up the newt and wrapped themselves in knots.” Some of these snakes appeared to recover within a halfhour; others, not so lucky, died. Then there are reports of snakes ingesting newts with no problem. Scientists aren’t sure whether there is variation in individual newts’ toxicity, or whether it fluctuates with diet.
While newts will also breed in streams, California tiger salamanders primarily use ponds for breeding. The striking yellow-and-black adults spend all but one or two months of the year farther upland, deep in the burrows of ground squirrels or other rodents. They may trek up to two miles to a breeding pond after the autumn rains have begun. A female will lay clumps of up to three transparent teardrop-shaped eggs, each about the size of a pea, on floating vegetation; by the time she’s done, she’ll have added up to 1,400 potential progeny to the pond. At hatching, larvae are no larger than a grain of rice. But within a few months, they’ll reach lengths of five inches or more, becoming formidable aquatic predators able to subdue water scorpions.
Despite their importance to many native species, most East Bay ponds aren’t themselves natural. Of the approximately 275 ponds on East Bay Regional Park District lands, at least 268 are manmade. Virtually all are stock ponds, created by ranchers who dammed creeks, deepened natural hollows, or impounded water from upland seeps. Their industry created a whole new class of habitat. Now, some of these ponds are little more than recurring puddles, while others aspire to lake status, ringed with cattails and crowded with flocks of swimming ducks.
The proliferation of ponds has been instrumental in keeping native amphibian populations afloat. Since the Gold Rush era, mining, agriculture, and development have destroyed many existing ponds and pools in the Sierra foothills, Central Valley, and San Francisco Bay Area. Today, says Bobzien, “the stock ponds may have actually augmented and increased populations of threatened amphibians to some degree.”
A case in point is the California red-legged frog. A jaunty reddish-pink with blotchy brown spots, this threatened species has lost more than 70 percent of its original habitat. Gold Rush miners filled its foothill pools with silt, while housing and highways have replaced much of the frog’s lowland habitat. However, thanks to the stock ponds, populations in the Park District stand at a stable 700 or so adult frogs, based on district radio-tracking studies.
These studies indicate that in very dry months, red-legged frog adults may migrate upland to stay cool in rodent burrows. Bobzien remembers tracking one frog to a burrow with unusual entrance decor—the freshly shed skins of rattlesnakes. “It may not have been in the same part of the burrow as the snakes; all I know is that there was a live California red-legged frog down there,” he says.
The presence of protected amphibians like the California red-legged frog and tiger salamander presents the Park District with a continuing challenge: to ensure that these species are able to flourish, while maintaining diverse and healthy populations of other native species.
The effect of grazing on California grasslands has long been controversial, but until recently, little hard data has been available to measure its impact on aquatic ecosystems. Because cattle graze on more than 50,000 acres of district property, there was some concern that they could be damaging pond ecosystems.
This led to a decade of study of the effects of cattle on amphibians in the district. The results, published just this spring, not only have given biologists new insights into the secretive lives of pond dwellers, but underscore how grazing has, in some places, helped shape and maintain the landscape to benefit native amphibians.
In the study, biologists compared amphibian populations at ponds visited by cattle with fenced ponds where cattle were excluded. They found that fenced ponds tended to lose amphibian species such as California tiger salamanders and red-legged frogs. Left unmolested, the European weeds that now dominate state grasslands grow into an impenetrable, weedy thatch. “Imagine if you were a little salamander and you had to get through that thatch to get to the pond to breed,” says Joe DiDonato, the district’s stewardship manager. “Grazing has been our main tool to control all of those nonnative grasses.”
Ecologically speaking, the importance of grazers in local grasslands makes perfect sense. Though not native to California, cattle do a passable job of filling the hoofprints of absent ungulates such as elk and pronghorn, and before them, the giant camels, bison, and zebra that roamed North America during the Pleistocene.
Modern amphibians are not only adapted to pond disturbance by grazers—some, like the tiger salamander, depend on it. “In my public talks, I like to show a slide of a mud hole where cattle have grazed the vegetation down to the dirt,” DiDonato says. “People look at that and go, ‘Oh my God, the cows just destroyed this pond!’ Then I say, ‘This pond has the highest population of California tiger salamanders of any of the ponds we’ve surveyed.’ And their jaws just drop.”
What does a murky puddle offer that a pristine, limpid, reed-ringed pool doesn’t? Safety from predators, of course. Ponds up and down California and elsewhere harbor several voracious predatory insects, including giant water bugs. With a body the length of your big toe and a poisonous bite to boot, water bugs lie in wait for prey amid the green tangles of aquatic plants. When they spot a likely target paddling by, they pounce. Like spiders, water bugs inject a poison that first paralyzes victims, then liquefies their tissues, leaving the bugs free to suck their meals at leisure. The researchers found that undisturbed ponds with lots of water bugs had virtually no tiger salamanders. The clear water makes larval salamanders proverbial sitting ducks.
Cattle graze down plants along pond edges and stir up pond sediment, leaving turbid waters that keep larval salamanders hidden from predatory insects and other sight hunters such as herons and garter snakes. The absence of shoreline vegetation also deprives the bugs of their favorite hiding places. Murk doesn’t hinder young salamanders, however— they seem to eat by feel, vacuuming up larval backswimmers, water boatmen, or anything else they can swallow. In fact, says Bobzien, when “we went to a pond with a high density of California tiger salamanders, they were the overwhelming vertebrate species in the pond. Turbidity may prohibit other species from occurring; it ecologically releases tiger salamanders to be more successful, because there’s a lot less competition.”
The predatory insects, garter snakes, and herons are also native species, so to ensure good homes for all pond creatures, district managers maintain a wide variety of ponds, from the larger Sindicich Lagoon—clear, deep, and fenced—to tiny puddles the color of milk chocolate.
Curiously, a dozen ponds surveyed by district staff were colonized by giant water bugs in some years and tiger salamanders in others. Two factors, say biologists, likely affect the balance: the permanence of the pond, and the size of the predator in power. Year-round ponds appear to favor predatory insect populations, since many of these bugs can overwinter in the relatively temperate water. Tiger salamanders that hatch in these ponds are easily overpowered by hunting water bugs. But the insects don’t always have the upper hand. They abandon seasonal ponds in summer, when the pools dry up. Later in the winter, if these wandering bugs enter a pond with established tiger salamander larvae, they’re done for—by that point, the salamanders are more than large enough to swallow smaller water bugs and other insects.
But don’t count on finding tiger salamanders in particular ponds every year. Recent research suggests they may come down from the hills to breed only two to three times in an 11-year life-span. “We’ve documented tiger salamanders breeding in 75 ponds, but from one season to the next, they tend to use less than half of the available ponds,” Bobzien says. That poses a problem for salamander protection, since a pond surveyed for development in an off year can erroneously be declared salamander free. “All of a sudden you’ve lost another breeding location for a population that’s already in dire straits,” Bobzien says.
Given the many rare species sheltered in district ponds, unauthorized collecting is always a problem, but pet releases—mostly of red-eared sliders, eastern box turtles, and bullfrogs—pose an even larger danger. “People don’t want to hang on to Greenie anymore, so they release him into the park,” DiDonato says. “They don’t realize that they could be introducing a disease, a predator, something that might affect native populations.” The threat is very real: Bullfrogs, carp, and bluegill can kill off all of a pond’s red-legged frogs or tiger salamanders in a single season.
Once settled, nonnatives can be a chore to eradicate. Fish and turtles are the easiest to eliminate: Biologists simply remove the water. The fish asphyxiate and the turtles are suddenly a snap to catch. (New district ponds built as mitigation for development have drainage systems for this very reason.) But it’s virtually impossible to capture every bullfrog. Instead, district personnel will drain an infested pond and then bulldoze in a foot-deep layer of soil, entombing any lingering adults beneath a soil cap.
Though many are imperiled, native amphibians can be pretty tough themselves. “California red-legged frogs, western toads, and Pacific tree frogs have pretty wide tolerances of extreme temperatures and environmental conditions,” according to the study, Bobzien says. And on the rare occasions when oxygen levels in the water drop, amphibians can swim to the surface to gulp air. Red-legged frogs are also champions at extreme temperature endurance. Ranging from the coast to the Sierra foothills, they can survive air temperatures from below zero up to 110 degrees, and pond water can insulate them against wide temperature swings.
That only works as long as there are ponds around. The artificial origin of most East Bay ponds means that without human oversight, they would gradually fill in. The district regularly repairs earthen dams and clears out silt and cattails to ensure the pools can still hold water.
Natural or not, ponds like the Sindicich Lagoons are nurseries for the young, sources of water amid summer’s drought, and cool places to rest on a scorching hike. As havens for humans and animals alike, these ponds have become an integral part of the East Bay’s wildland ecosystems.
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