Knuckleheads at the wheel

Knuckleheads at the wheel
Only the geniuses at the Public Policy Institute of California could issue a "monumental report" (at somebody's expense) recommending that the state model future water policy after its deregulation of electric power, creating an independent systems operator for water.
Electrical power deregulation is the largest single cause of the state budget crisis. In 2001, the state began the year with a $12-billion surplus and ended it with a deficit of about $25 billion due to the smooth and efficient operations of the independent systems operator. The workings of the deregulated energy market brought California to its knees, where it has remained. But it is easier to forget history than to release the hold of economic dogma, therefore the experts recommend a largely self-regulating free market for water, which will be presented to the public cloaked in the language of "reasonable use." Reasonable use, a doctrine that has governed California riparian water law for about a century, has, by erosion of generations of agribusiness and urban water-district attorneys, come ever closer to being that magic wand of capitalism that turns water into a commodity like a bale of hay, a mousetrap or a Toyota.
The whole trend of recent water policies has been to institute procedures more secret than ever by establishing yet more layers of bureaucracy to conceal the ongoing theft of the public trust and destruction of fish and wildlife habitat and species. They haven't even gotten rid of CalFed yet.
The theoretical problem seems to be something like this. The smart people believe that the only salvation from the California water wars is to create a genuine and thorough-going free market in water and thus realize the fabulous efficiencies of the free market. (Since a free market in legislators has existed for decades now, legislators themselves favor such a solution. If they don't they lose contributions and are replaced by a new legislator with properly orthodox economic views.) The only problem is that water in streams and rivers is not private property, it is in public trust. One can speak of use rights in such water but not ownership.
Possibly the very worst thing the state could do would be to create an "independent systems operator" for water, an institution that would somehow, in the interests of market efficiency, convert the public trust in surface water into private property interests in surface water. Yet we have already seen models, the Kern County Water Bank, working out that idea and there is the general pattern of irrigation and water districts taking their allotments for use of rivers and selling amounts to the highest bidder. These transactions, called water transfers, are now vital parts of the state's water-delivery system and there is a proposal for a "regional" long-term transfer program involving water districts in the Sacramento Valley transfering water to districts south of the Delta.
3-6-11
Fresno Bee
EDITORIAL: Water report suggestions are crucial
Governor must consider its proposals once he deals with state budge
http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/03/04/v-print/2296783/editorial-water-report-suggestions.html
Given the importance of water to this state, you'd think California's leaders would have figured out a way to properly use this precious resource. Not a chance in a state that would rather argue over water than actually use it wisely.
In drought years and wet years, California manages to mismanage water in spectacular fashion. A monumental report released by the Public Policy Institute of California makes that very clear.
The 482-page report offers a road map for lawmakers and water interests to move beyond conflict and toward a new era of "reconciliation." A clear message of the report is the need to modernize and consolidate the various institutions that govern how water is used in California.
On the state level, decisions about water are divided between the Department of Water Resources and the State Water Resources Control Board. It's silly -- unless you're into creating nice-paying jobs for water bureaucrats.
The PPIC report, like the Little Hoover Commission before it, recommends that the water resources board be merged with sections of DWR that have nothing to do with running the State Water Project. This new state water department would enforce water rights, administer water quality laws, conduct statewide planning for water, oversee flood management and protect the public trust.
Making this department separate from the State Water Project would address the perception (and the reality) that state water contractors have inordinate influence over state water planning. Under the PPIC proposal, the State Water Project would become an independent public benefit corporation, similar to the Independent System Operator, which manages the state's power transmission.
The PPIC proposal is a good one. In buying and selling electricity and maintaining its infrastructure, the State Water Project would be more nimble and responsive if it didn't have to deal with the state's convoluted contracting procedures.
Yet the PPIC is smart not to recommend that the state water contractors take complete control of these water works, as some of them would like to do. Contractors could sit on the board of an independent benefit corporation, but other interests would have a seat at the table, too.
The PPIC also is on target recommending a stronger role for the Department of Fish and Game. Under its plan, this department would no longer be subservient to the Fish and Game Commission and would have more direct authority over river flows to help fish. The Fish and Game Commission, meanwhile, would go back to its original role -- regulating hunting and fishing.
Once he deals with the budget, Gov. Jerry Brown would be smart to assess the recommendations of the PPIC and the previous Little Hoover suggestions, and bring more sense to water governance.
2-28-11
SFGate.com
Playing God
117
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/gleick/detail?entry_id=83837&plckOnPage=2&plckItemsPerPage=10&plckSort=TimeStampDescending
 .In a desperate attempt to make it easier to solve California's complex and contentious water problems, a dangerous new idea has recently been floated -- intentionally letting some species go extinct rather than take the difficult steps needed to save them and their ecosystems. This idea should be quashed, smothered, strangled, and quickly tossed in the dumpster of failed ideas.
The first hint of this appeared earlier in February in the 52-page study released by the Delta Stewardship Council. That report argued that it was possible that some species of fish might be so devastated already and their ecosystems so ruined that they were unlikely to survive even with significant efforts to save them. This, of course, is an argument long made in private by some agricultural and urban interests unwilling to accept the difficult strategies to save endangered and threatened species because it might cost them water.
Then, just this week, the argument for explicitly permitting extinction was described in the newly released water report from the Public Policy Institute of California. They are stunningly blunt, calling for the state to consider practicing "endangered species triage," intentionally permitting a species to go extinct if an argument can be made that it will somehow help other species survive -- a very strange concept to ecologists who look at the health of overall systems. This is, however, not really an argument about letting one species die off to save other species: their argument hides the real driver behind the destruction of fisheries and aquatic ecosystems -- economic competition for water. Any species can be saved if we are willing to spend the money and put in place the policies to do so -- such efforts just come at an economic cost. PPIC acknowledges this driver deep in their report (on page 412) when they say: "The condition of native fish populations has continued to deteriorate, despite decades of well-intentioned but insufficient and poorly coordinated policies to protect them. Efforts to stop these declines now threaten the reliability of water supplies and flood management projects."
That's the real point: now that serious efforts are finally being made to tackle the real threats driving Delta fish species to extinction, economic interests are being threatened and fighting back. The delta smelt is not being driven to extinction by conflicting priorities among other species of threatened fish. It is being driven to extinction by policies around human withdrawals and uses of water for economic gain. The idea of endangered species "triage" is simply a wedge in the door to permit species to go extinct when the policies to protect them cause hardship for special interests.
There are those who believe that killing off a species of animal, or bird, or fish in the name of economic gain is reasonable, including legislators trying to weaken or destroy the Endangered Species Act. To me this is a moral, ethical, and political outrage. Moreover, it is a infinitely dangerous idea, since once we start down that road, where do we stop? Who gets to play God? If condemning the delta smelt or coho salmon to extinction in return for a few hundred thousand acre-feet of water to grow alfalfa, or cotton, or almonds is acceptable or to permit more housing in floodplains, why not wipe out the San Joaquin kit fox and the California clapper rail in order to have more development on sensitive lands in the Central Valley and along the edges of San Francisco Bay? And why stop there? If economics rules, then those sperm whales still have lots of great oil in them and killing the last tuna for sushi is just a financial decision.
Endangered species triage? That way madness lies, with no end except spiraling ecological destruction, impoverishment of the environment, a sterile landscape, and the final triumph of money over our souls.
Peter Gleick
Posted By: Peter Gleick (Email) | February 25 2011 at 01:12 PM

2/4/11
Contra Costa Times
Brown's water chief wants Delta water diverted to Southern California...Mike Taugher
http://www.contracostatimes.com/environment/ci_17296050?nclick_check=1
The Brown administration's top official on Delta matters said this week he is confident a new aqueduct can be built to divert water from the Delta for water users in Southern California.
In his first interview since joining the new administration, Jerry Meral said events and information developed since he backed the Peripheral Canal as part of Gov. Jerry Brown's first administration have only strengthened the case for it.
And estimates developed at the end of the Schwarzenegger administration about the amount of water that could be taken from the Delta will probably prove to be in the right ballpark, he said. He cautioned that he was expressing personal convictions and that final decisions would be made only after formal reviews.
"I don't want to prejudge this," Meral said, "but something like a facility roughly of the size in the earlier documents will be proposed, will be permitted and be built."
Meral, who has a doctorate in zoology, has spent much of his career working for environmental groups. He was also deputy director of the state Department of Water Resources from 1975 to 1983, when he supported the controversial Peripheral Canal that would have skirted the Delta to move Sacramento River water to the south.
Voters statewide killed that plan in 1982, in part due to strong opposition in Contra Costa County.
Now deputy secretary for the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, Meral has the distinction of being both a prominent environmentalist and a strong supporter of an aqueduct to reduce reliance on south Delta pumps. Many environmentalists outright oppose the aqueduct while others who are open to the idea are much more qualified in their support.
An aqueduct is now the centerpiece for the conservation plan. In recent months, tunnels under the Delta appear to have overtaken a canal as the preferred choice.
By using the aqueduct instead of south Delta pumps, and by restoring Delta wetlands, supporters hope the plan can satisfy endangered species laws and end water supply disruptions caused by environmental problems in the Delta.
East Bay water officials who have been skeptical of the plans were nonetheless encouraged by Meral's willingness to listen to them.
"I have more hope that we'll be getting a fair hearing than we did before," said Greg Gartrell, assistant general manager of the Contra Costa Water District.
But, Gartrell said, there is a threat in trying to balance environmental needs with water supplies for Delta water users in parts of the Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley and Southern California. The plan could end up either taking water from, or degrading water quality for, others.
The Contra Costa Water District, Delta farm agencies and upstream water users, including the East Bay Municipal Utility District, which relies on water pipelines from the Sierra Nevada, could be harmed, Gartrell said.
"They could be solving their problems with our water. That's a long tradition in this state," Gartrell said.
After four years and $140 million in spending, the Bay Delta Conservation Plan has arrived at a delicate point. The central question: Can a set of environmental criteria be developed for factors such as salinity levels and the amount of water in upstream rivers that, (1) provides enough environmental restoration to justify a 50-year water extraction permit and (2) releases enough water to make the project financially worthwhile to the participating farm and urban water agencies?
Much of the project costs, more than $12 billion, would be paid for by Southern California, San Joaquin Valley farm districts and others, such as Santa Clara County.
A study meant to determine how the proposed plan would work was tripped up last year by biologists at federal regulatory agencies.
In essence, the biologists concluded that the way in which Delta water users wanted to run the project would not protect the environment enough to earn the 50-year permit they seek.
San Joaquin Valley farm districts threatened to quit.
Now, state and federal officials are trying to devise standards that might pass that test.?
Agency officials could soon propose new guidelines, Meral said.
While an agreement amounts only to what it is to be studied and not a guarantee that such a project would be approved, Meral said it was cause for optimism that the plan could work.
He acknowledged that any plan might have shortcomings.
"There's a danger of overconfidence in what you can do," Meral said. "The whole goal is to have a flexible project, as flexible as it can be."
"I find it hard to believe a compromise can't be reached," he said.
He said that upstream water users and Delta interests that have felt shut out of planning should be heard.
"We're thrilled to death that finally the state of California has asked for our opinion," said Randy Kanouse, lobbyist for the East Bay Municipal Utility District.
Others remain skeptical, saying they fear the fix is in and that the time for meaningful input has passed.
"If the (Bay-Delta Conservation Plan) were to be done right, every option on the table would have to be evaluated and analyzed," said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, campaign director for Restore the Delta, a coalition of environmental groups and Delta landowners.
In a recent letter to state Delta authorities, the Contra Costa water district argued that the state should first figure out how much water is needed by the environment and how much water is needed by those with higher legal rights to Delta water than the agencies looking to build the aqueduct.
Meral said those kinds of determinations are the realm of the State Water Resources Control Board and that it does not make sense to wait.
Gartrell also contends that an aqueduct one-fifth the size of the one under consideration would cost less, be less controversial and would deliver nearly as much water.
Environmental restrictions would prevent full use of the larger aqueduct, Gartrell said.
"What I see developing is a race to build something that they won't have the ability to use," Gartrell said.
An oversized aqueduct would lead to strong political pressure to run more water through it, cutting the supply for north state users and the environment, he said.
 
 
2-28-11
Sacramento Bee
Editorial: Time for a new era of governing water statewide
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/02/28/v-print/3435085/time-for-a-new-era-of-governing.html
Water is California's most precious resource. Yet in lean years and wet ones, California manages to mismanage this precious resource in spectacular fashion.
That is the take-home message from a monumental report released last week by the Public Policy Institute of California, titled "Managing California Water." The 482-page report issues both a clarion call and a road map for lawmakers and water interests to move beyond conflict and toward a new era of "reconciliation."
One clear message of the report is the need to modernize and consolidate the various institutions that govern how water is used. On the state level, decisions about water are now bifurcated between the Department of Water Resources and the State Water Resources Control Board.
The PPIC report, like the Little Hoover Commission before it, recommends that the water resources board be merged with sections of DWR that have nothing to do with running the State Water Project. This new state water department would enforce water rights, administer water quality laws, conduct statewide planning for water, oversee flood management and protect the public trust.
Making this department separate from the State Water Project would address the perception (and the reality) that state water contractors have inordinate influence over state water planning. Under the PPIC proposal, the State Water Project would become an independent public benefit corporation, similar to the Independent System Operator, which manages the state's power transmission.
The PPIC proposal is a good one. In buying and selling electricity and maintaining its infrastructure, the State Water Project would be more nimble and responsive if it didn't have to deal with the state's convoluted contracting procedures. Yet the PPIC is smart not to recommend that the state water contractors take complete control of these water works, as some of them would like to do. Contractors could sit on the board of an independent benefit corporation, but other interests would have a seat the table, too.
The PPIC also is on target recommending a stronger role for the Department of Fish and Game. Under its plan, this department would no longer be subservient to the Fish and Game Commission and would have more direct authority over river flows to help fish. The Fish and Game Commission, meanwhile, would go back to its original role – regulating hunting and fishing.
Once he deals with the budget, Gov. Jerry Brown would be smart to assess the recommendations of the PPIC and the previous Little Hoover suggestions, and bring more sense to water governance.
2-28-11
California Progress Report
Northern California Rejects Long-Term Water Transfer Agreement…Traci Sheehan  
Planning and Conservation League. Traci Sheehan is the Executive Director of The Planning and Conservation League, a statewide, nonprofit lobbying organization. For more than thirty years, PCL has fought to develop a body of environmental laws in California that is the best in the United States
.
http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/site/comment/reply/8718
Just days away from a program scoping process comment deadline, northern California water irrigation districts stand firm behind their February 2nd letter, which states they will not agree to sell their water to Central Valley water contractors.
The proposed U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s 10-year “Long-Term North to South Water Transfers” program, would ship up to thousands of acre-feet of water from northern California to the San Luis&Delta-Mendota Water Authority; which represents agricultural water districts in the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California. The realization of this program is contingent on the willingness of northern California sellers and that willingness has yet to be seen.
A week few weeks ago, Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District, Maxwell Irrigation District, Natomas Central Mutual Water Company, Pelger Mutual Water Company, Princeton-Codora-Glenn Irrigation District, Provident Irrigation District, Reclamation District No. 108 and River Garden Farms, all rallied to formally submit a letter withdrawing their participation in the long-term water transfer program.
Community Alliance...Fresno Alliance
Unreasonable Use of California’s Most Precious Resource…Lloyd G. Carter…3-1-11
http://fresnoalliance.com/wordpress/?p=2624
Nearly a century ago, Fresno County widow Amelia Herminghaus set off a revolution in California’s water world that fundamentally altered how water could be used.
Herminghaus and her late husband had built an 18,000-acre farming and ranching empire straddling the San Joaquin River near Mendota, including 22 sloughs that paralleled the riverbed. In the spring, heavy runoff from the river would fill the sloughs and create fertile pastureland for their cattle and livestock. All but 1,000 acres of the Herminghaus estate had riparian water rights to the river, which are at the top of the water rights hierarchy in California, ahead of the so-called appropriators, who do not own land along the river but need the water.
By the 1920s, California’s fledgling electricity industry was beginning to dam Sierra rivers to capture and store water to run power turbines during the summer and fall months. Southern California Edison Company, by blocking spring flood flows with its dams in the San Joaquin River watershed, cut off Herminghaus’ natural irrigation system from the spring flood flows, so she sued Southern California Edison. And won.
The California Supreme Court affirmed her superior riparian right to the natural flow of the river, even though the court noted it was a rather wasteful way to irrigate. Southern California Edison had only appropriative water rights, which were junior to the senior rights of riparians and thus could not manipulate the river’s natural flow to store water in the mountains for summer electricity production.
Outraged, the power companies and appropriators interested in additional diversions of river water throughout the state pushed to change the law. And in 1928, California voters approved an amendment to the California Constitution limiting all water users in the state, including riparians, to only the reasonable and beneficial use of water and “reasonable method[s] of use.” (Although almost any use of water can be beneficial to the user, it is not always reasonable.)
Specifically, Section 2 of Article 10 of the state constitution was amended to read:
It is hereby declared that because of the conditions prevailing in this State [the long drought in the 1920s] the general welfare requires that the water resources of the State be put to beneficial use to the fullest extent of which they are capable, and that the waste or unreasonable use or unreasonable method of use of water be prevented, and that the conservation of such waters is to be exercised with a view to the reasonable and beneficial use thereof in the interest of the people and for the public welfare. (This language was also enshrined in Section 100 of the California Water Code.)
In the first few decades of the reasonable use doctrine, there were few, if any, prohibitions on use or method of use of water as the big federal and state water projects came online in California, increasing supplies for chronically water-short Central and Southern California.
And then, in the mid-1980s, the doctrine was invoked by the State Water Resources Control Board following the poisoning of the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge in Merced County by toxic agricultural wastewater from the Westlands Water District in Fresno County. The Westlands’ subsurface drainage water, which must be drained if the farmland is to stay productive, had dissolved the trace element selenium, which is scattered through the Westlands soils. Selenium, a micronutrient, can become toxic at slightly higher levels, as little as 2–5 parts per billion.
The dissolved selenium in the Westlands drainage had been sent by drainage canal to Kesterson, where it entered the food chain, bio-concentrating as it moved up the food chain, killing fish and birds, and triggering grotesque deformities in bird embryos nesting around the drain-water evaporation ponds at the wildlife refuge. The drain water in the ponds was also leaking onto adjacent private property and flowing underground to the nearby San Joaquin River.
The State Water Board, following public hearings in late 1984 and early 1985, found that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the operator of the Kesterson evaporation ponds, had created a public nuisance and pollution through its stopgap temporary “solution” of evaporation ponds at Kesterson. The Water Board ordered the Kesterson ponds cleaned up or closed within three years. (The U.S. Department of Interior, the parent agency of the Bureau of Reclamation, closed Kesterson a few weeks after the State Water Board order was issued.)
That 1985 cleanup order specifically stated: “If the Bureau [of Reclamation] closes Kesterson Reservoir and continues to supply irrigation water to Westlands without implementing an adequate disposal option, continued irrigation in the affected area of Westlands Water District could constitute an unreasonable use of water.” (Emphasis added.) A 1987 Water Board technical staff report said unsafe disposal of wastewater was not even a beneficial use.
Unfortunately, the State Water Board took no action over the next 25 years to resolve the question of whether irrigating marginal and selenium-laced soils was a reasonable use. The Bureau of Reclamation, of course, continued to supply Westlands irrigation water without providing the “adequate disposal option” that the State Board required in the Kesterson cleanup order.
One of the authors of the 1985 Kesterson cleanup order was most likely longtime Water Board attorney Craig Wilson, who in July 2010 was appointed the first Delta “Watermaster.” Wilson spent more than 30 years at the State Water Board and was the Board’s chief legal counsel from 2000 to 2005 until departing for private practice. The legislature passed a law in 2009 creating the Delta “Watermaster” position, and Wilson accepted the appointment, which gives him the authority to monitor and report, as well as take water rights enforcement actions in the 700,000-acre Delta region, including, in theory, unreasonable use issues.
Wilson recently made waves in California’s water world by issuing a report to the State Water Board entitled “The Reasonable Use Doctrine and Agricultural Water Use Efficiency.” The report addresses how the state’s Reasonable Use Doctrine may be employed to promote more efficient water use in the agricultural sector. The report explains how the Reasonable Use Doctrine is the cornerstone to California’s complex water rights law and that all water use must be reasonable. It contends there is a wide array of irrigation practices in place today that result in the more efficient and therefore more reasonable use of water.
The Wilson report concluded that the Reasonable Use Doctrine may be employed to promote a wider use of such efficient practices without going after each individual water waster. The report, supported by the Water Board staff, was presented to the State Water Board as an informational item only at its January 19 Sacramento meeting.
The report calls for the State Water Board to convene a Reasonable Water Use Summit and contains specific recommendations for consideration during the summit. The recommendations range from wider employment of efficiency practices such as improvements to the irrigation systems that deliver water to farms, weather-based irrigation scheduling and more efficient irrigation methods. Not mentioned in the report is whether the continued irrigation of high-selenium soils without safe and adequate drainage is an unreasonable use of water, as the Water Board contended 25 years ago.
The agribusiness response to the Wilson report was typical. Mike Wade, executive director of the California Farm Water Coalition, told the Los Angeles Times that Wilson’s conclusion that “small changes” in irrigation methods could yield “significant amounts” of water savings was flawed and was based on flawed research. Wade also claimed it would be too expensive for farmers to implement Wilson’s recommended improvements in irrigation efficiency. A considerable chunk of California’s farmland is still irrigated by flood irrigation, similar to what was practiced in Egypt 5,000 years ago.
Wade argued that Water Board regulations on reasonable water use would usurp farmers’ flexibility in deciding which crops to grow and how to grow them.
Wilson’s report was also criticized by environmentalists. The California Water Impact Network (C-WIN) wrote the State Water Board asking that Wilson’s report be enhanced.
“[T]he Delta Watermaster’s report should be amended to include consideration of unreasonable use of water as a result of irrigation of saline, seleniferous soils which pollute groundwater and surface waters. Specifically, New Melones [Stanislaus River] water releases are made at the expense of other beneficial uses for dilution of the salt pollution from western San Joaquin Valley sources such as the Grasslands Bypass Project. Downstream, farmers in the Delta are harmed by the salt pollution from those same upstream agricultural sources,” wrote C-WIN Executive Director Carolee Krieger.
Krieger’s letter added: “The Bay-Delta food chain continues to be contaminated with selenium as evidenced by selenium water quality impairment from agricultural sources for 41,736 acres in the Delta, 5,657 acres in the Carquinez Straights, 70,992 acres in San Francisco Bay Central, 9,024 acres in San Francisco Bay south and 68,349 acres in San Pablo Bay. The San Joaquin River is a major source of that impairment…The Reasonable Use Water Summit should consider if the benefit to a few from irrigation of toxic lands in the western San Joaquin Valley is worth the overall cost to society and the environment.”
It remains to be seen if the feckless and timid State Water Board, given the clout of agribusiness in California, will even call for a Reasonable Use Water Summit prior to a proposed $11 billion controversial water bond on the November 2012 statewide ballot.
The ever-hopeful Wilson thinks such a Reasonable Use Water Summit could be held within six months. But Water Board members over the decades have continually deferred making the hard decisions that need to be made about the continued irrigation of 300,000 acres of high-selenium soils in the western San Joaquin Valley with no safe disposal method for the toxic drainage. Wilson is to be praised for raising the issue of the reasonableness of current irrigation practices in California, with agriculture using 80% of the state’s developed (surface water) supply. The Kesterson/Ag drainage time bomb is still ticking. The question is, can the State Water Board hear it?
Lloyd Carter has been writing about Valley water issues for 40 years. His Web site is www.lloydgcarter.com.
 
3-2-11
California Farm Bureau Federation

Settlement on pumping delta water reached…Ching Lee, Assistant Editor.(Ching Lee is an assistant editor of Ag Alert. She may be contacted at clee@cfbf.com.
http://www.cfbf.com/agalert/AgAlertStory.cfm?ID=1688&ck=AE614C557843B1DF326CB29C57225459
A settlement has been reached between the state and federal governments, farmers, water contractors and environmental groups to allow more water to be pumped through the delta this spring while still providing protection to the delta smelt.
The temporary agreement, approved last week by U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger, lasts through June and applies to the current water year only. It gives state and federal operators of the delta pumps an interim plan for delivering water to San Joaquin Valley farms and Southern California cities while federal scientists work to revise a new regulatory plan on delta pumping that protects the tiny fish.
In December, Wanger invalidated the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's regulatory plan, also known as a "biological opinion," for restricting water exports without adequate scientific justification and ignoring avoidable impacts on the economy. Federal regulators are now developing a new biological opinion.
Since Wanger's ruling did not establish a new pumping regime, the settlement maintains the essential protections in the biological opinion.
"This settlement does not change the basic requirements of the Endangered Species Act, which prohibits any government action from jeopardizing a listed species," said Chris Scheuring, managing counsel for the California Farm Bureau Federation's Natural Resources and Environmental Department. "It is, however, perhaps the best possible short-term development to ease some of the pumping restrictions without damaging the smelt."
The interim plan eases pumping restrictions somewhat in the south delta, allowing the State Water Project and Central Valley Project to draw more water if the best available science and ongoing real-time assessment of conditions in the delta show that additional pumping would not harm the smelt and its critical habitat.
As part of a new "enhanced coordination process," water contractors and environmental groups will take part in weekly meetings that will inform the Fish and Wildlife Service's assessment of delta conditions and risks to the smelt. The new process is aimed at increasing transparency in decisions to limit pumping and provides the court and all stakeholders notice of any changes.
The interim remedy makes clear that it does not affect restrictions designed to protect salmon and pending litigation concerning that biological opinion. Smelt remedies beyond June 30 will be set presumably later this spring, Scheuring noted.
Federal controls over how much water is pumped south of the delta are usually lifted at the end of each June, also the end of the smelt's spawning period, when the fish have traveled a safe distance from the pumps. There have been no pumping restrictions so far this year.
"The settlement is good news for many farmers this year," Scheuring said. "However, it doesn't change the fact that we continue to play catch-as-catch-can for delivery of project water to service areas south of the delta. Farm Bureau continues to pursue the long-term solution set in that regard."
Mark Cowin, director of the California Department of Water Resources, called the settlement "an important step forward to address one of the many complex issues associated with water operations in the delta."
In a statement, Cowin said, "Environmental organizations, state and federal agencies, water contractors and agricultural interests working together have achieved a reasonable resolution. The Department of Water Resources will now be able to more effectively operate the State Water Project over the next several months in a manner that is protective of delta smelt."
In another legal development concerning the delta, a pending agreement between the state Department of Fish and Game and the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta could relax size and catch fishing limits on the striped bass, a non-native, predatory fish known to be contributing to low numbers of returning salmon in the delta.
Wanger is scheduled to consider the agreement on March 17. If he approves the settlement, Fish and Game, along with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, will develop a proposal to change the current striped bass sport fishing regulation that will allow anglers to keep more of the fish they catch.
Also under the pending settlement, the department has agreed to reserve $1 million to support research on predation of protected fish species in the delta.
Matt Mahon, spokesman for the coalition, said the case was settled because the state's own scientists "have said striped bass predation is an issue and they agreed with our position.
"We know their science. We know that they are working in the right direction," Mahon said. "We don't know exactly what that's going to look like once they put pen to paper though."
In addition to striped bass predation, researchers have cited other causes of declining salmon numbers, including poor ocean conditions, killer whales and seals. Yet regulation in the past has focused on pumping operations in the south delta, Scheuring noted. Federal regulators have all but shut down the commercial salmon fishery off the California coast in recent years.
According to the settlement, if the coalition agrees with the department's regulatory proposal, then a recommendation will be made to the Fish and Game Commission to adopt the new rules. If the coalition objects to the proposal, then the settlement ends and the lawsuit continues.
The coalition initially recommended no limits on fish take and size. Mahon said he believes Fish and Game will remove some of the restrictions, but it won't be a complete overhaul as the coalition originally wanted.
"It'll be a very science-based solution," he said. "That's why we are moving forward with this settlement. We believe we've reached a place where (Fish and Game is) going to move forward with something that will be beneficial to the delta and to the smelt populations."
3-2-11
Sacramento Bee

Viewpoints: State Water Plan is a done deal long before 2012 vote… Burt Wilson. Burt Wilson is a member of the forum subcommittee for the 2013 State Water Plan. He lives in Carmichael.
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/02/27/v-print/3431850/viewpoints-state-water-plan-is.html
"Fait accompli" is French for an "accomplished fact." It means something already done. For example, when a bill is voted on in a legislative committee, spectators may believe the vote might go either way, but what they don't know is that the bill might be "greased" – already approved in secret before the vote. Thus the vote is a sham, and the outcome is a fait accompli.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt was fond of saying, "Nothing happens in politics unless it is supposed to happen" – meaning everything in politics is a fait accompli.
Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger yanked Proposition 18, the State Water Plan Bill, from the November 2010 ballot – supposedly because of its $11 billion cost – and set it for a vote in November 2012, when Californians may find they're voting on a huge fait accompli, because the basic elements of the water plan will already be in place by then.
In 2009, the Legislature passed the Delta Reform Act (SBX 7 1) as one of several bills constituting the State Water Plan. It created the Delta Stewardship Council as a legally constituted body to oversee the Delta Plan, a legally enforceable part of the State Water Code.
Since the council began its work on Feb. 23, 2010, millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on planning, science and even implementation of several basic structures necessary to the Delta Plan.
As you are reading this, water agency workers are hacking away at the Delta landscape as if a vote had been taken and the Water Plan passed. Soil tests have been conducted for a huge, planned 40-mile long, 300-foot-deep tunnel. Surveys have been made for a 1,400-foot-wide planned canal. More than $30 million is being appropriated to study the "science" of the Delta.
The huge Freeport intake on the Sacramento River, built ostensibly to settle an old, obscure, water-rights issue, can be easily envisioned to participate with five more planned intakes in pumping more Delta water south.
Did you vote on any of this? No! Where did all this money come from for this planning? When Schwarzenegger axed the Water Plan bill, there already was $12 billion in unspent funds (surprise!) languishing in the water agency's coffers. That's your tax money appropriated by the Legislature. And now it's being spent on facilities and planning that will mesh with the construction of a future "conveyance system" to complete the Water Plan.
Thus when it comes time to vote on the Water Bill in 2012, what will we be voting on? A fait accompli. Although the conveyance systems themselves – a tunnel and/or a canal – will not be built by then, all the studies, plans, science and much of the preliminary planning will already be there. This means there will be a gigantic media message already in place to ask voters to vote for a conveyance system to "complete the plan" – a strong message indeed.
One can envision three scenarios converging on the coming Water Plan vote in November 2012:
1. The voters will approve the conveyance systems, and they will be built.
2. The Water Bill will be defeated and the conveyance systems will still be built.
3. The Water Bill will once again be stricken from the ballot for one reason or another, and the conveyance systems will still be built.
How can this happen? The Delta Stewardship Council, in the release of its recent first draft of the Delta Plan, reminds us it is charged with the "implementation" of the "co-equal goals and objectives" of the Delta, one of which is to "improve the water conveyance system and expand statewide water storage."
This just happens to be the same wording that is part of the State Water Code. The State Water Code is state law – a legal mandate for implementation. Thus, in reality, there doesn't really have to be a vote on the Water Bill, the conveyance systems or the cost. The legal path has been already greased, and the money, when push comes to shove, can simply be appropriated by the Legislature. In short, whether it's a canal or a tunnel, it's all a fait accompli.
The above scenario is all too typical of politics today. It adds up to a stark subversion of the democratic process by the Legislature and state agencies. As voting citizens of the state of California we deserve, and should demand, better.
 
In the letter, the districts voiced concern for the long term protection of the right to their water supplies. The letter further explain, “[the Bureau of Reclamation’s] position threatens landowners within our service areas of not having enough water to irrigate crops, puts at risk endangered species and water fowl that rely upon the continued irrigation of their lands, and could ruin the regional economy.”
With this in mind, it begs the question: In these cash strapped times, is it necessary to spend state, federal and local money on pursuing the development of the water transfer program when a vital component is not willing to participate?
The deadline to submit comments regarding the “Long-Term North to South Water Transfers” program is February 28th. You can submit comments to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation by clicking here. http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/site/comment/reply/8718