A California water group poured gasoline on the already-blazing California Water Wars with a lawsuit calling for an end to pumping on the California Delta until “certain” drainage-impaired farmland is retired.
Longtime Underground readers will realize most the “certain” lands referenced in the lawsuit belong to Westlands Irrigation District - the politically connected irrigation group (and Underground whipping boys) who bought some hugely expensive private property on the McCloud River so there’d be one less obstacle standing in the way of raising Shasta Dam (and flooding miles of the Upper Sac, McCloud, and Pit Rivers).
From the SF Chronicle: Group wants chemical-filled farmland retired:
The giant state and federal pumps in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta that funnel water to 25 million Californians should be shut down until certain Central Valley farmers retire hundreds of thousands of acres of chemical-laden farmland, according to a lawsuit filed today by a state water watchdog.Irrigating agricultural land in the western San Joaquin Valley tainted with selenium, mercury, boron and other toxic substances constitutes an unreasonable use of a public resource protected by state laws and has contributed to the sharp decline of endangered fish species, said the California Water Impact Network.
“We think there is a simple solution to California’s water problems - to retire all of the drainage-impaired lands in the Central Valley. A second is water conservation - agriculture uses 80 percent of the developed surface water,” said Carolee Krieger, president and founder C-WIN.
The always-excellent Aquafornia blog offers multiple perspectives on the lawsuit, including this unique angle from the Stockton Record:
State and federal water managers have increased exports to farms and cities south of the Delta even as fish populations plummet, says the lawsuit, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court. Northern California reservoirs have been “cannibalized” for the sake of Southern California, and irrigation of drainage-impaired lands in the western San Joaquin Valley is a waste of water, the groups say.
I guarantee this lawsuit won’t find favor in Sacramento, where the Governator (recently picked for Environmental Villan of the Year by Field & Stream) is desperately trying to build a peripheral canal and add more storage to the state’s reservoirs.
A complete halt to pumping from the Delta is an unlikely result, but even the threat of it should, uh…. galvanize the discussion.
See you at the Delta, Tom Chandler.
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If the pumps were the sole reason the Delta is a mess, this suit would have some merit. How about shutting down the Port of Stockton, relocating most of Tracy, Stockton and Manteca, and removing most of the sub-prime mucus blob housing that was constructed over the past 20 years? *Then* shut the pumps down, and see if we’re having fun yet.
Or, build a Peripheral Canal, promote water marketing, and watch what happens.
There’s almost never one reason for an environmental collapse, but with record amounts of water being removed from the Delta the same five years we saw precipitous declines in native species, I think it’s clear that removing less water from the estuary is a good idea, and one way to do so is to stop irrigating tainted land that should never have been developed in the first place.
Peripheral canal? Given the amounts of water removed from the Delta without it - and the inability of anyone to retain enough water to protect fish - it looks like a death sentence for the Delta as we know it. I’d love to be proven otherwise, but taking more water is always politically easier than using less water.
Tom, you (and many others) are correct in saying that a Peripheral Canal, if operated in a horrible way, could render the Delta even worse off than at present. The same could be said of sewage treatment plants, oil refineries, and so forth.
However, if operated lawfully, I think it would allow less waste (by that I mean water diverted or impounded that ends up serving no useful environmental or agricultural purpose) , much greater flexibility in the timing of water deliveries, and greater safety. A great fear I have is that a catastrophic failure of the present plumbing will lead to panicked and thoughtless responses (see post 9-11 USA for an example). Even if the response is not crazy, the economic impact of 20 million people losing most of their water in a few days would not be remotely funny.
Greater flexibility will also permit periodic adjustment of the salinity levels, which may be an important component of controlling invasive species. What we have now is not working for anyone.
Thanks for keeping an open mind on this rather (ahem) contentious issue. I may have posted this already, but for anyone interested in the Delta, the Water Education Foundation (www.watereducation.org) has some good written material and a wonderful 3 day tour. They do not have any axe to grind, and are neither pro nor con on this or any other issue. They do provide some clear information for people to use in making up their own minds.