From High Country News: Feinstein’s Water Bomb

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is preparing to introduce a legislative rider that would dramatically reduce Endangered Species Act protection for salmon and other fish in California. The amendment would lift restrictions on the amount of water that farmers can pump from the Sacramento-San Joaquin river delta for the next two years. But it could also scuttle a delicately negotiated effort to balance protections for endangered fish with the water needs of farms and residents of Southern California.

Feinstein’s effort comes as the state seems bound for the third year of an emergency fishing ban to protect dwindling salmon runs, and as populations of the Delta smelt and other fish continue to crash. And the move is a remarkable turnaround: Just four months ago, Feinstein denounced Sen. Jim DeMint, R-South Carolina, for trying to introduce a similar amendment at the behest of California water districts.

Feinstein’s office declined repeated requests for details and comment yesterday, but insiders familiar with the matter say that the Senator’s reversal is largely due to lobbying by the Westlands Water District. Last year, after three years of drought, the federal government cut water deliveries to many irrigation districts in the San Joaquin Valley. Westlands, which is the largest district of its kind in the nation, was hit the hardest, and saw its supply of water from the Delta dwindle to just 10 percent of the amount it holds contracts for.

Woo-hoo! Strip away ESA protections on the Delta – just as many of its native fish populations are collapsing?

Westlands has recently launched offensive after offensive on the California Delta – and this after many years of essentially draining the Trinity River.

Feinstein – who happily supported Westland’s buyout of the McCloud River Bollibokka property by Westlands – has also been a longtime supporter of raising Shasta Dam (so you can imagine she won’t be seeing any checks from our admittedly impoverished part of the world).

She’s also been willing to engange in negotiations with Westlands about ceding them literally billions of dollars of water – and this for an irrigation district whose land is rich in selenium, and probably never should have been irrigated in the first place.

Anyone want to guess where Ms. Feinstein’s campaign money comes from these days?

Later, the New West story makes it clear how little gutting ESA protections will actually mean to Westlands:

But pushing aside the federal pumping restrictions intended to protect threatened smelt and endangered salmon would solve only part of the district’s problem. Fish-related restrictions account for just 15 to 20 percent of the cutbacks, according to an independent analysis by the Public Policy Institute of California. The vast majority of the water shortage is due to the drought. (For an in-depth exploration, see Breakdown).

Westlands’ battle against the pumping restrictions has nonetheless reached a heart attack-inducing pace. Last week, the district led a confederation of farm-water agencies in asking federal district judge Oliver Wanger to order the federal government to run its Delta pumps at maximum capacity. That helped capture the surge of water delivered by a massive winter storm, but the reprieve lasted just six days before the government had to throttle down its pumps. On Wednesday, Westlands and other water users asked Wanger to order that those pumps be started up again, but the judge denied that motion.

The problem isn’t the overused, factually inaccurate “favoring fish over people” meme so widely misused in the Central Valley.

Instead, the issue is more simply this: The water in the California Delta has been overpromised to the point the whole shebang isn’t sustainable. Throw in a little drought, and you’ve got the legal madhouse that is the California Water Wars.

Those with a minute or two and the inclination might want to visit Ms. Feinstein’s “contact” page on her Web site, and and send a nice, respectful email like:

Ms. Feinstein:

I’ve read – with considerable alarm – about your plan to gut ESA protections for the California Delta, a move which would further harm one of California’s already-failing salmon runs.

With the current pumping restrictions accounting for only 15%-20% of Westlands shortfall, it’s clear the problem isn’t one of favoring fish over people – it’s one of California’s water being egregiously overpromised.

Dooming salmon populations – and possibly the remnants of California’s commercial salmon fishermen – in favor of a water district that is already the recipient of billions of our taxpayer dollars is clearly a bad idea, and I hope you’ll reconsider your stance.

Sincerely,

Due to a lack of time, I’ve eased up on the California Water Wars posts, but sometimes it gets so bad you can’t ignore it.

This is one of those times.

See you getting cranky, Tom Chandler.

Their purchase of the exclusive, private Bollibokka Club on the lower McCloud was first cast in terms of removing barriers to raising Shasta Dam (another bad idea).

Now another possibility has surfaced (courtesy of Westlands itself): They’d attempt to annex the 3000 acres of the Bollibokka Club into their irrigation district, then claim water rights for their hundreds-of-miles south irrigation district. This from the Redding Record Searchlight:

Some Shasta County officials are worried that a Fresno-area water district may ask to annex almost 3,000 acres it owns along the McCloud River — a possible move to shift the water rights hundreds of miles south.

The issue will be discussed this morning at the Shasta Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) meeting.

So far, no annexation proposal has been filed by the Westlands Water District, Shasta LAFCO Executive Officer Amy Mickelson said. Westlands, the largest water district in the nation, includes farmland in western Fresno County and Kings County.

While it appears nothing is imminent, Westlands did make a pair of phone calls – one to the Shasta LAFCO cited above, and one to the Fresno LAFCO, which feels suspiciously like they’re shopping for the most agreeable entity.

Shasta LAFCO’s Mickelson said she took a brief call in January from a Westlands representative about possible annexation of the land, but like hundreds of calls the district takes each year, nothing has come of it since, nor does she think anything ever will develop.

“I truly think this was just a stab in the dark, (to ask) how easy would it be?” she said of Westland’s inquiry. “I think we’re quite a ways from seeing anything formally filed, if and when they opt to do that.”

Mickelson mentioned the call in a staff report to Shasta’s commissioners to keep them informed, and she’s watching Westland’s agendas to see if the water district takes further action, she said.

After its call to Shasta LAFCO, the water district called Fresno LAFCO to see if it could decide an annexation request of the Shasta County land, Mickelson said. Shasta’s commission opposes that move and Mickelson has sent an e-mail to the Fresno agency saying so, she said.

When asked directly by the Record-Searchlight reporter, the Westlands spokesperson delivered what we’d call a weasly non-denial:

Woolf sidestepped a question about why Westlands might also be interested in annexing that land into its water district, hundreds of miles to the south, however. She stressed that no decision had been made.

“I honestly don’t know if we would be pursuing that or not. It hasn’t been done at this point in time,” she said of annexation.

None of this means anything’s going to happen. None of means something won’t happen. It does, however, offer up visions of Owens Valley North.

What it does mean is that the Westlands Irrigation District is pretty much running at normal speed, which is to say looking for any angle that profits them – regardless of the economic and envionmental harm done to others.

It’s hard not to feel sympathy for some members of the district, who are facing severe cutbacks in water deliveries. Westlands is an irrigation project that should never have been built in the first place (the salt-and-selenium tainted soil creates huge problems), but at this point, I’d suggest the best route isn’t to let them environmentally (and economically) devastate yet another river.

In our third year of drought (I saw a statewide survey figure suggesting about 81% of normal snowpack), the California Water Wars are in full bloom, and if you don’t believe me, spend a few minutes on the unbelievably complete (and neutral) Aquafornia.com blog.

Everyone’s going at everyone else hammer and tongs, with seemingly the only winners being attorneys.

mccloud river, westlands irrigation district, california water wars

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.

water wars, california water wars, delta, westlands irrigation district

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From Bacher’s compelling narrative:

Unfortunately, Snow failed to mention that the reason for the low carryover storage was because Shasta, Oroville, Folsom and other northern California reservoirs have been drained to alarmingly low water levels by the state and federal governments to send subsidized water to drainage impaired land in the Westlands Water District and to fill the Kern Water Bank, the Semi-Tropic Water Bank and reservoirs in Southern California.

Today’s articles in the S.F. Chronicle, Sacramento Bee and other newspapers about Snow’s announcement failed to mention the real reasons behind the alleged “drought.” Fortunately, Tom Stienstra, S.F. Chronicle outdoor columnist and author, wrote a superb piece, “Drought, or water heist?,” in the Chronicle on October 26, exposing this fraud by the Schwarzenegger administration. “This isn’t a drought. This is a created shortage,” Stienstra emphasized.

Stienstra cites Department of Water Resources data stating that the past two years are only the ninth driest two-year period in the past 88 years, and that California routinely experiences such periods once every 10 years.

“What happened last year is that water managers were betting on a wet spring,” said Stienstra. “When it didn’t happen, many lakes were drained down to nothing in order to send water to L.A. and farmers.”

“True droughts are measured by soil moisture, and in some cases, water levels at wilderness lakes. In a true drought, soil moisture is so low that plants go into artificial hibernation to protect themselves, as in 1992, and that has not happened. Up in the high country, most wilderness lakes – outside the reach of water-grabbers – are full,” he said.

If you missed the reference, I’ll point out that the “drainage impaired land in the Westlands Water District” is the same Westlands District that bought McCloud’s Private Bolle Boka club – a clear attempt to pave the way for the raising of Shasta Dam to a much higher level than is publicly discussed.

Later in the article, Bacher cites record levels of water extraction from the Delta and an utter lack of conservation as main contributors to the “drought” – which he considers largely manmade.

“The DWR didn’t call for water conservation this year – so the dry year situation wasn’t taken seriously,” said McIntyre. “This year we’re going into a potentially dry year without a buffer in the reservoirs, so the state and federal governments have managed themselves into a manmade drought.”

The state and federal governments in recent years have pumped record amounts of water out of the California Delta. Some of the largest annual water export levels in history occurred in 2003 (6.3 million acre-feet), 2004 (6.1 MAF), 2005 (6.5 MAF) and 2006 (6.3 MAF). Exports averaged 4.6 MAF annually between 1990 and 1999 and increased to an average of 6 MAF between 2000 and 2007, a rise of almost 30 percent, according to the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.

The problem with California water supply won’t be addressed by building a peripheral canal or more dams, but by practicing better water management and increased water conservation, McIntyre contends. “This is more a failure of water policy and management than it is of infrastructure,” she said. “We will have a water crisis every year unless we find a way to decrease demand.”

Read the rest of the piece here.

water wars, california water, drought, state water project, westlands irrigation district

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