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It’s time to rethink the Monterey Agreements, says editorial

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on December 7, 2007 at 8:59 am

From Santa Clarita’s Signal, a column from local environmentalist Lynne Plambeck, who discusses local water supply issues and the Monterey Agreements. Lynne writes:

How does the State Water Project work? Snowfall from the Sierra Nevada Mountains moves through a system of natural rivers and dams into the Sacramento Delta. From there, huge pumps lift the water into the California Aqueduct for delivery south.

So to the first problem: If it doesn’t snow in the Sierra, there is no water to deliver to the south. With increasing concerns over global warming, this scenario appears more and more likely. Planners have tried to address it by building reservoirs and groundwater-banking facilities, but also by urging Southern Californians to realize they live in a desert and must conserve water.

The state also requires local agencies to calculate how much water they receive based on a model of past deliveries. While the current model is based on the last 72 years of weather patterns, there is evidence that far greater periods of prolonged drought have occurred in the past. However, this evidence is not considered in the model, causing some experts to worry about the future accuracy of the model projections.

Reliability of water supply is a major concern of planners, and while communities can take steps to increase reliability of supply - by building reservoirs or storing water in a local aquifer or water bank, but if these supplies are not replenished, they will be depleted. The Monterey Agreements deal with how water is divided between urban agencies & agricultural uses in drought years:

In 1995, several of the State Water Project contractors got together in a closed-door meeting in Monterey to negotiate changes to their contracts. The required environmental review document for this agreement was set aside by a court in 2000 in a landmark water case, Planning and Conservation League vs. Deptment of Water Resources. Now the Deptment of Water Resources has finally completed the required new Environmental Impact Report, just as many of the environmental effects that conservation groups feared for the Delta have indeed come to pass.

Perhaps it is time to take another look at this agreement, especially the “Urban Preference” clause. Prior to the Monterey Amendments, the Department of Water Resources was required to allocate water to urban areas first, forcing farmers to fallow their fields. Since most fields that depended then on state water were planted with annual row crops that could easily be delayed for a year, this clause was an important way to get more water to cities in times of severe drought such as we experienced in 1991.

But that clause was eliminated behind closed doors in Monterey, without public input, making the division of state water 50 percent to farmers and 50 percent to cities. Our own Castaic Lake Water Agency was one of the chief supporters and signatories to this agreement.

Hearings on the Monterey Agreement are now being conducted throughout the state, with one just held in Ventura last Tuesday. There is also an opportunity to comment on the new environmental documents through Jan. 13. If you want more information on the Monterey Agreement, just visit the Deptment of Water Resources Web site at www.water.ca.gov. There you will find all the information, including the EIR on line for the public. No closed doors this time!

To read the full text of this editorial from the Santa Clarita Signal, click here.

December 7, 2007 · Filed Under Monterey Agreements

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