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Thomas D. Elias: Now it’s definitely a man-made drought

Posted by: Maven on March 10, 2009 at 6:45 am

From the Marysville Appeal-Democrat:

One question hung in the air for many months after a landmark ruling by a federal judge in Fresno severely limited amounts of water the huge pumps in the Delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers can send to much of the San Francisco Bay Area, Southern California and farms in the Central Valley: Why didn’t anyone even try to overturn the ruling?

There was no appeal, it turns out, because that 2007 decision was somewhat temporary, applying only until the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service could issue new rules to protect the endangered, silvery, minnow-like Delta smelt.

Few court rulings have been as consequential in the short run as that one by Judge Oliver Wanger, and the new rules, just out, figure to have even more impact. Simply put, this is causing a major drought.

Wanger’s decision was one reason many California reservoirs neared their lowest levels ever last summer and fall. Yes, 2007 and 2008 were dry years, but this drought did not approach record levels. Wanger’s ruling made things far more severe by depriving the state Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project (CVP) of about one-third of the water their reservoirs would ordinarily have gotten.

Now a series of February and March storms has restored the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, ultimate source for most water in the Delta, to normal or near-normal levels. But the new Fish and Wildlife regulations will stop the pumps even longer times than did Wanger’s order. The idea is to idle them during the entire smelt spawning season, essentially from January to June.

So supplies will be low for farms and cities this spring and summer. Perhaps not as low as indicated by the federal Bureau of Reclamation before the late-winter storms, when it warned many farmers to expect no water at all from the CVP. But still far lower than if the pumps were operating normally.

Now there is a lawsuit to keep the pumps going, alleging the new rules favor fish over people. Read more of this column by Thomas Elias by clicking here.

March 10, 2009 · Filed Under Delta Issues, Drought, Weather & Snowpack, Wildlife & Endangered Species

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