Action in Washington could restore water to San Joaquin River
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 11, 2008 at 7:20 amFrom Stockton’s Record, this editorial:
There was good news out of Washington last week. If you’re a salmon.
The Senate Energy Committee approved a bill, similar to legislation a House panel approved last fall, that will restore water flows to the San Joaquin River. The proposal for the river, the state’s second longest, would bring water to a 60-mile dry stretch by next year. With luck, that would mean chinook salmon would return to the river three years later.
Being a salmon has grown increasingly tough in recent years, what with streams and rivers blocked by developments and dams, low water, bad water quality and who knows what else. In fact, we know so little about what has caused the salmon population to collapse that commercial fishing for the species off the California and Oregon coasts as well as sport fishing on the inland waterways has been halted this season.
Putting water back in the San Joaquin River, flowing north from Friant Dam and eventually into the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, will not restore the West Coast salmon runs of the past. But it won’t hurt, either.
Read the rest of this editorial from Stockton’s Record by clicking here.
U.S. Senate panel OKs San Joaquin settlement
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 8, 2008 at 12:09 pmFrom the Sacramento Bee:
A key Senate committee on Wednesday handily approved a revised but still ambitious bill to restore the San Joaquin River.
Following months of tinkering and political maneuvering, lawmakers quickly embraced the river restoration effort. The Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee’s approval by a bipartisan 15-7 margin builds momentum, while not eliminating all resistance. “Bottom line: This legislation can help resolve one of the oldest water disputes in the West,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said after the committee’s approval.
The bill authorizes work to improve the parched river channel below Friant Dam so more water can be released and salmon reintroduced. The bill has a federal price tag of roughly $190 million, although calculating the full cost of river restoration is very complicated.
“I see this as a huge federal commitment and expense that has a lot of implications and consequences,” cautioned Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., also warning of a “pretty heavy cost to taxpayers.”
Read the full text of this article from the Sacramento Bee by clicking here.
Central Valley Business Times adds this:
“This brings us one step closer to passing this landmark legislation,” says Ms. Feinstein. “The legislation would bring an end to 19 years of litigation between the National Resources Defense Council, Friant Water Users Authority, and the federal government. It would transform the San Joaquin into a living river and maintain a stable water supply for the farmers of the region.”
If the legislation fails, the fate of the San Joaquin River would be determined by a federal district judge who, the parties agree, would likely rule in favor of releasing much larger amounts of water at higher cost, and without any effort to mitigate farmers’ potential water losses, Ms. Feinstein says.
She says it is this threat that compelled the parties to the table, and brought them to agreement.
Read the full text of this article from the Central Valley Business Times (which includes a list of the specific terms of the settlement) by clicking here.
From the San Francisco Chronicle:
The original lawsuit stems from the opening of Friant Dam in 1949, which dried up portions of California’s second-longest river below the dam where salmon once ran thick. The Natural Resources Defense Council and other groups sued the Interior Department and others in 1988 over operations of the dam.
Bottom line: This legislation can help resolve one of the oldest water disputes in the West,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. “If Congress doesn’t resolve it, a federal judge will — with consequences that would be more costly and impose a greater burden on farmers.”
Under the settlement, the Friant Water Users Authority would relinquish some of its traditional water use. Friant officials viewed that as preferable to having a judge establish the water flows. The total cost has been estimated around $500 million to $600 million, according to Hal Candee, lead negotiator for the NRDC. Some $200 million would come from state bond money and the bulk from irrigation districts.
The Senate bill sweetens the deal for water users by directing about $100 million for water projects, including strengthening of canals, meant to help Friant capture additional water during wet years.
“This was a very important step, particularly given the amendments to the bill,” said Ron Jacobsma, consulting general manager of the Friant Water Users Authority, which represents 22 water districts. “Everybody’s behind this thing.”
Read the full text of the story from the San Francisco Chronicle by clicking here.
Navajo Water Settlement & San Joaquin River Settlement advance to full Senate
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 7, 2008 at 12:30 pmBusy day for the Senate Energy & Natural Resources committee in Washington today, apparently. From John Fleck at Inkstain:
The bill, S.1171, would guarantee 600,000 acre feet per year of water rights to the Navajo Nation, and also fund a water pipeline that would run across the Navajo Nation from the San Juan River in northwestern New Mexico down to Gallup. The trick has always been figuring out a way to pay for it.
Yeah, isn’t that always the case …. find out more by taking the link from John Fleck’s blog - click here.
And from Stockton’s Record:
The [San Joaquin River restoration] legislation, which still must pass the full House and Senate, would implement a legal settlement that would return water to a dry 60-mile stretch of the San Joaquin River by 2009 and bring back Chinook salmon three years later.
Read the full text of this article from Stockton’s Record by clicking here.
Climate change adds twist to San Joaquin River restoration project
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 27, 2008 at 6:29 amWater is such big news in California, as regular readers know. I can easily post ten to twelve stories per day. Aquafornia focuses on Southern California water issues, but I cast a wide net because Southern California is hydrologically connected to many areas. This is one story which, up until now, I have not been following. However, with the collapse of the salmon run, Aquafornia will now follow San Joaquin River restoration stories.
The San Joaquin River is one of the rivers in Central California which feed into the Delta. The San Joaquin River is part of the federal Central Valley Project. The river in some areas is dry most months of the year, and during the summer, some stretches consists solely of irrigation drainage flows. The players in this story are the farmers, who have been mandated to give up irrigation water to the river, and the environmentalists who want the once-prodigious salmon runs restored.
From the Fresno Bee:
The best hope for cold-water chinook salmon to survive global warming may be near sweltering Fresno — in the San Joaquin River, where salmon have been extinct for 60 years. That’s the latest twist in the long-running debate over restoring the San Joaquin, a project that will begin in less than 18 months.
Farmers, forced by legal settlement to give up irrigation water for the project, are skeptical about the claim. They see global warming as a reason to reconsider the half-billion-dollar restoration. Warmer conditions will kill the restored fish runs, they say.
But fishery experts say San Joaquin salmon would tolerate climate warming better than salmon in cooler places, such as Northern California. The reason: The highest of the High Sierra would continue to provide the cold water that salmon must have to survive in the San Joaquin. Northern California has the lower end of the Sierra and, scientists predict, eventually won’t have much of a snowpack, eliminating a lot of cold water. “The restored San Joaquin may be an important place for the survival of salmon in the next century,” said fishery biologist Peter Moyle of the University of California at Davis.
The back-and-forth over restoring the river has been unfolding for decades, with debate focused mostly on a troubled, 149-mile section of the San Joaquin between Fresno and its confluence with the Merced River. Global warming came into the picture last year when a report from a worldwide panel of experts said about 40% of the salmon habitat in the Pacific Northwest could be lost during climate change.
If the San Joaquin is revived, as is planned over the next decade, it would have the southernmost salmon fishery in North America. And the San Joaquin Valley is expected to warm up faster than the Pacific Northwest or Northern California. This prompts some farmers to question the wisdom of trying to return salmon to the San Joaquin.
“Does it really make sense to spend this money and restore salmon down here?” asked Chowchilla-area farmer Kole Upton.
But Moyle, an authority on California’s native fish, said it is a very good idea for spring-run salmon. The fish will move up the river from the ocean in spring and spend summer in deep, cool ponds near Friant Dam before spawning during fall. The release of cold snowmelt from Millerton Lake in summer should keep the ponds cool enough for salmon even as the climate warms up, Moyle said.
The undercurrent of this discussion is political, as it has been all along.
Read more on this story from the Fresno Bee by clicking here. For more information on San Joaquin River Restoration, click here.