What if water rules change? Water users who rely on federal projects to deliver water may think they know what their rights are, but they could be wrong.
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 23, 2008 at 7:35 amFrom Ag Weekly Online:
Water users who rely on federal projects to deliver water may think they know what their rights are, but they could be wrong.
Take the shareholders in the Stockton East Water District. The district is located in a part of California that has been heavily dependent on ground water since the Gold Rush days. The aquifer is in a state of critical overdraft, said Jennifer Spaletta, an attorney from California that is representing Stockton East in a court case that began when she was still in school.
In the 1970s, the Bureau of Reclamation built a dam on the Stanislaus River and created a reservoir that holds 2.4 million acre-feet of water to relieve the pressure on the aquifer. BuRec contracted with two entities to provide 155,000 acre-feet of water provided those entities built the infrastructure to get the water from the reservoir to their projects.
So Stockton East sold bonds and assessed everyone from irrigators to homeowners to raise the $65 million needed to build the 25 mile-long conveyance system that included tunneling through the mountains.
The BuRec contracts were signed in 1983, the canal system was completed in 1992, the same year Congress redirected BuRec to use 800,000 acre-feet of the yield of the reservoir for fish restoration. As soon as Stockton East finished building the canal system, it asked for 10,000 acre-feet of water and was denied.
And that raises a couple of questions: What does the law mean when contractors have contracts to receive water from a federal Bureau of Reclamation project but the federal government decides to use the water for a different purpose? If the government decides to use the water for fish restoration is that a takings, a breach of contract or a really bad deal?
Read more from the Ag Weekly Online by clicking here.
State officials move to revoke water rights for the proposed Auburn Dam
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on October 24, 2008 at 6:14 amFrom Stockton’s Record:
The proposed Auburn dam, which San Joaquin County had long hoped would bolster its water supply, was all but dead Thursday after state water officials issued a tentative order canceling the water rights.
According to the draft order, the State Water Resources Control Board recognizes the county’s need but adds that San Joaquin County was not guaranteed water from the proposed dam on the American River.
More from Stockton’s Record by clicking here.
The Sacramento Bee adds this:
Water rights associated with an Auburn dam enable the Bureau of Reclamation to store a staggering amount of water - 5 million acre-feet - at different times of the year. But since the project was halted by earthquake concerns in 1976, the federal government has failed to proceed with construction on any new version of the dam, as required by the terms of its water rights.
“In fact,” the order states, “the only construction that Reclamation has performed relative to the project was to restore north fork American River flows to the former dam site by sealing a bypass tunnel necessary for project construction.”
Once removed from federal hands, the water rights could become available to others.
Read more from the Sacramento Bee by clicking here.
Time to stand up for water rights and the right to farm
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on October 11, 2008 at 7:52 amFrom the Western Farm Press:
If you’ve never written or called your state legislators, it’s time to let them know you oppose the Pacific Institute’s “More With Less” report. CAFA and other organizations have been on the offensive since the report was released on Sept. 9. “More With Less” stands for more regulations, an erosion of water rights, less water, and less freedom to make crop selections. The report claims growers can grow more with less water and should shift to “high value” tree and vegetable crops.
The Institute wants courts and regulators to “apply California’s water-rights laws more rationally to ensure water is being used reasonably and beneficially.” Another recommendation: “Redesigning misguided federal and state subsidies that encourage wasteful use of water.”
The report (available at www.pacinst.org) is a blueprint for the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta, but it should concern all regions in California. If implemented, it would set a dangerous precedent. CAFA’s letter below, sent to the California Department of Food & Agriculture, provides key points to use when writing or e-mailing state legislators.
[start of letter]The California Alfalfa & Forage Association, a statewide organization, is in agreement with the California Farm Bureau and other groups that oppose the Pacific Institute’s “More With Less” report released on Sept. 9. Alfalfa was falsely singled out by the Institute in May, and its report again demonstrates that it understands neither agriculture nor market dynamics. If implemented, their recommendations would disrupt markets, cause severe hardships and have a negative impact on the environment.
Read the rest of the letter from the California Alfalfa & Forage Association by clicking here.
Amador County plan intended to head off statewide battle over water
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 17, 2008 at 6:43 amFrom the Amador Ledger Dispatch:
There are drums of war beating all over the state of California and residents of the Sierra Foothill counties will soon be hearing their ominous sound. The battle is over water. As a precaution, the Amador Water Agency is breaking out a new weapon - purple pipe.
Standing before a screen displaying the agency’s latest map, AWA engineering and planning manager Gene Mancebo presented the board of directors with the Purple Pipe Plan at its meeting Thursday morning. The plan is to create a water system that will convey recycled water through purple pipes. “The agency’s objective,” said AWA general manager Jim Abercrombie, “is to maximize our water supply.”
Mancebo added, “We have to build a portfolio of water supply.”
Additional water rights may be available if the agency can provide evidence that recycled water is replacing a significant quantity of its treated water. The goal, according to Abercrombie, is production and use of nearly 3 million gallons per day of recycled water, which would free up 3,000 acre feet of untreated water.
The article also discusses Amador County’s pre-1914 water rights in depth. Read more from the Amador Ledger-Dispatch by clicking here.
Water rights discussed at Bay Area Delta Vision meeting
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 22, 2008 at 5:33 amFrom the Village Green, a SF Chronicle blog, a post written by reporter Kelly Zito, who attended the recent Delta Vision meeting in Oakland. Water rights were part of the discussion. It’s not just about the Delta, the task force said, but also about a system built around 150 year old thinking:
Specifically, panel members have discussed the idea of rejiggering the state’s complicated and controversial system of water rights.
Put simply, state laws “provide the highest priority to the earliest water users,” according to the state Water Resource Board. Also known as the “Doctrine of Prior Appropriation”, or “first in time, first in right” (Whew. The law/policy portion of this entry is nearly over). That means that if you landed here during the Gold Rush and starting drawing water from a local stream, you’re water rights are pretty solid, and you’re more likely than others to receive your full water allotment.
However, the task force is wondering whether that model fits the water needs of 21st century California. According to a recent task force report, research shows “the state… has substantial ability to reallocate water when necessary to prevent unreasonable use, achieve water quality, protect the public trust, avoid public nuisance and respond to emergency situations.”
For those water wonks who have hung with me this far, that’s kind of a big deal. Water rights in California are considered sacred and untouchable. If you want to start a big water fight, bring up the word “reallocation” to a Central Valley farmer whose rights date back 100 years.
Big changes and big waves appear to be ahead.
Read the full text from the Village Green by clicking here.
Northern California counties file lawsuit against DWR to receive full SWP allocation under ‘area of origin’ rights
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 21, 2008 at 7:59 amFrom the Weekly Calistogan:
The Napa County Flood Control and Water Conservation District is among those challenging DWR in Sacramento County Superior Court. At stake are state supplies that Napa Valley cities depend on for half their water. While Calistoga gets about half its water supply from the state, American Canyon depends on the State Water Project for nearly all of its supplies.
Earlier this year the state cut State Water Project deliveries by 65 percent, citing drought conditions that left Sierra Nevada reservoirs below normal.
If the suit is successful, DWR would have to give Napa County and the other plaintiffs 100 percent of their allocation every year, drought or no drought.
The plaintiffs — Napa County, Butte County, Solano County Water Agency and Yuba City — argue that they are entitled to full allocations under the terms of the 1963 contracts that launched the State Water Project.
The project, the largest of its kind in the nation, supplies more than four million acre feet annually to Bay Area, Central Valley and Southern California water districts.
The plaintiffs, who receive two percent of this amount, say their 1963 contracts exempt them from dry-year cutbacks because they contribute water to the Sacramento River Delta, from which the State Water Project draws its supplies.
From the Solano-Napa Times Herald:
The “area of origin” refers to land north of the Delta, said David Okita, Solano Water Agency general manager.
The DWR and the Napa and Solano agencies differ on how to interpret the original contracts agencies have securing their state water supplies.
The four agencies maintain the contracts protect them from water cuts during shortages. One reason they are immune is that their jurisdictions lie within areas where the water originates, according to the lawsuit. The other 25 agencies with state water contracts only have rights to surplus water and have to bear bigger reductions during dry spells, Okita said.
The lawsuit allegations were bolstered by a recent court decision siding with the agencies with “area of origin” rights, he said.
DWR information officer Don Strickland said its lawyers are studying the lawsuit. He said the state is not ready to make an official response.
The contract dispute has been brewing for a while, Strickland added. “They can’t understand why they can’t get a full allotment and say, ‘We come from the part of the country the water comes from,’ ” he said. “They want their full allotment.”
Napa County’s water situation this year is not dire, but things could worsen should the state hold back more water in 2009, Riesenberg said. This year, Napa cities are relying more on local reservoirs and other supplies, he said.
Solano users also are not in bad shape, mainly because the county has plenty of water stored in Lake Berryessa, Okita said. “We are in better shape than most folks, but we should be getting 100 percent of our state water supplies instead of 35 percent,” Okita said.
An editorial in the Napa Register sees water wars on the horizon, as trouble is brewing:
The pressure on the Delta comes from many sides: Municipal users, agricultural users, fish and wildlife and their advocates among humans, problems caused by toxic runoff. In addition, the health of San Francisco and San Pablo bays are largely dependent on the health of the Delta.
Lawsuits between government agencies over complex issues like water allocations have a tendency to drag on forever. It is our hope that the Department of Water Resources sees the importance — and minimal harm — of upping the supply to the affected agencies and eases the pressure without marathon litigation.
But when the lawsuit is over, it’s a sure bet that California’s water wars will still be raging.
The Weekly Calistogan article references a press release. I have looked all over, and I cannot find one online. If someone knows where I can find it, please let me know!
Delta overhaul can’t undercut northern rights, says editorial
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 16, 2008 at 8:28 amFrom Redding’s Record Searchlight, this editorial:
Will the governor’s push to fix the water disaster in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta cause a new disaster up north?
That’s the warning of a letter the Shasta County supervisors will weigh sending to the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force — the group appointed to figure out how to fix the rickety plumbing that keeps two-thirds of Californians in drinking water.
“We understand the critical need to … save the collapsing ecosystem of the Delta, but we fear that decisions affecting water rights in our region will lead to a Delta-like catastrophe,” reads the letter, which the supervisors will discuss Tuesday.
What’s the trouble? The Delta Vision strategic plan, released in June, puts too much emphasis on centralized management of water at the expense of local control. And it casts the discussion of water use in terms of “public trust” while playing down historic water rights and the area-of-origin rights of the north state.
Read more of this editorial from Redding’s Record Searchlight by clicking here.
Metropolitan’s & Westland’s purchase of Yolo bypass lands has some worried
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 3, 2008 at 12:24 pmFrom the Sacramento Bee:
Southern California’s biggest water agencies are putting down roots in the Yolo Bypass. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and Westlands Water District are buying land and jointly planning restoration projects in the bypass to protect their access to water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, officials told The Bee.
The agencies are the two largest diverters of Delta water, contributing to the decline of threatened Delta smelt and other fish. A related disruption of the Delta’s food chain has prompted fears that an ecosystem collapse is under way, which could affect water quality for millions. The water agencies hope to protect their diversions by creating more habitat for fish to thrive.
This new interest has local residents worried. They fear the water titans have other motives, such as draining groundwater from the area or somehow seizing Sacramento River water rights. “The purchase of land by out-of-county water districts makes us nervous,” said Yolo County Supervisor Mike McGowan. “Until we see some real legitimate response from these entities being willing to work with us, we’ll continue to be paranoid about it.”
Read the full text of this article from the Sacramento Bee by clicking here.
New reports available on economic efficiency of water use & allocation, tribal communication, and financing Delta improvements and environmental mitigation
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 31, 2008 at 6:53 amFrom the California Water Plan E-news:
Economic efficiency of water development & allocation:
A paper recently submitted to the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force examines the economic efficiency of water use and allocation in California. It was written by economist Roger Mann. The paper identifies key issues related to the economic efficiency of water development, allocation and use in California and discusses general policy changes that might improve economic efficiency. Click here to read the report.Tribal Communication Plan:
A Tribal Communication Plan has been posted on the Water Plan Web site. It is intended to help everyone involved in the California Water Plan – including the Department of Water Resources and all
other state and federal agencies – to communicate appropriately and effectively with all California Native American Tribes about water issues that may affect them in their territories and ancestral
homelands. Click here to read the report.
And from my own wanderings, this report from the California Research Bureau, commissioned by the Delta Vision Task Force titled “Financing Delta Improvements and Environmental Mitigation”:
Resolution of the Delta’s water supply, water quality, and fish problems may involve
building various structures, possibly including gates, pumps, canals, levees, and dams, and undertaking landscaping rearrangements to improve habitat for several species of flora and fauna. Resolution also involves changing water flow regimes in ways that would make more or less water, but probably less, available for human uses. This work and these changes will cost serious money. Cost estimates for many of these actions have not yet been developed. This paper explores approaches to financing these “improvements” and “mitigations.” While a little abstract, this is abstraction that matters. It will determine from whose pockets a good deal of money will come.California has a long history of financing water projects. The first section of this paper reviews this history, in hopes of identifying water-financing principles that might be adapted to Delta improvements and mitigation. Some deep-seated controversies about how Delta improvements should be financed have roots in this history, and it may be helpful to point them out.
A core idea in California’s approach to financing water projects is that beneficiaries should pay for them. Decades ago, this was a straightforward proposition – people or water districts should pay for the necessary dams, canals, and pumps and the costs of operating them in proportion to the amount of water they received. In the current age of rising environmental sensitivity, it is a little muddier. An alternative formulation that applies, at least crudely, to housing developments and highway projects, is that project proponents should pay to mitigate at least some of the environmental harm that their project is likely to cause. The second section of this paper explores this controversial subject. It seems unlikely that any consensus can be reached about how to finance facilities in the Delta without reaching some agreement about how to deal with this matter.
Read the full text of this report by clicking here.
Promised San Joaquin County water source springs a leak; Auburn Dam water rights get a hearing
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 22, 2008 at 9:25 pmFrom Stockton’s Record:
An ever-thirstier San Joaquin County has been told for more than half a century to take a drink from the American River, where the federal government planned a new dam to capture and store snowmelt. But the Auburn Dam, the long-awaited source of surface water that our area needed, never happened.
Now the state, in a final blow, may kill the federal government’s rights to take any more water from the river. That water was to be shared with three counties, including San Joaquin. The dam and canal to send the water south were never finished.
Local officials testified Monday that they still need the water and asked that the water rights be preserved a few more years. “This has long been promised to the county by the state and federal government, and it’s a commitment that should be honored,” Mel Lytle, water resources coordinator for the county, told the State Water Resources Control Board.
Auburn Dam, started in 1972, was delayed three years later after an earthquake. Then the cost soared above what Congress was willing to pay.
Much has changed since the dam was first proposed. The Delta has deteriorated. Environmentalists say the state has promised more water than can be delivered.
Stockton environmentalist Bill Jennings told the board he was 26 years old, weighed 150 pounds and had “flaming red hair” when the Auburn Dam water rights were issued. Today his beard is a snowy white. “This morning, my shower diverted more water” than has been put to use in all those years, he said.
“The Auburn Dam project is dead,” Jennings said. “The corpse needs to be buried.”
Not necessarily so, say others, and for different reasons. Read more from Stockton’s Record by clicking here.
Even without a dam, San Joaquin County could contract with the federal government to take American River water from another location - perhaps Freeport on the Sacramento River, where local officials are already pursuing water through a separate process.
“The county is not proposing to build Auburn Dam,” attorney DeeAnne Gillick said at Monday’s hearing.
Rather, local officials asked for about three years to negotiate a water contract with the Bureau of Reclamation and find a way to get the water on their own.
Water rights fight won’t end soon; Rancher won ruling against Forest Service, but appeal is likely
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 21, 2008 at 5:51 amFrom the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
It took 17 years for the late rancher Wayne Hage to win a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service in a long-running dispute over property rights, water rights and grazing on federal land. A federal judge finally ruled last month that the government had engaged in an unconstitutional “taking” of Hage’s water rights and awarded more than $4 million to Hage’s estate. His family and supporters, while relishing the victory, fear the fight is far from won.
“What happened to us in the 1980s and 1990s is now happening across the West, so it is going to be vitally important for Western ranchers to understand what they own and how to defend it,” said Ramona Morrison, one of Hage’s daughters. A member of the Nevada State Agriculture Board, she was a freshman in high school when the dispute began.
“We could have a classic case here in some sense of laws working at cross purposes,” said Ed Monnig, U.S. Forest Service supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyable National Forest where Hage once grazed his cattle in central Nevada.
Federal Claims Court Judge Loren Smith, based in Washington D.C., ruled that government restrictions severely reducing water flows to the Hage family’s land “deprived them of the water they needed for irrigation, making the ranch unviable.”
Like judges before him, Smith said the cancellation of Hage’s grazing permit as a result of overgrazing and trespassing did not constitute a “taking” prohibited under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, because a grazing permit is “a license, not a contract or property interest,” he said. But he concluded the government committed a taking when the Forest Service, apparently motivated by “hostility” toward Hage, made it impossible for him to maintain irrigation ditches.
“It doesn’t do you a lot of good to own that water if you really, effectively can’t use it,” said Lyman Bedford, a San Francisco-based lawyer who has argued the case since Hage filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service in 1991.
Read the rest of this story from the Las Vegas Review-Journal by clicking here.
Water plan to protect Delta: State Water Resources Board proposes self makeover
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 30, 2008 at 7:19 amHoping to streamline their work and improve enforcement, the State Water Resources board has proposed it’s own reorganization plan, which has two parts: legislation to overhaul its structure and duties, and a strategic plan to regulate San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. More details from the Sacramento Bee:
The proposal for legislation comes in the form of a “water quality improvement initiative” that could become a rider on a forthcoming state budget bill. It builds on a water quality bill by Senate Majority Leader Don Perata, SB 1176, that is now stalled.
The proposal would reduce the size of the regional boards from nine to seven members to minimize chronic vacancies. Each chairman would become a full-time, paid position to improve accountability and expertise.
It would streamline the now-cumbersome process to adopt water pollution limits by bringing California’s system into accord with federal procedures.
To improve enforcement, the boards would be freed of issuing written notices before penalizing polluters, and a requirement to hold a public hearing before referring such cases to the attorney general would be abolished. City attorneys and district attorneys in large cities would gain the power to seek civil penalties against polluters if requested by the water board. Only the attorney general has this power now.
The second prong of the overhaul package is the “Bay-Delta strategic work plan.” It proposes an aggressive regulatory agenda to improve water quality and habitat in the largest estuary on the west coast of the Americas. The plan is scheduled to be presented to the state board Tuesday in Sacramento and could be adopted as soon as July 16.
It proposes an ambitious schedule to review existing water rights within and upstream of the Delta to ensure diverters are following the law. This includes the complex diversion rules governing the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project, which deliver Delta water to 25 million Californians. The plan would evaluate the need for more fish screens on these diversions and whether in-stream flows are adequate to provide quality fish habitat.
The board also would develop a strategy to achieve the governor’s call for a 20 percent reduction in per capita water consumption by 2020. This could impose new mandates on local water agencies. The plan would take up to five years to carry out.
Both proposals can be viewed on the water board’s Web site, www.swrcb.ca.gov.
Read more from the Sacramento Bee by clicking here.
Water rights transfer deal in Washington stirs up concerns in rural communities
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 22, 2008 at 4:40 pmFrom the Associated Press:
Ray Colbert wanted out after five decades of growing apples, but his son didn’t want the farm in northern Washington. No one else did either. So, Colbert sold the last big piece of his operation, an 80-acre parcel, to a buyer far downstate who wanted what came with the land: water from the Okanogan River.
State regulators signed off on the buyer’s request to transfer the rights to the water and let it flow hundreds of miles down river, figuring the deal was good for fish and wouldn’t hurt anyone else’s water supply. Local officials, however, fear such deals will dry out their rural farming community. “If this were to snowball and keep up, Okanogan County would literally dry up. It would dry up its economy, its agricultural production and everything else,” said state Sen. Bob Morton, a Republican whose rural district sprawls across remote northern Washington.
Moving water around the West is nothing new — it’s what enabled apples to sprout in this area in the first place. In Northern California, river water is diverted south to irrigate most of the country’s winter vegetables and keep faucets flowing in the Los Angeles area. Officials in northwest Montana are negotiating a water compact with the Blackfeet Indian Reservation that would allow the tribe to sell water from the headwaters of the Missouri River to any place in the vast swath of the state that lies in the river’s basin.
“There’s no constraint where they can market that water to — hundreds and hundreds of miles,” said John Tubbs, administrator of the Montana Department of Natural Resources water resources division.
Such moves don’t come without dispute. Ranchers and conservationists are fighting a plan to pump billions of gallons of water from rural Nevada and send it to Las Vegas. More fights are likely as farmers find they get a bigger payoff from selling their water than by growing crops, since Western water law allows water rights to be separated from land.
For Colbert, the decision wasn’t difficult. “The Okanogan Valley’s a great place to live. I love it, but it’s a tough place to make a living,” Colbert said. “I’m so relieved to basically be out of these big orchards.”
He shares the concerns of local officials but also says his water right is his to do with as he pleases. “It’s a property, like a truck or a cow, and you should have the right to do as you wish with it,” he said.
Read more from the Associated Press by clicking here.
Nevada rancher awarded $4.2 million; Forest Service took his water rights, judge says
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 11, 2008 at 5:50 amFrom the Los Angeles Times:
A federal judge has awarded more than $4.2 million to the estate of late Nevada rancher and private property rights advocate Wayne Hage, ruling that the U.S. Forest Service committed a constitutional “taking” of his water rights during a decades-long dispute over livestock grazing on federal land. Calling the conflict a “drama worthy of a tragic opera and heroic characters,” U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Loren A. Smith also ordered the government to pay back interest to the family of one of the leaders of the so-called “Sagebrush Rebellion” during the 1980s.
Hage’s lawyer estimates the interest dating to 1991 to be an additional $4.4 million, which he said would make it the largest award ever in such a case. “It sends a pretty important message to the government that if you screw with a small ranching family and put them out of business, you have to pay big bucks,” said Lyman “Ladd” Bedford, a San Francisco-based lawyer who has argued the case since Hage first filed a lawsuit against the Forest Service in 1991.
Smith, based in Washington D.C., ruled that government restrictions severely reducing water flows to Hage’s land “deprived them of the water they needed for irrigation, making the ranch unviable.” “The court finds the government’s actions had a severe economic impact on plaintiffs and the governments’ actions rose to the level of a taking,” he said in Friday’s ruling. “Whereas real property ownership is defined by a right to exclude others from that property, water ownership is defined by the right to access and use that water.”
Like in similar cases in the past, the judge said the cancellation of Hage’s federal grazing permit as a result of overgrazing and trespassing did not in itself amount to a “taking” prohibited under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. That’s because a grazing permit is “a license, not a contract or property interest,” he said. However, Smith said the taking occurred when the Forest Service — apparently motivated by “hostility” toward Hage — made it impossible for him to maintain the irrigation ditches.
Read the rest of this story from the Los Angeles Times by clicking here.
A quest for water: Whose water is it? Utah rancher tests the system by leasing unused water allocation
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 1, 2008 at 6:28 amFrom the Salt Lake Tribune:
In Tim Vetere’s dreams, the Fremont River water flows upstream to grow melons, hay and cattle on a ranch that stretches across thousands of acres of good farmland in east central Utah’s section of the Colorado River Basin. His wish seems to have come true, at least on paper. State Engineer Jerry Olds, seeing Wayne County perilously close to the deadline for putting its 50,000 acre-feet per year of Colorado River to use, last year approved Vetere’s request for one of the largest water-right transfers in recent state history.
The rancher’s quest for water comes at a time when water needs increasingly are clashing with reality: The state has doled out 180,000 rights to tap rivers and dig wells, but there’s just not enough water to honor them all.
Vetere now can draw on the Green River - about 60 miles upstream from where the right exists - for Wayne County’s Fremont River allocation and may irrigate more than 16,000 acres across three counties. And Olds, willing to get creative to solve some of Utah’s most vexing water problems, reckons the rancher’s plan might set an example for how Utah can keep its share of Colorado River water at a time when big downstream states are facing shortages.
The Colorado River Basin has been closed to new large allocations in the decade Vetere has been trying to secure his own water rights. That’s why Olds pointed Vetere to Utah rural water agencies that have yet to “prove up” their Colorado River water rights by putting them to beneficial use. Maybe, he told Vetere, someone would sell some rights or work out some other deal.
Vetere approached Wayne County, where water managers agreed to allow the third-generation rancher to lease its right to the Fremont River. In turn, said Bliss Brinkerhoff, a member of the county water conservancy district board, Vetere will get to keep 15,000 to 20,000 acre-feet for his own if he can show he is putting the water to good use.
Olds made sure the state would get something out of it, too - new understanding of never-tapped resources, which under the law belong to all Utahns. “As state engineer, I want to see Utah use this water,” Olds said. “What we’re doing is giving [Vetere] a hunting permit to go see if there are in fact elephants down there, and if there are, he can shoot one.”
But if or when Wayne County tries to get the water back, as Brinkerhoff says may happen, it will depend on whether the water managers can show they need it. If they can’t, “then there’s an issue,” Olds said.
Read more on this extensive article from the Salt Lake Tribune by clicking here.
Water rights claim ends truce over Santa Margarita River
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 10, 2008 at 5:51 amFrom the Fallbrook Times:
A court challenge filed by an Anza-based Indian tribe has reignited one of Southern California’s longest-running water-rights disputes, an action that could tighten supplies in a vast area that takes in Camp Pendleton, Fallbrook, Murrieta, Lake Elsinore, Temecula, and its satellite horse and wine country communities.
The challenge – which surfaced recently when residents and public agencies began receiving litigation notices – has toppled the most recent truce, a six-year lull in a long fight over where and how to tap the 749-square-mile watershed of Southern California’s last free-flowing river.
The effects of reopening the 84-year-old litigation over the Santa Margarita River and its tributaries and underground basins are unclear. It is also unknown whether any fallout, which could take years to unravel, would be limited to the Anza area where the Cahuilla Band of Indians contends that rapid growth and drought conditions are straining its current and future supplies.
“That is the great unknown,” said Verne Lauritzen, chief of staff for Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone, who represents the Anza and Temecula areas. “The lawsuit has pressed forward and that’s created an urgent situation.”
Once seen as possible intermediaries in the water rights dispute, Riverside County and other public agencies are now snarled in what will likely become complex and costly proceedings.
Stone’s office had initially hoped to serve as a liaison between the tribe and Anza residents who lack a water district and other local oversight agencies. But the county was forced to step back from any intermediary role when its planning department and at least one of its ancillary agencies were drawn into the new legal actions.
“Now we’ve got our county council assessing this (litigation) on what we can and can’t do,” Lauritzen said in a recent interview. Up to that point, Stone’s office had posted lawsuit documents on its Internet site and had fielded nearly two dozen telephone calls from Anza-area residents who were recently caught off-guard by the Cahuilla water rights claim.
Read more, much much more, from the Fallbrook Village News in this comprehensive article which details the history surrounding this new round of litigation by clicking here.
Water rights and water wrongs in the Sierra Nevada
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 27, 2008 at 6:53 am
From the California Progress Report:
Water law in the state of California can best be described as one of those incredibly complex multiple level chess games, with varying and not necessarily consistent rules for each level. In the crazy California water game different norms control, depending on whether ground water, riparian rights, appropriative rights, or prescriptive rights are involved (and this is short form-there are many other variations), and even whether rights were acquired before or after 1914. Add in all the various water projects, which divert water far away from its mountain origins, and its one-time inevitable flow towards the sea, to provide water for agricultural interests and urban needs, and you get an even more layered, confusing system, with consequent over appropriation of surface waters, and overdraw of groundwater.
There are many who feel the current system of water allocation in California is unfair, inefficient, and sadly broken. This year’s collapse of the salmon fisheries, and the precarious situation of the Delta underscore the need to reassess how California’s water is used, abused, and wasted. The debate promises to be heated, with, on one side, those who are convinced dams, and canals are a magic bandaid, and on the other side, those who favor protection of the environment, and who emphasize conservation and wise use of water over building yet another dam, and who think it’s absolutely profligate to ship water to places like Westlands Water District to grow thirsty crops and forage, when that water is taken at the expense of protection of instream uses, such as keeping endangered fish out of the maws of the vast water project pumps.
There is a basic core of rationality in California’s water system, though. The Public Trust Doctrine requires a balancing of consumptive and instream uses. This doctrine was successfully applied to water appropriation through the vigilance of those who fought for more than 20 years to prevent the siphoning away of Mono Lake to slake Los Angeles’s thirst. Further, the California Constitution prohibits waste and unreasonable use of water. The terms “waste” and “unreasonable use” are a virtual full employment act for attorneys specializing in water law, but I’ll spare you a treatise on “legally correct” usage. What I’d like to talk about is a real-life, shameful waste of water in the Sierra Nevada, up near Donner Summit.
Read the full text of this story from the California Progress Report by clicking here.
The most important water story of the year that didn’t run in Southern California
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 21, 2008 at 1:38 pm… but it’s not for my lack of trying. When this story first ran, I sent it to every Los Angeles newspaper and a few other places, but nobody picked it up. This is my third time posting this article. From Mike Taugher at the Contra Costa County Times (ran on 2/24/08):
During the Great Depression, the southern and central parts of the state cut a deal with the north: Let us build big pumps and canals to take your surplus water, and we’ll give it back when you need it. The time to deliver on that promise may be nearing — but coming through will be tough because California’s water supply is already threatened by climate change, a declining Delta ecosystem and a desiccating Colorado Basin.
The state agency responsible for doling out water rights, it turns out, has a massive backlog of pending applications for Delta water at the same time experts are coming to the conclusion that the system is already maxed out. This puts the state Water Resources Control Board in a difficult position: how to satisfy historic assurances for the north at a time when the amount of water available for other parts of the state is already being cut?
“Those (applications from the north) can change the equation pretty significantly,” Vicky Whitney, the water rights division chief for the State Water Resources Control Board, testified recently.
The pending applications, which total more than all of the Delta water delivered each year to Southern California, would, to the extent they are granted, take water directly from the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California, Whitney told a task force formed to develop solutions to the Delta’s water supply and environmental problems.
California, Whitney said, “let permanent demand occur in geographic areas on borrowed water.
Yes, that permanent demand she is referring to is us, folks, sitting here in dry Southern California.
You see, the Delta Vision Task Force, charged with the near-impossible task of trying to decide how best to fix things, figured they’d better find out how much water is being requested from the Delta:
Members of the task force, who were becoming convinced that too much water was being promised from the Delta, wanted to know how much more water was being sought in the rivers and streams that ultimately drain to the estuary.
The number that came back was startling: 4.8 million acre-feet a year, a figure greater than the 4.1 million acre-feet under contract — but rarely delivered fully — from the sprawling State Water Project that serves 25 million people in Southern California and 750,000 acres of farms in Kern County. And that does not count an additional 3 million acre-feet to 5 million acre-feet being requested by the state on behalf of Northern California counties. Not all of those unfulfilled claims will prove legitimate.
But played out to its worst extreme, the situation could dry up Delta water supplies to Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley, regions that are highly dependent on Delta water delivered through the State Water Project and the smaller, federal Central Valley Project.
“I don’t get terribly panicky about this,” said Jerry Johns, deputy director of the state Department of Water Resources, which manages the State Water Project. “This is something that will play out over a series of years. There will be time to adjust to this.”
I would say it’s a good bet Mr. Jerry Johns doesn’t live here in Southern California! Mr. Johns also had this to say:
Johns said it is incumbent on Southern California water agencies to develop more water supplies, conservation programs and other plans to make up for future losses on the Delta.
It is unknown how many of the pending applications will be granted. But the fact that the demands in the north are on a collision course with the rest of the state should not be a surprise because the North Coast rivers were put off limits to dams in the 1970s and 1980s when those rivers were designated wild and scenic.
“They’ve known that water supply wasn’t going to be there for about 25 years,” said John Herrick, manager of the South Delta Water Agency. “Nobody planned. That doesn’t mean the solution would be easy, but they’ve had 25 years.”
Further, the solution most often touted by some water agencies — an aqueduct to connect the Sacramento River directly with south Delta pumps — will not work if the underlying problem is an insufficient water supply, some critics contend.
“The early plans anticipated developing a lot more water,” said Greg Gartrell, assistant general manager of the Contra Costa Water District. “That never happened. The result is that the system has been squeezed to what appears to be a limit. A (peripheral canal) will not solve the lack of water.”
My take on this story: Some of these water rights applications will prove legitimate and will be granted, at least under currently-enacted county/watershed of origin laws. This means less water for Southern California. Theoretically, it could wipe out all the water coming towards Southern California from the State Water Project. This is a known condition, confirm both Whitney & Johns. Johns goes further, saying that we’ll have the years ahead to adjust to it, and that Southern California needs to start preparing by finding new supplies and implementing conservation & reclamation programs.
But before you go pointing at that big blue ocean out there, consider the fact that the Poseidon desalination plant, proposed for Carlsbad, will be the largest desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere, supplying water for 300,000 homes. At last count in 2000, there were nearly 10 million people living in Los Angeles County alone. That doesn’t count San Diego, Orange, or Riverside County. And it’s definitely not including future demand, as Southern California continues to be one of the fastest growing regions in the state.
Recommended reading! Get the rest of this story (before the link expires) from the Contra Costa County Times by clicking here.
Pending water rights applications in Northern California could “change the equation pretty significantly”
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 4, 2008 at 7:23 amA story so important, I’m going to post it again. Mike Taugher’s excellent article on pending water rights applications in Northern California generated much less attention than it deserved. In it, he outlines a problem that the state is going to have to deal with in the near future: all the water that has been promised to Northern Californians a long time ago, but has yet to be delivered:
The time to deliver on that promise may be nearing - but coming through will be tough because California’s water supply is already threatened by climate change, a declining Delta ecosystem and a desiccating Colorado Basin.
“Those (applications from the north) can change the equation pretty significantly,” Vicky Whitney, the water rights division chief for the State Water Resources Control Board, testified recently.
The pending applications, which total more than all of the Delta water delivered each year to Southern California, would, to the extent they are granted, take water directly from the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California, Whitney told a task force formed to develop solutions to the Delta’s water supply and environmental problems.
“California,” Whitney said, “let permanent demand occur in geographic areas on borrowed water.”
And in the years before the Central Valley Project, the state must have seemed awash in water, so promising to give it back must have seemed easy enough to do, and some dams that were planned to be part of the system were never built. But now, the chickens are coming home to roost. How much water do those pending applications call for? Nearly 2 State Water Project’s full. Now, not all of those pending applications will be approved, but if a substantial amount are, that water would theoretically come out of the water flowing south to us & to the Central Valley.
My take on this: there won’t be anymore water coming to us from Northern California than what we are getting now, and there may be a whole lot less in the future.
It is unknown how many of the pending applications will be granted. But the fact that the demands in the north are on a collision course with the rest of the state should not be a surprise because the North Coast rivers were put off limits to dams in the 1970s and 1980s when those rivers were designated wild and scenic.
“They’ve known that water supply wasn’t going to be there for about 25 years,” said John Herrick, manager of the South Delta Water Agency. “Nobody planned. That doesn’t mean the solution would be easy, but they’ve had 25 years.”
Further, the solution most often touted by some water agencies - an aqueduct to connect the Sacramento River directly with south Delta pumps - will not work if the underlying problem is an insufficient water supply, some critics contend.
“The early plans anticipated developing a lot more water,” said Greg Gartrell, assistant general manager of the Contra Costa Water District. “That never happened. The result is that the system has been squeezed to what appears to be a limit. A (peripheral canal) will not solve the lack of water.”
New state law desgined to protect fish arouses Medocino supervisor’s suspicions
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on February 8, 2008 at 5:14 pmFrom the Ukiah Daily Journal:
Tuesday’s Mendocino County Board of Supervisors meeting saw several boardmembers, sitting as the Mendocino County Water Agency, release their collective venom regarding the water rights as outlined in AB 2121. The bill was signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in September 2004 and seeks to regulate stream flows ostensibly to protect various species of wildlife. The item was placed on the board’s agenda to address the deadline for public comment on the policy.
The new law is called “Draft Policy for Maintaining Instream Flows in Northern California Coastal Streams”, and the comment period has been extended to May 1st. This will allow enough time to review the six to seven hundred pages of documents. The policy focuses on measures to protect native fish populations, especially the salmon. The policy applies to several northern California rivers and streams, but specifically not to the Eel River.
Several supervisors, though, saw the purpose behind the legislation much differently.
“It smacks of backroom deals,” said 2nd District Supervisor Jim Wattenburger. “I believe that you need to be aggressive. This is a very draconian effort by Southern California legislators to divert water for themselves. This is very poorly thought out. This is not a very public, transparent piece of legislation.”
Third District Supervisor John Pinches said he didn’t see the intent of the law as having anything to do with wildlife preservation. “To me this is not about saving fish,” he said. “If it was about fish they wouldn’t have exempted the Eel River. This is government at its worst. I think we need to take early action to oppose it.”
Sanford said the best defense the county has against the implementation of the policy is in the legal aspects of it rather than the more scientific. “As far as a strategy here, I don’t see a lot of room in arguing the technical issues here,” he said. “This is a document that has been prepared and then peer reviewed. The county has more credibility on the land use side. My real concern is that from a land-use perspective, what does this mean in terms of land values? What happens when you make people more aggressive about finding groundwater? That’s an angle that we should exploit.
To read the full text of this article from the Ukiah Daily Journal, click here.
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