Who will be Delta’s keeper?
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 30, 2008 at 8:24 amIt’s a classic case of too many cooks in the kitchen. More than 200 agencies have some say on what happens in the vast Delta, and the product of their labors doesn’t seem to satisfy anyone, as fish die and the water supply shrinks.
Among all other impending Delta decisions, such as whether to build a peripheral canal, a key question yet to be answered is how the Delta will be governed in the future. Who will be in charge?
During a series of recent meetings with California Secretary for Resources Mike Chrisman and his staff, San Joaquin County leaders have jockeyed for representation on whatever governance agency is created in the future.
Chrisman chairs a five-member Cabinet committee that will submit a strategic Delta plan, already approved by a blue-ribbon task force, to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger by Dec. 31. The committee may expand on the task force’s recommendations; a meeting to gather public comments is scheduled for Friday in Sacramento.
There are signs that at least some local representation will be part of the new governance structure, said Terry Dermody, former San Joaquin County counsel now acting as a water attorney for the county. Dermody said Chrisman’s staff revealed in meetings that it may restructure the Delta Protection Commission to consist of elected officials from five Delta counties, three cities including Stockton, and representatives of three major water agencies for Delta farmers.
Read more from Stockton’s Record by clicking here.
Increasingly scarce water is the new California gold
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 30, 2008 at 8:14 amFrom Redding’s Record Searchlight “Speak Your Piece”, this commentary:
The future of California depends on the utilization of water. Water is the new California gold. Without proper control, the state will slowly deteriorate.
Californians have taken water for granted for far too long. With the burgeoning population, that can no longer be the case. We have to balance it against our needs in the future. Where do we put our priorities? They are: first, in life-giving drinking water; second, in food and foliage production, and third, in sanitation.
With the amount of expenditures being evaluated by state and federal agencies, there have to be viable options. Wasting water for generations is no longer acceptable. Curbing inequitable proposed measures could support production of water storage, totally independent of existing waterways and spawning grounds. Water education, like power and fuel efficiency, should parallel all efforts.
Programs are being studied to store fresh water. Catch basins/dams and replenishing aquifers are considered. Current clean hydroelectric reservoirs should be retained. We need more off-line storage when wet years provide a surplus of water.
One near-term effort needs to be to educate the population. Wasting of this precious resource should be curtailed. Water is the life blood of all California and bleeding it dry should be stopped, even to the extent of fines for flagrant waste.
Without adequate water, the agricultural economy of the state is in trouble. The world needs the food California produces, as much as California needs the product income. It has been said the desert would bloom if it had water, and lots of arid parts of California have been converted. This has increased the need for water as well as the agricultural productivity.
Read more from the Record-Searchlight by clicking here.
Californians need to worry about food security, says commentary
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 30, 2008 at 8:05 am
From the San Francisco Chronicle, this commentary by A.G. Kawamura, the secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture:
At a time when people are deeply concerned about our dependence on imported oil, we should also be concerned about increasing our state’s dependence on imported food. In fact, our ability to feed our state could be seriously threatened by problems such as a long-term drought, the state’s aging water delivery and supply system, and court-ordered water supply cuts.
When people talk about food security, it’s normally a social justice topic at international conferences on hunger and famine. But it’s a term that we’re hearing more in California as population growth, along with land use and water policies, puts more pressure on this state’s agricultural industry. Rather than referencing worries about global food shortages, food security for Californians is about whether our state can continue to be the nation’s top food producer.
One of the major threats to the state’s farming industry is our lack of water. California’s drought, combined with court-ordered cuts in water deliveries, is threatening our food production.
Because of the water shortage, growers are cutting back on production, fallowing land and stumping trees. The drought has cost the state more than $250 million in lost plantings and 80,000 acres of crops this year alone. And that doesn’t include the huge amount of idle farmland that hasn’t been planted in the past few years because of an unpredictable water supply.
Read more from the San Francisco Chronicle by clicking here.
Court rejects POWER appeal of All-American Canal case
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 30, 2008 at 7:58 amFrom the Imperial Valley Press:
One of the groups suing the Imperial Irrigation District has suffered a setback.
POWER, which stands for Protect Our Water and Environmental Rights, initially sued the IID claiming environmental reviews on the All-American Canal were not adequate. It had two appeals to its case denied Friday.
“This means POWER lost again. What a surprise,” said IID Board President John Pierre Menvielle.
The lawsuits were initially filed in 2006 by brothers Mike and Jimmy Abatti, members of POWER. Mike Abatti later dropped his involvement in the lawsuits after he was elected to the IID board.
Read more from the Imperial Valley Press by clicking here.
Officials hope for snow to fill up Lake Tahoe
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 30, 2008 at 7:55 amWith Lake Tahoe’s water level nearing the natural rim, water authorities are hoping for record-breaking precipitation to bring the level up.
“We desperately need a big winter and a big snowpack to bring Lake Tahoe back up again,” said Federal Water Master Garry Stone.
When the water in Lake Tahoe nears the natural rim, at 6,223 feet, water flows more slowly into the Truckee River.
At midweek the lake measured 6,223.25. Under normal conditions, the flow into the Truckee is about 250 cubic feet per second. The current rate is about 12 cubic feet per second, Stone said. If the lake level drops below the natural rim no more water will flow into the Truckee.
“We can’t get any more water out of it,” Stone said. “It’s like a bathtub, we do not have the ability to release water through the natural rim.”
The picture of the dam at Lake Tahoe is from last Friday. There is very little water flowing through it into the Truckee River. The dam is operated by the Bureau of Reclamation, and was built in 1913 as part of the Newlands Project. The Newlands Project was one of the very first Bureau of Reclamation projects.
Of course, Lake Tahoe is a natural lake; the dam raises the level of the lake six feet, which creates a reservoir on top of the lake of 732,000 acre-feet. The dam also controls releases into the Truckee River.
As the level of the lake drops further, there won’t be any water flowing into the Truckee River. Flows for the river will then be made up from Boca Reservoir; according to the article, there’s enough water in Boca to last through December. The picture on the right is Boca Dam last Friday.
Read the full text of the story from the Nevada Appeal by clicking here. You can find out more about the Newlands Project by clicking here.
Dorothy’s Law: To modernize water policy and management in California
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 30, 2008 at 7:28 amFrom the California Progress Report:
About 125 people came out to the beach at Santa Monica Pier on a cloudy Sunday to share their favorite Dorothy Green stories. Some people came as far as San Francisco, Sun Valley and Denver to reminisce about Dorothy’s amazing achievements, tireless work ethic, big heart, and sense of humor. The County Lifeguards paid tribute to Dorothy, the founding president of Heal the Bay who passed away in October, as one of their own with a boat offshore and Capt. Angus Alexander’s inspirational words at the podium.
Any event with Dorothy had to include an environmental action and her memorial was no different. Paula Daniels, Conner Everts and I put together a version of “Dorothy’s Law”: a common-sense legislative solution to California’s dysfunctional water supply management.
The text was based on Dorothy’s last editorial in the Los Angeles Times. Every visitor at the memorial was asked (actually, required) to sign the request for Dorothy’s Law, and now the environmental community will forward it to the state legislature and the Governor’s office. Hopefully some elected leader will follow Dorothy’s advice to move us towards sustainable water supply management.
Read the text of Dorothy’s Law and find out more from the California Progress Report by clicking here.
Sierra Nevada climate changes feed monster, forest-devouring fires
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 30, 2008 at 7:23 amFrom the Sacramento Bee:
Driving home from Lake Tahoe, Leah Wills watched the column of ash-gray smoke from the Moonlight fire grow and grow – until finally she was under it. Overhead, the sky that September afternoon in 2007 turned eerie pink. Orange-red flecks of burning bark streaked like missiles through the air. And the smoke – eye-watering and acrid – was inescapable.
“It was like a nuclear cloud,” said Wills, 59, a policy analyst for the Plumas County Flood Control District who lives near the tiny hamlet of Genesee. “I’ve been to Denali and Kilimanjaro. I grew up with tornadoes. I’ve seen some big things. I never saw anything that big in my life.”
Wildfire has marched across the West for centuries. But no longer are major conflagrations fueled simply by heavy brush and timber. Now climate change is stoking the flames higher and hotter, too.
That view, common among firefighters, is reflected in new studies that tie changing patterns of heat and moisture in the western United States to an unprecedented rash of costly and destructive wildfires.
Among other things, researchers have found the frequency of wildfire increased fourfold – and the terrain burned expanded sixfold – as summers grew longer and hotter over the past two decades.
Read the rest of this comprehensive article from the Sacramento Bee by clicking here.
Goodrich suit claims EPA hiding perchlorate data
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 30, 2008 at 7:20 amFrom the Contra Costa Times:
One of the companies accused of polluting the drinking water in the Rialto area has sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency saying the agency is withholding evidence that supports the company’s case.
Charlotte-based Goodrich Corp. says in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., that EPA has modelling showing the company is not responsible for the contamination.
The EPA is in the process of declaring a 160-acre portion of Rialto a Superfund site because various chemicals, including perchlorate, are flowing through the city and toward Colton and Riverside.
Perchlorate, an ingredient in rocket fuel and fireworks, can adversely affect the human thyroid.
“We believe that EPA has models that exonerate the company,” said Goodrich spokesman Patrick Palmer. “And if they have such models, they shouldn’t hide them.”
Read more from the Contra Costa Times by clicking here.
Coachella Valley Agencies offering progress updates on the Salton Sea at Thursday meeting
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 30, 2008 at 7:18 amFrom MyDesert.com:
The Salton Sea might have fallen off the radar in Sacramento, but it’s still on the map in the Coachella Valley’s backyard. And it still faces an ever-worsening ecological crisis that could have huge environmental impacts locally.
A multi-billion-dollar plan to restore the sea is stalled in the Legislature. But lesser, quieter progress toward at least the beginnings of a solution continues, officials said.
On Thursday, the state departments of Water Resources and Fish and Game will update the public on activities at the sea.
“It’s been a year since we’ve been out to the public, so we felt it was time to get back out there, let them know there’s work that’s been going on and what that work has been,” said Kim Nichol, an environmental program manager with the Department of Fish and Game.
Scientists say they’ve found bacteria that will fight invasive mussels, But germ can’t be used on wide scale, so its utility is limited, they warn
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 30, 2008 at 7:15 amFrom the Chicago Tribune:
Researchers seeking to slow the spread of invasive zebra and quagga mussels in American lakes and rivers have found a bacterium that appears to be fatal to the problematic species without affecting native mussels or freshwater fish.
The bacterium, Pseudomonas fluorescens, offers some hope for controlling the troublesome bivalves that are wreaking ecological and economic havoc in North American waters from the Colorado River to Vermont, and especially in the Great Lakes.
But more testing remains to be done, and the bacteria could be used effectively only on a limited scale, said Daniel Molloy, the New York State Museum researcher who discovered the possible new use for P. fluorescens.
It would be impossible to use the bacteria to wipe out all the invasive mussels in a Great Lake because they would be quickly replenished, he said. “It’s too big,” Molloy said of the mussel invasion.
Read more from the Chicago Tribune by clicking here.
Outcome of recent water quality events to shape California development
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 30, 2008 at 7:08 amFrom the California Real Estate Journal:
Development in California could become more difficult depending on the outcome of recent events concerning water-quality regulation.
An ongoing court battle has the potential to reshape storm water regulation entirely. Pending renewal, the statewide construction storm water permit contains proposed provisions that could dramatically raise the cost of construction and even affect feasibility. Pressure to regulate the design of projects through local storm drain permits continues to squeeze the industry.
In August, a trial court handed down a rare victory for the regulated community to several Los Angeles-area cities and the Building Industry Association in the case of City of Arcadia v. State Water Resources Control Board. The court’s ruling would force the Los Angeles Water Board to revise all of its water-quality standards applicable to storm water to make them more reasonable and achievable economically.
Basin Plans, akin to General Plans for water, contain water-quality standards which identify the beneficial uses of waterbodies (i.e., fishing or swimming) and establish the maximum amount of pollutants that can be present in the waterbodies. Water-quality standards provide the base for water-quality regulation. Permits incorporate the standards, and several other regulatory programs are tied to maintaining the standards in local waters.
Revision of the standards, per the court’s order, will affect all businesses, developments and construction projects with permits in L.A. and Ventura counties as well as county citizens through programs applied to public storm drains and other regulatory vehicles. If the Los Angeles Water Board revises the standards to consider the statutory factors, some of the strict limitations placed on flows to local waters (e.g., zero trash even during flood events) could be modified, making permit limits more attainable.
Read more from the California Real Estate Journal by clicking here.
State water supplies increasingly cloudy; Agencies hoping seeding process can help bolster key watersheds
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 29, 2008 at 7:10 amFrom Stockton’s Record:
Keep your eyes on the clouds rolling east this week. If they’re fat enough, they’ll get squeezed. Thirsty California water and power agencies - including those serving San Joaquin County - this winter are again sending pilots out to seed the clouds over key watersheds. In fact, the cloud-seeding programs are growing and could potentially double in coming years, according to the California Department of Water Resources.
The year’s first seeding in the central Sierra could happen this week if conditions are right.
The seeding involves the use of chemicals such as silver iodide that cause more water droplets or snowflakes to condense and fall to the ground. Various agencies spend more than $3 million a year statewide on the seeding, which typically generates rain and snow fall that yields an extra 300,000 to 400,000 acre-feet a year of water, according to the California Department of Water Resources.
An acre-foot is enough water to cover an acre 1 foot deep. Water managers say an acre-foot is about enough water to serve two typical family homes for a year.
“It definitely is worth it,” said Kevin Cunningham, hydro facilities manager for the Northern California Power Agency, which this year for the second time is seeding clouds over watersheds in Calaveras and Tuolumne counties that feed the North Fork Stanislaus River.
Read more from the Stockton Record by clicking here.
Navajo water a wild card in river’s future; Old rights » 1908 decision gave tribe part of the river
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 29, 2008 at 7:04 amFrom the Salt Lake Tribune:
The commission that created the 1922 Colorado River Compact knew that Mexico, the Navajo and other tribes had rights to the river, but when it divvied up the presumed 15 million acre-feet annual flow, it didn’t define the claims. In 1944, the United States and Mexico agreed that Mexico would get 1.5 million acre-feet per year, resetting the assumed baseline river flow at 16.5 million acre-feet. Four years later, the commission set the Upper Basin states’ shares on a percentage basis rather than an absolute allocation.
Still no mention of Indian tribes, even though an 1850 treaty with the Navajo Nation, reinforced by a 1908 Supreme Court ruling, guaranteed water rights necessary for a permanent homeland.
In 2003, the Navajo Nation sued the Interior Department, seeking to force the U.S. government to, at last, quantify the tribe’s rights.
Some Navajos say a strict interpretation of the treaty and the 1908 ruling in Winters v. United States shows the tribe’s rights trump all others because they were affirmed before the 1922 Colorado Compact. Navajo leaders, however, are pursuing negotiations rather than going back to the Supreme Court. That’s because they realize the justices could wipe out the earlier Winters ruling.
The approach has polarized Navajos, with some alleging the tribe’s attorney, Stanley Pollack, a white man, isn’t fighting hard enough.
Read more from the Salt Lake Tribune by clicking here.
Drought deepens strain on a dwindling Colorado; Flows falling » California first in line as Utah, other states fight for water
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 29, 2008 at 6:59 amFrom the Salt Lake Tribune:
The drought gripping Utah, Southern California and the rest of the Southwest this century shows no sign of ending. Scientists see it as a permanent condition that, despite year-to-year weather variations, will deepen as temperatures rise, snows dwindle, soils bake and fires burn.
That’s grim news for all of us in the West, perhaps most especially for the 10 million residents along the northern stretch of the Colorado River — Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming and Colorado — whose water rights are newer, and therefore junior, to those in Southern California, Nevada and Arizona.
Making matters worse, the Colorado — the 1,450-mile-long lifeline that sustains more than 30 million souls and 3.5 million acres of farmland in seven states, 34 tribal nations and Mexico — is in decline, scientists warn.
Even so, demand for the Colorado’s water echoes from city leaders, industry giants, oil drillers, farmers, fishers, ranchers, boaters, bikers and hikers — along with silent pleas from wildlife and the ecosystem. Trend analyses by federal scientists, probably conservative, predict the population dependent on the river will reach at least 38 million during the coming decade.
Read more from the Salt Lake Tribune by clicking here.
For the record: law journal articles contemplate future of California dams
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 29, 2008 at 6:54 amFrom the California Progress Report:
Ideas about water management in the Western United States are in a state of flux, particularly in regard to dams. Recently stakeholders announced an “Agreement in Principle” to work toward removing four dams on the Klamath River. Next week the State Water Resources Control Board will likely revoke the water rights for the oft-proposed Auburn Dam. To learn more about these issues, we recommend that you pick up a copy of the most recent edition of the Golden Gate University’s Environmental Law Journal on “The West’s Aging Dams: Retain or Remove?”
Click here to read the rest of this story from California Progress Report, which includes links to two journal articles, one by Jonas Minton of the Planning & Conservation League about California dams, and another by Jerry Meral, formerly the director of the PCL, on the options for removing the O’Shaughnessy Dam and restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley.
BIG DECLINE: Las Vegas now using less water; Why? Conservation efforts, economic woes, population dip
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 29, 2008 at 6:43 amFrom the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
Joblessness is up, budgets are down, and the housing market has yet to hit bottom. But look on the bright side: We’re using less water.
Through October, the Las Vegas Valley Water District has sold roughly 4 billion gallons less water than it had by the same time last year, a decline of almost 4 percent. It is the largest such year-to-year decline for the water district in recent memory.
There are any number of reasons for the drop, from conservation initiatives including a recent water rate increase to belt tightening by customers trying to ride out the economic slump. But one cause is sure to raise more eyebrows than the others: Less water is being sold because there are fewer people here to buy it.
Some local demographers now estimate that Clark County’s population actually shrank by nearly 10,400 people over the past year. The county’s official estimate, adopted last week by the Southern Nevada Planning Coalition, shows a population of 1,986,146 as of July 1. That’s down 10,396 from last year’s estimate of 1,996,542.
Read more from the Las Vegas Review-Journal by clicking here.
California ocean group proposes plastic ban
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 29, 2008 at 6:37 amFrom SustainableBusiness.com:
The California Ocean Protection Council (OPC) has proposed banning plastic take-out containers and instituting plastic bag use fees as part of a strategy to reduce ocean litter. The proposal calls for plastic manufacturers to recover and dispose of their products and for product user fees to be assessed.
The proposed implementation strategy, that will require legislative action in order to be enacted, identifies three primary approaches that California should take to eliminate marine debris. California should: (1) establish a “take-back” program that would require manufacturers to take back used packaging and dispose of it properly; (2) institute a statewide fee on single-use plastic grocery bags and a prohibition on polystyrene food containers; and (3) impose user fees on other commonly littered packaging items.
“The council is confident that this strategy will have far reaching benefit for ocean health and brings about needed action to tackle the marine debris problems plaguing our oceans,” said OPC Chair and Secretary for Resources Mike Chrisman. “Our decision today moves California closer to a real solution to reduce the threats to our ocean and coast.”
Read more from SustainableBusiness.com by clicking here.
My View: California water storage: Underworld and body
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 28, 2008 at 9:10 amFrom the Sacramento Bee, this commentary from Graham E. Fogg, a professor of hydrogeology in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources at the University of California, Davis:
The likely effects of climate change on local water resources in places like Sacramento are still being researched by climate and hydrologic scientists, but one thing is fairly certain: There will be less snow in the Sierra Nevada in the coming decades.
Climate model projections suggest the Sierra snowpack could dwindle to a mere 20 percent to 40 percent of its historical volume during this century. In fact, historical data show that for the last century, the April-July flows in the Sacramento River have declined steadily, apparently caused by a rise of roughly two degrees Farenheit in air temperature and a consequently thinner snowpack.
Basically, the total precipitation has not declined, but winter is bringing less snow and more rain. Whether climate change brings more or less precipitation to California, on average, more of it will fall as rain rather than snow. Consequently, less water will be available when it is most needed in the summer, because surface reservoirs will have to release more water in the winter. So the seventh-ranked economy in the world, which also provides some 50 percent of the nation’s fruits and vegetables, relies on a water system that depends precariously on storage of water in a gradually diminishing snowpack.
Currently, the state has no working storage alternative that would adequately compensate for declines in the snowpack. One approach is to build more dams and raise the heights of existing dams, but there is a consensus that the problem cannot be solved solely by augmenting surface storage.
Subsurface storage is a tantalizing alternative and could be vastly increased if certain technical hurdles and limitations in our knowledge of the underworld could be addressed.
Read more of this commentary from the Sacramento Bee by clicking here.
Specter of water rationing emerges for Inland Empire providers
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 28, 2008 at 9:05 amFrom Riverside’s Press-Enterprise:
Riverside County Supervisor Marion Ashley remembers the extreme drought conditions of nearly two decades ago.
In 1991, before low-flow toilets became the norm, Ashley and many others put bricks in their toilet tanks to reduce the amount of water used in flushing. In the shower, they turned off the water to soap up, then back on for a rinse. Some of his friends caught the overflow in buckets to use later.
Ashley gave up watering the yard of his Perris home, letting plants and bushes wither and die. “It worried me all the time,” said Ashley, who sees similar measures fast approaching as the state enters what could be a third dry winter.
Even if this year brings average rain and snowfall, the drought won’t be over. Climatologists say it will take a very wet year or several average years in a row to bring California back to even.
Read more from the Press-Enterprise by clicking here.
San Diego cuts funds to storm water watchdog unit
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 28, 2008 at 9:01 amFrom San Diego Union-Tribune:
San Diego’s budget crunch not only has endangered libraries and recreation centers, it also has forced major cuts to the department responsible for curbing runoff that fouls bays and beaches.
The Storm Water Department sponsors one of the highest-profile environmental campaigns in the region – Think Blue – and is responsible for complying with state and federal water pollution rules that are backed by hefty penalties.
Budget reductions approved by the City Council on Monday slashed $5.7 million of the department’s $48.8 million budget this fiscal year – one of the largest cuts among all city departments in terms of dollar amount.
The result will be fewer inspections at industrial sites, slower responses to complaint calls, fewer repairs to storm drains and less advertising to remind residents about preventing pollution. “We have to scale back the program as a whole,” said Jennifer Nichols Kearns, a department spokeswoman. “It means less public exposure to our messages.”
Read the rest of this article from the San Diego Union-Tribune by clicking here.








