[env-trinity] Plans to Increase Delta Exports Creates Opposition to CALFED

[Tom Stokely]

http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/10882601p-11800215c.html
Major shift mapped for Delta water
By Stuart Leavenworth -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, September 26, 2004

Under pressure from some of California's biggest cities and farm districts, federal and state officials are planning major changes in how water is stored and distributed across the state, including increased pumping of supplies from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. 

The proposed changes, outlined in an obscure state-federal document called the Operations Criteria and Plan, sets the stage for California's most far-reaching plumbing shifts in a decade. Under the plan, water contractors would increase pumping from the Delta by 27 percent, sending more to Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley. Less water would flow to the San Francisco Bay and less would be reserved for endangered salmon during the driest of droughts. 

Increased pumping from the Delta originally was envisioned under Cal-Fed, a state-federal water collaboration launched in 1994. But the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation unveiled other proposals only recently, and those are coming under fire from environmentalists, Delta farmers and sportfishing groups. 

All sides agree the liquid power struggle will be a major test of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his water lieutenant, Lester Snow. Schwarzenegger has styled himself as a business-friendly, pro-environmental governor who can solve entrenched disputes. But solutions don't come easy in the Delta, where there are symbolic shadings and big stakes attached to any effort to move water around. 

"The key decision-maker will be Governor Schwarzenegger," said Tom Graff, an Oakland-based lawyer for Environmental Defense, a group that has fought past plans to increase water exports from Northern California. "At some point, he and his appointees will have to decide if they uphold the environmental commitments of Cal-Fed." 

Created with a eye toward raising all boats in the Delta, Cal-Fed once was touted as a $8.6 billion "fix" for the estuary. The program has multiple goals of increasing water supplies for farms and cities while restoring fish hurt partly by water diversions. It's still unclear if those goals can be reconciled. 

The largest estuary on the West Coast, the Delta has lost roughly half its historic flow into San Francisco Bay because of upstream water diversions. If state and federal officials turn on the pumps at the wrong time, they can suck fish and larvae toward and into the pumps. The diversions also can worsen water quality for Delta farmers and the Contra Costa Water Agency by drawing salt and bromides up the estuary. 

In recent years, Cal-Fed has helped water managers coordinate a complex system of raising or lowering pumping rates to meet environmental demands. A special pool of water - the Environmental Water Account - helps compensate water districts hurt by unexpected restrictions on Delta pumping. 

Despite those successes, Cal-Fed has few vocal champions. Water users say the program has spent about $500 million buying potential habitat to help fish and wildlife but has done little to prevent future water shortages. Environmentalists say fish stocks remain a fraction of their past numbers, and note that Delta water standards still are violated. 

Frustrated with Cal-Fed's open meetings and often plodding process, California's big water users teamed up with state and federal officials last August, and quietly negotiated their own plan for increasing Delta pumping. It became known as the Napa agreement. 

For decades, the state Department of Water Resources and the Bureau of Reclamation have maintained separate reservoirs, separate aqueducts and separate pumping plants in the Delta. Napa promised to change all that. For the first time, state contractors would be able to store their water in the federal government's big reservoirs. Federal contractors, meanwhile, could ship some of their water through the state's Harvey Banks Pumping Plant and its 11 massive electrical pumps, which suck water 244 feet up in elevation and deliver it to the California Aqueduct. 

Integrating these water works hasn't been controversial; the plan to increase pumping is. The Napa pact would allow the Banks plant to ramp up its regular pumping rates about 27 percent, from 6,680 to 8,500 cubic feet per second. State officials say the extra water would come from outflow to the Bay. 

The state's two largest water agencies - Westlands Water District, with 570,000 acres in irrigation, and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, with 18 million customers - stand to be major beneficiaries. Those districts and others may end up gaining several hundred thousand acre-feet of water, said Tim Quinn, a vice president for Metropolitan. 

In addition, the increased pumping capacity could lay the groundwork for more sales of water from Northern California rice farmers to Southern California. 

To those excluded from the talks, the Napa meeting was less a breakthrough than a backroom deal, and a betrayal of Cal-Fed's principles. 

Delta farm districts, environmental groups, sportfishing interests and many mid-size urban districts were not at the table. At the urging of U.S. Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, and state Sen. Mike Machado, D-Linden, the Napa signatories later crafted side agreements with Delta farmers, who fear that extra pumping could foul their water supply. But environmentalists were not included. 

"A lot of groups in the conservation sector are getting ready to wash their hands of the Cal-Fed process," said Steve Evans of Friends of the River, a Sacramento-based conservation group. "It is clear that major agencies are acting outside of Cal-Fed ... ." 

Up until the last few years, irrigation districts in the San Joaquin Valley were voicing the same complaints. Farmers lost supplies when President George H.W. Bush signed the 1992 Central Valley Project Improvement Act, which allocated more water for the environment. Many farmers were skeptical that Cal-Fed would come to their aid. 

In 2001, however, President George W. Bush took office and agribusiness gained new clout. Interior Secretary Gale Norton appointed Bennett Raley, a lawyer for Colorado ranchers, to manage Western water issues. She also hired Jason Peltier, a lobbyist for Central Valley irrigation districts, to handle Cal-Fed. 

Two years ago, farmers won back some of their water when Bush and his appointees declined to appeal a court ruling challenging implementation of the 1992 act. South-of-Delta farmers now are pushing for extra water guarantees, said Thad Bettner, deputy general manager of the Westlands Water District, because they fear their existing supplies will be lost as California cities grow. 

If federal and state officials implement key parts of the Napa pact, Westlands and other water exporters could see immediate gains. Federal water for San Joaquin Valley wildlife refuges could be moved through the state pumps, freeing up more capacity in federal pumps for irrigation supplies. In exchange, the federal Bureau of Reclamation would assume some of the state's responsibilities for meeting Bay-Delta flow requirements. 

Quinn, the Metropolitan vice president, said increased pumping would occur only when it wouldn't hurt fish and water quality. He dismisses claims of a water grab by Southern California, noting that Cal-Fed has long planned to increase the capacity of the pumps. 

Graff and other environmentalists, however, say it is clear that Southern California is relying more heavily on the Delta because of the Colorado River drought. Earlier this year, Environmental Defense came across financial documents filed by Metropolitan that show the agency plans to boost Delta diversions to 1.7 million acre-feet by 2008, and has steadily increased diversions the last several years. 

"All this whining from urban water agencies about the supposed lack of balance in Cal-Fed is hogwash," said Evans. Metropolitan, he said, "is receiving nearly double the water they received just a few years ago." 

Hoping to make the pumping plan more palatable, Cal-Fed has come up with supplemental proposals to improve water quality in the estuary, a fig leaf for Delta farmers and urban agencies. 

Environmentalists say those plans do little for fish, and they are even more troubled by the Operating Plan and Criteria, which shows how the Bureau of Reclamation expects to meet future water demands. 

According to that operating plan, the bureau proposes to end decade-old protections for endangered winter-run salmon in the upper reaches of the Sacramento River. 

Winter-run salmon lost their historic spawning grounds when the bureau built Shasta Dam in the 1930s. Surviving fish were nearly wiped out during the drought of 1975-77, when the bureau nearly emptied Shasta and warmed up the river. 

After winter-run salmon were added to the federal Endangered Species List in 1989, the agency was ordered to carry over 1.9 million acre-feet of water in Shasta every year. Those reserves ensure that salmon have cold water to survive a drought, but they also hamper the bureau in meeting its contract obligations. 

This year, with pressure building on the bureau to ship more water through the Delta, the agency is proposing to end the carry-over storage requirement and reduce the stretch of river where it must legally maintain cool water temperatures. 

Reclamation officials contend they can protect salmon without these hard-line restrictions. Marian Echeverria, a spokeswoman for the bureau, said the agency now has access to water sources that weren't available back in the early 1990s. 

Even with those assurances, some environmentalists and Delta farmers fear Northern California will bear the brunt of the proposed changes. Delta farmers say their irrigation supplies will become more salty as more freshwater is shipped south. 

"This process needs a whole lot more daylight," said Tom Zuckerman, a lawyer for the Central Delta Water Agency. He suspects federal officials are rushing the process so they can sign new, long-term contracts with water districts by year's end. 

The outcome could hinge on NOAA Fisheries, a federal agency charged with protecting endangered salmon and other ocean-migrating fish. NOAA biologists initially wanted to issue what is known as a "jeopardy opinion" under the Endangered Species Plan. Such a ruling would have blocked the bureau's plan, but NOAA hasn't yet issued a final decision. 

Another wild card is Schwarzenegger and his director of water resources, Snow, who worked as regional director of the Bureau of Reclamation in the Clinton administration. Snow says state and federal officials erred by not holding recent public workshops on the operating plan. "It wasn't very artfully handled," he said in an interview last week. 

Nonetheless, said Snow, critics are jumping the gun. The Department of Water Resources, he said, is studying how planned Delta diversions would affect fisheries and flows to the Bay. The public will have ample opportunities to comment on any final proposal, which would need to meet both federal and state environmental laws, he said. 

Snow said he also is awaiting the opinion from NOAA Fisheries and will examine it closely. 

"We will not stand by and allow a lessening of salmon protections that will cause problems for the state," said Snow. "If NOAA Fisheries does something that gives the bureau a free pass, we are going to catch that."

 

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