[env-trinity] SF Chron- Strife over new Central Valley water allocation

[Tom Stokely]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/01/22/BAGG7AUH4M1.DTL&type=printable 
Strife over new Central Valley water allocation 
Farmers, fisheries, environmentalists all feel shorted 

- Glen Martin, Chronicle Environment Writer 
Saturday, January 22, 2005 

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has released preliminary 2005 federal water allocation 
projections for California, and the figures have made many of the stakeholders unhappy. 

Environmentalists and fisheries advocates claim the agency is ignoring key provisions 
mandated by federal legislation directing greater flows down the Sacramento River to restore 
depleted salmon runs. 

Farmers say the federal Central Valley Project -- which supplies 7 million acre-feet of water to 
farmers, wildlife refuges, fisheries and cities from the upper Sacramento Valley to Los Angeles 
-- was built specifically for agriculture, but ongoing diversions to cities and environmental 
restoration are coming unfairly at the farmers' expense. 

The disagreements highlight two decades of political and legal conflict directed at the Central 
Valley Project as agribusiness and environmental groups skirmish over disposition of water. 

The latest conflict arose Friday when the bureau released two projections on water supplies for 
the coming year. Although the projections were based on two criteria, "above normal" and 
"dry year," it said the probability of an above average year was higher because of the amount 
of precipitation and snowpack to date. 

If that turns out to be the case, water users north of the Sacramento River/San Joaquin River 
Delta -- agriculture, municipalities, wildlife refuges and farmers and other users who held 
water rights before the construction of the Central Valley Project in the 1930s and 1940s -- 
would receive 100 percent of their quotas. 

South of the delta, agriculture would receive 60 percent of their quotas; municipalities, 85 
percent; and refuges and historic water rights holders, 100 percent. 

If the year ends up being a dry one, the allocations would remain the same except that 
agriculture north of the delta would receive 60 percent of contractual quotas and cities north 
of the delta would receive 85 percent. 

Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fisheries, said the bureau is 
ignoring basic tenets of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act of 1992. 

That legislation directed the agency to release 800 thousand acre-feet of water down the 
Sacramento River for salmon, to operate the Central Valley Project with fisheries and wildlife 
restoration as a goal, and to devise a plan that will double salmon and steelhead runs on the 
Sacramento River system. 

"They've basically ignored it all, with the exception of some extra water releases down the 
river," Grader said. "And even then, they're not letting the water run all the way down the 
system and out the Golden Gate, where it's needed to restore the health of the delta and San 
Francisco Bay." 

Instead, said Grader, the agency is capturing most of the flows at huge pumps in the delta 
near Tracy, and shipping the water south to farms and cities. 

Jeff McCracken, a spokesman for the bureau, acknowledged that some of the fisheries flows 
mandated by the 1992 project improvement act are recaptured at the delta and pumped 
southward. 

But McCracken noted that fisheries flows for both the Sacramento and Trinity rivers are 
given top priority by the agency, and all other allocations are secondary. 

"If we pumped everything we could, we wouldn't be giving farmers 60 percent of their 
(contractual) water," McCracken said. "We are following all the mandates of the CVPIA, we 
are meeting our requirements under the (U.S.) Endangered Species Act, and we are 
upholding water quality in the delta." 

Farmers aren't satisfied with the projected allocations, either. Michael Wade, the executive 
director of the California Farm Water Coalition, said cities and environmentalists consider 
farmers the default water supplier for the entire state. 

"When these (CVP) deliveries were first negotiated 60 years ago, people expected to get the 
amount of water that was agreed on," said Wade. 

"Now farmers are getting only 60 to 65 percent of their water," Wade said. "It's like 
encouraging a guy to go into the shoe business, and then giving him only half the leather he 
needs for the shoes." 

E-mail Glen Martin at glenmartin at sfchronicle.com. 
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