[env-trinity] Eureka Times Standard - Also Related to Litigation Filed Yesterday.

[Byron]

Trinity advocates watch Central Valley contracts 

By John Driscoll The Times-Standard 

Northern California interests are lining up to protest the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation's plans to forge long-term water contracts with irrigators in
the Central Valley -- pacts Trinity River advocates believe threaten the
river's source of cold water. 

Humboldt and Trinity counties, fishing and environmental groups and the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency are among those who have lodged complaints
about the environmental documents drafted for the 25-year contracts for the
Central Valley Project. Specifically, the groups focused on contracts for
the San Luis Unit, which include eight water contractors in the Western San
Joaquin Valley. 

Essentially, the groups say that the document doesn't explore just how
Reclamation will supply promised water to the unit while cutting exports
from the Trinity River, as cleared in a case won by the Hoopa Valley Tribe
in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court One longtime expert, Trinity County Senior
Planner Tom Stokely, believes the water in part will have to be pulled out
of Trinity Reservoir. If the lake were drawn down further than typical in
the fall, more water from winter rains and snow could be stored before
spilling over Lewiston Dam, he said. That could allow more water to be
exported to the Sacramento River, from where water is sent to Central Valley
irrigators. 

"It's the only way they can send more water to these districts," Stokely
said. 

It could also deplete the cold water available in the fall for salmon in the
Trinity and the Klamath River, which it flows into. 

Among the districts whose contract is up in 2007 is Westlands Water
District, the nemesis of the Hoopa Valley Tribe during the five-year legal
battle and 30-year war over the river's water. Westlands in January conceded
its case to the tribe, clearing the way for higher flows and fish
restoration efforts on the river. 

In recent years, the state and federal water pact called CalFed has provided
Westlands with between 55 percent and 70 percent of its contracted
deliveries. The 2000 federal decision to restore the river -- cleared
through the circuit court -- calls for a reduction in that amount, to 50
percent. 

But a Dec. 23, 2004, letter to Congressman George Miller from Reclamation
Commissioner John Keyes III suggests that the agency intends to deliver the
full amount to its contractors by 2025. In Westlands' case, it's difficult
to know where that water would come from. The district is the primary
beneficiary of Trinity water as laid out in the 1955 legislation that
authorized the Trinity project. 

Bureau spokesman Jeff McCracken said a number of studies are underway that
look at increasing the yield of the Central Valley Project, a vast array of
reservoirs and canals. The assumption that 100 percent of the water could be
delivered is from projections that new or improved storage will come on
line, McCracken said, and that increased yields can be gained from the
system's reservoirs. 

"To meet all our environmental needs we use water from our reservoirs,"
McCracken said, "and in order to meet all our contractual needs we would use
all of our reservoirs." 

But in allocations for 2005 released Tuesday, Reclamation is allowing for 65
percent of water deliveries for agriculture south of the Sacramento River
Delta, including the San Joaquin Valley. 

Stokely can't see how that figure can be reached, since the Trinity
restoration plan calls for a reduction in water exports to 50 percent. The
water would have to come from storage -- including Trinity Lake, he said --
since none of the bureau's long-term projects have been realized. 

Nearly half of Westlands requires drainage service that it doesn't have, and
some districts in the area are waterlogged and contaminated with boron and
salt. Providing for drainage could cost billions. 

The draft document for the San Luis Unit doesn't look at a range of
alternatives including not renewing the contracts; doesn't address reducing
water deliveries to waterlogged lands; or consider how contaminated runoff
will be drained from those areas, Humboldt County's letter to Reclamation
reads. 

The EPA called the document "inadequate" since it doesn't deal with the
environmental impacts of full water deliveries or those deliveries' effects
on drainage. 

A slate of environmental groups like Friends of the Trinity River and
California Trout ask that the draft document be tossed out. It never
addresses the benefits of retiring land in the Central Valley, or deals with
the toxic drainage issue, the groups wrote. 

It also only casually references the bureau's trust responsibilities to the
Hoopa Valley and Yurok Tribes. 

In its comments, the Hoopa Tribe claims Reclamation is looking at the
contract renewals in a vacuum, without considering the needs of the Trinity.
Reclamation must consider reductions in water exports as a possibility, the
tribe wrote. 

 

 

Byron Leydecker, 

Chair, Friends of Trinity River

Consultant, Californiua Trout, Inc.

PO Box 2327

Mill Valley, CA 94942-2327

415 383 4810 ph

415 383 9562 fx

415 519 4810 ce

bwl3 at comcast.net

bleydecker at stanfordalumni.org (secondary)

http://www.fotr.org

http://caltrout.org

 

 

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