[env-trinity] Trinity Water Would Further Contaminate San Joaquin River

[Byron]

SAN JOAQUIN SALT LEVELS:

Group wants lower water standards;
San Joaquin River proposal is latest in fight over salt pollution 

Stockton Record - 4/4/05

By Dana Nichols, staff writer

 

STOCKTON -- A group of water districts along the San Joaquin River south of
San Joaquin County want the state to stop requiring that river water in
their area be good enough to drink.

 

Their proposal is the latest twist in a decades-old struggle over salt
pollution. The suggested change would lower standards for water in that part
of the San Joaquin, allowing farms to discharge saltier drainage into the
river.

 

San Joaquin County water-policy watchers fear such a change could cause more
problems here, where salt has already damaged crops irrigated with river
water. It could also mean less water for Stockton homes and businesses.

 

High salt levels in the San Joaquin River force the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation to discharge water from New Melones Reservoir, sending it down
the Stanislaus River to dilute the salt levels where the two rivers meet.

 

The more water that gets dumped from New Melones to dilute salt, the less
chance that Stockton homeowners, businesses, or farmers in eastern San
Joaquin County will get water from the reservoir.

 

The San Joaquin River Exchange Contractors Water Authority, based in Los
Banos, is asking for the change. Officials there say no one drinks water
from the river in their area, and the river is dry in many places anyway, so
the strict drinking-water standards are meaningless.

 

Relaxing the standards would make it easier for farmers to discharge salt
from their fields, said Steve Chedester, executive director of the Exchange
Contractors Water Authority.

 

"It helps us manage what we have to deal with up in our section upstream of
the Merced River," he said.

 

Charles Burt, a professor of irrigation at California Polytechnic University
San Luis Obispo, is doing research for the Exchange Contractors.

 

He spoke last month before the State Water Resources Control Board in favor
of eliminating drinking water as a designated "beneficial use" of a section
of the river south of Merced.

 

He said that changing the standard farther south in no way means that he
wants the state to relax standards for the river in San Joaquin County.

 

"My talk was specifically on (the area) between the Mendota Dam and
Vernalis," Burt said.

 

Mendota is where the San Joaquin River turns north west of Fresno. Vernalis
is where the river enters San Joaquin County.

 

Board spokeswoman Liz Kanter said the board's staff will consider the
proposal as well as others made at the hearing. After the public comment
period ends on May 20, staff members will make a recommendation to the
board.

 

"The process for de-designating a beneficial use is lengthy and stringent,"
Kanter wrote in an e-mail. "Even if staff recommended this, there would be
many opportunities for public comment before it happened.

 

One of those likely to comment would be John Herrick, an attorney for South
Delta Water Agency, whose farmers have suffered salt damage to crops.

He blamed the Exchange Contractors for not doing all they could to dilute
their drainage.

 

"They want to be able to sell their water rather than being able to use it
to help clean up the river," Herrick said.

 

But the Exchange Contractors say they are working hard to manage their salt
problem. And history has put them in a difficult position.

 

The group is known as "Exchange Contractors" because of a deal that goes
back six decades to when Friant Dam was constructed.

 

The various water districts from Mendota and Firebaugh to Merced had rights
to San Joaquin River water. They cut a deal to allow the federal government
to keep their water behind Friant Dam.

 

They exchanged that water for water pumped out of the Delta near Tracy and
delivered via the Delta-Mendota Canal.

 

That exchange allows all the water behind Friant to feed farms and cities
from Fresno south.

 

But water from the Delta arrives with a lot more salt than there would be in
the sweet Sierra snowmelt stored behind Friant Dam. And soils in some parts
of the western San Joaquin Valley are naturally high in salts already.

 

That combination means the salt concentrations from farm drainage can
violate drinking water standards.

 

But the salt isn't a threat to farming, Chedester said.

 

"While our water quality isn't as good as it was when it was off of the San
Joaquin River 100 percent in the 1940s, the water quality we receive is fine
for ag use," Chedester said. "We grow fine crops. We have high yields. We
have salty soils and we are doing fine."

 

Complicating the problem is that the federal government never built a drain
promised decades ago to carry salt contamination away from the area.

 

Now, Chedester said area water officials are hoping to raise $100 million
from the state and federal governments for a complex program of salt
management that would include a plant to remove salt from water.

 

Nigel Quinn is a research group leader at Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory who has studied the San Joaquin's salt problems for 20 years.

 

He has been helping to develop a system for so-called "real time" management
of the salt problem. It would use sensors and electronic communication to
better coordinate the releases of fresh water with salty water and get
maximum use from the fresh water.

 

He said he was disappointed to hear that the Exchange Contractors wanted to
give up on the drinking water standard. He said his real time management
system might be a better way to solve their problems.

 

"I would like to try that experiment before going ahead and taking the more
drastic action of de-listing," Quinn said.

 

Bill Jennings of Deltakeeper, a water watchdog group based in Stockton, said
eliminating the drinking-water standard for part of the San Joaquin River is
the equivalent of giving up on the river

 

He said he was astonished when he heard the proposal at the hearing.

 

"The aggies were saying essentially there is nothing they can do to control
it."

 

 

Byron Leydecker, 

Chair, Friends of Trinity River

Consultant, California Trout, Inc.

PO Box 2327

Mill Valley, CA 94942-2327

415 383 4810 ph

415 383 9562 fx

bwl3 at comcast.net

bleydecker at stanfordalumni.org (secondary)

http://www.fotr.org

http://caltrout.org

 

 

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