[env-trinity] SF Chronicle: No public discussion on Feinstein's slick maneuver to streamline transfer of northern California water to southern Callifornia

[Mark Dowdle - TCRCD]

  Feinstein's slick maneuver to move water around

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Just two sentences, dropped into a 1,221-page, $915 billion omnibus 
spending bill, have streamlined the controversial practice of selling 
water from north of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to farms and 
cities south of the delta. This little provision merited more scrutiny 
and debate than it received.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., inserted the language into the bill, a 
complex document that authorized the spending needed to keep the 
government in business through September that President Obama 
<http://www.sfgate.com/barack-obama/> signed into law Dec. 17, to 
provide more flexibility in moving water around the Central Valley - 
something she has sought for several years.

The first sentence eases water transfers from irrigation districts 
served by the federal Central Valley Project, including the Westlands 
Water District and the privately owned Kern Water Bank. The second 
sentence mandates a study to streamline water sales, both among 
south-of-the-delta water contractors and north-south transfers.

State law has been moving for the past decade toward water markets as a 
way to distribute more equitably the state's most precious resource. The 
transfers are in keeping with that policy.

The rules matter because if they could ease the transfer of "paper 
water" - water a district has contracts for but doesn't actually have - 
it could increase the overall amount of water exported. That water would 
have to come from someone else; that could be bad for fish, farmers or 
San Francisco Bay.

Those concerned about the state's salmon and trout fisheries fear more 
flexibility to transfer water will reduce the Sacramento River to the 
same state as the San Joaquin River - but a trickle of its former flows. 
They want greater protections for the fish. The delta ecosystem is 
already declining as pumping has increased.

At the same time, Bay Area water districts rely on the ability to move 
water to supplement their own supplies. It's too easy to characterize 
water conflicts as a north-south or fish-versus-farmers or 
greedy-private-water-contractors debates.

An earlier law that allowed water transfers for a year has expired. How 
well did that work? What does the federal government get out of agreeing 
to deliver another 80,000-acre-feet of subsidized water?

We don't know, because this tiny rider to an omnibus bill wasn't 
discussed in public as it should be.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/27/ED7R1MGG4Q.DTL

This article appeared on page *A - 11* of the San Francisco Chronicle

© 2011 Hearst Communications Inc. 
<http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/info/copyright/>
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