[env-trinity] redding.com- Marc Beauchamp: Drought may rain on ACID's birthday

[Tom Stokely]

Let's hope it keeps raining and snowing. 

TS

http://www.redding.com/news/2014/feb/07/marc-beauchamp-drought-may-rain-on-acids/ 

Marc Beauchamp: Drought may rain on ACID's birthday
Staff Reports
Friday, February 7, 2014
The Anderson-Cottonwood Irrigation District turns 100 on July 27, but California’s severe drought is likely to put a damper on the festivities.
ACID General Manager Stan Wangberg told me this week his “most optimistic outlook” is that the agency will get only 50 to 75 percent of its normal water allotment, and there’s a chance it could get no water at all — none, nada, zippo — for its 800-odd customers. They use ACID water to irrigate 6,700 acres — for permanent pasture, to grow walnuts and other trees as well as hay and alfalfa, and to do some commercial farming.
“It’s pretty dire,” a clearly worried Wangberg said. In 28 years in the water business the 63-year-old Chico native and one-time rice farmer’s seen nothing like it.
Any day now Wangberg will hear from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation about ACID’s projected water allocations for the current year.
Last week the state of California took the unprecedented action of announcing there will be no water deliveries this year from the State Water Project. That means no water for some 29 public water agencies that help supply water to 25 million Californians and 750,000 acres of irrigated farmland.
‘Not enough water’
Said Mark Cowin, state Department of Water Resources director: “Simply put, there’s not enough water in the system right now for customers to expect any water this season from the project.” Instead, they’ll have to rely on groundwater, local reservoirs and other supplies, the state said.
ACID gets its water from the federal government; the Bureau of Reclamation built Shasta Dam and its reservoir. Under ACID’s contract with the feds, Wangberg said, its annual allotment can be cut by a maximum of 25 percent.
Trouble is, the state water board, which controls water rights in California, could then step in and further reduce or prohibit diversions of water to the district. “We’re not immune,” Wangberg said.
Wangberg pointed to this sentence in a Jan. 17 release from the California Water Boards: “Some riparian and pre-1914 water right holders (that would include ACID) may also receive a notice to stop diverting water if their diversions are downstream of reservoirs releasing stored water and there is no natural flow available for diversion.” Wangberg said he isn’t exactly sure what that sentence means but it worries him. “We’re all uneasy about where it’s going.”
Shortened season?
Wangberg will lay out options to his board of directors at a meeting on Feb. 13. They could include a shortened water season and potential refunds for ACID customers (who annually pay $75 per acre of land for their water).
“We’re getting lots of calls” from concerned customers, Wangberg said, sitting in ACID’s modest concrete block office across from Anderson City Hall. “It’s just really bleak,” he said, looking at a print-out of reservoir levels across Northern California.
ACID owns and maintains a 35-mile-long mostly earthen canal that runs from a diversion dam on the Sacramento River at Caldwell Park in Redding to near the confluence of Cottonwood Creek and the Sacramento River.
ACID benefits rural residents and city dwellers alike, Wangberg said.
ACID’s benefits
In Redding, for example, the 56-degree water flowing through the canal helps lower air temperatures and the waterway and its associated laterals provide riparian corridors.
In Churn Creek Bottom, Cottonwood, Anderson and northern Tehama County ACID water “supports an agricultural lifestyle” that includes horses and backyard farms, allows kids to raise livestock and creates a verdant corridor that makes the south county so attractive to many.
Another benefit, as ACID board member (and former Redding police chief) Bob Blankenship told me in an email: “Many do not realize the seepage from the ACID canal recharges many private wells in Churn Creek, Anderson, Cottonwood and northern Tehama County.”
A prolonged drought, Blankenship warned, could have “devastating consequences on the (ACID) system.”
Worth celebrating
Besides direct and indirect benefits to its customers, ACID provides jobs to 12 full-time employees. With water allocations drastically cut or suspended, Wangberg worries about whether he’ll have to lay off staff.
ACID’s projected budget for 2014 is about $1.25 million, with revenue coming mostly from water sales or transfers and property taxes. (ACID sells water to Bella Vista Water District, the city of Shasta Lake, Shasta Community Services District and, since 2008, the city of Redding.)
It’s drizzling as I write this early Thursday morning. And more rain is in the forecast for this weekend. But even a few soaking storms (“rain events,” Wangberg calls them) won’t ease California’s water crisis.
I’ll quote from one of the releases Wangberg handed me: “It would need to rain and snow heavily every other day from now until May to get us back to average annual rain and snowfall.”
As I said, the drought could put a damper on ACID’s birthday bash this summer, but on the other hand it may inspire us all to reflect on the vital importance and preciousness of water and the generations of pioneering engineers, planners and workers who imagined and built the infrastructure that brings it to us in the arid west.
And, yes, that’s worth celebrating in any year, wet or dry.
Marc Beauchamp has a blog at Redding.com. Reach him atNotBusinessAsUsual at gmail.com.
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