[env-trinity] Trinity Journal: Water worries continue

[Tom Stokely]

Note: the article below is not just about Hayfork.  It also includes a section on paper water, the extensive drought and a letter by Congressman Huffman.  

http://www.trinityjournal.com/news/local/article_a5f065f2-9434-11ec-8363-8323617a585b.html
Water worries continue
   
   - By Tony Reed The Trinity Journal
    
   - Feb 23, 2022
    
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The difference in Trinity Lake water levels from today (top) to two years ago is obvious, as seen from the Fairview Boat Ramp.
   
   - Tony Reed | The Trinity Journal

Receding water in Trinity Lake has exposed a sunken, wood hull boat next to the Fairview boat ramp.
   
   - Tony Reed | The Trinity Journal
   
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While water levels in Trinity Lake and regional reservoirs continue to drop, some residents have expressed concern that action by the Trinity County Water Works District 1 in Hayfork would impact water users outside district boundaries.  

Craig Hair Jr., manager at the Trinity County Water Works, said the board has initiated a process of regulating transportation of water from local sources to outside the district.

He explained that the issue of filing trucks with district water has been an issue for a long time and has appeared on the Water Works’ board agendas many times.

He said there has never been an ordinance against taking district water to other areas, because such a mandate hasn’t been needed. However, as available water promises to be limited this season, the Water Works board opted to create an ordinance that anyone found to be filling water tanks or trucks from metered parcels for transport outside the district may see their water shut off by the district.

Property owners within the district pay a parcel tax which is used to repay loans that were used to build the water system.

“It is not legal to use these public facilities to supply water to parcels that have not paid a yearly parcel tax,” according to the draft policy. “Property owners within the District boundary currently pay for the maintenance and operation costs of the District monthly, all year long.”

Hair said some have assumed that the board was planning to shut water off to everyone outside the district, which is incorrect since many depend on those water exports for survival.

The board directed Hair to draft an emergency plan for consideration at the Feb. 15 meeting. Hair said the draft plan looks at areas of concern, listed as residential domestic use, livestock use, irrigation for food, and “other.”

According to the draft policy, there is a certain demand for water outside the boundaries of the Water Works and there is a responsibility for the board to protect the supply.

“There is a balance that can be determined between the water needs of the regular occupants within the District boundaries and the emergency use of water outside of District,” the draft states. “The water balance will need to be reviewed from time to time as water use within the District increases.”

The ordinance mandates the district should keep water reserves for fire suppression and “must not allow the minimum pool of Ewing Reservoir go below elevation 2,415 feet.”

Taking water outside the district will require an emergency application, which was drafted for board review at the next meeting. The application requires one disclose their parcel number, the amount of water needed, planned use for the water and the applicant’s cannabis license number, if applicable. It also asks for the license plate number and liability insurance proof of the vehicle being used to transport the water.

“Emergency use of District water must not be taken lightly and must not be subsidized by the District customers,” the draft policy states. “Conservation of water used outside of the District must be of utmost importance.” The draft closes by noting that the board will set the rates for emergency use yearly.

Paper water

In a previous story, Tom Stokely, Water Policy Director with the California Water Impact Network, said he expected local lakes to be drained to dead pool this summer, because of the state’s contracts to deliver water to downstream interests. A report by UC Davis concluded that the amount of water promised to those interests is about five times as much as the rivers contain.

“The problem facing our rivers and the Delta is thus clarified when annual flows are compared to the water rights that are claimed,” said a recent release from the California Water Impact Network. “This disparity between real and contractual water is known as ‘paper water.’ It is water, in other words, that exists only in state or federal documents, not in California’s rivers.” It said the Central Valley Project is predicated on junior water rights claims, meaning they can only divert water after stakeholders with senior water rights have taken their shares. Water rights are a form of property, and users are entitled to specific amounts at specific times. According to C-WIN, the Central Valley Project cannot provide full contract deliveries, especially during a drought.

A recent C-WIN analysis estimated that while the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers are allocated for five times what they can deliver, the Trinity River is being asked for more.

“For the Trinity River, water rights claims exceed available supply by a factor of seven,” the CWIN report states. “California’s water code has evolved — or metastasized — over the course of 150 years. It’s a jumble of prior practices, dueling lawsuits, conflicting legislation and water projects that have consistently performed under expectations. The current overallocation of water is a result of this ad hoc, and ultimately unworkable process.”

The report asserts that the State Water Board is unable or unwilling to reign in paper water claims, and that state and federal projects are at the back of the line when it comes to water availability, especially in drought and low snowpack years.

The Bureau of Reclamation has yet to receive the snowpack measurements it uses to forecast water usage, although no snow has fallen for over a month. Those numbers and the forecast will be published as soon as they are available.

Worst in a long time

Gaining national news this month is a study performed by the Department of Geography at UCLA, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and the NASA Goddard institute for Space studies. The report, published in the peer-reviewed Climate Change Journal, looked at historical and geological evidence and concluded that the 2000-2021 weather has been the worst drought since the late 1500s.

“Here, we show that after exceptional drought severity in 2021, ~19% of which is attributable to anthropo-genic climate trends, 2000–2021 was the driest 22-year period since at least 800,” the report states. “This drought will very likely persist through 2022, matching the duration of the late-1500s megadrought.”

The report says that no other period since 1901 has been as dry or hot and it’s evidenced in the drying of Lakes Mead and Powell, two of the country’s largest reservoirs.

“In summer 2021, these reservoirs reached their lowest levels on record, triggering unprecedented restrictions on Colorado River usage, in part, because the 2-year naturalized flow out of Colorado River’s upper basin in water-years 2020–2021 was likely the lowest since at least 1906.”

The report refers to the region as southwest North America, saying that since 2000, it has been unusually dry, made worse by the drought of 2021.

“Exceptionally dry soil in 2021 was critical for the current drought to escalate and overtake the 1500s megadrought as the period with the highest 22-year mean severity,” the report stated. “The 2021 soil moisture anomaly was nearly as dry as that of 2002, the driest year in the 1901–2021 observational record and notable for its severe impacts on forest ecosystems and wildfire.”

Huffman weighs in

Rep. Jared Huffman has sent a letter to the Bureau of Reclamation asking that it work to preserve cold water in Trinity Lake in order to protect threatened fish populations in the Trinity River this summer. According to a release from Huffman’s office, he’s also calling for infrastructure improvements to the dam that will allow better control of downstream water temperatures.

“Northern California is likely headed into another severely dry summer with grave consequences to tribal and coastal communities and the fisheries they rely on. Without drastic measures to address overallocated flows from the Trinity River to the Central Valley Project, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation risks depleting the cold-water threshold in the Trinity Reservoir necessary to sustain fish populations through the fall,” Huffman wrote to BOR Commissioner Camille Touton. He added that conditions have become dire and asked that the Bureau weigh all options when it comes to preserving cold water.

“All efforts must be taken to preserve the remaining cold-water pool in Trinity Lake by curtailing diversions to Whiskeytown Lake through June so BOR can release cool water to the Trinity River over the summer,” he wrote. “In fact, it may be necessary to make significant cuts to Sacramento River and San Joaquin exchange contractors to preserve cold water in Trinity Lake and its sister CVP reservoir Shasta Lake. The unprecedented drought of recent years should be considered in BOR’s drought modeling in the new biological assessment of the CVP on endangered species.”


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