[env-trinity] Reconsultation seen as pathway forward for more water

[Tom Stokely]

http://www.trinityjournal.com/news/local/article_4cd328e8-154c-11ee-98cd-f39ffeba70ae.html

Reconsultation seen as pathway forward for more water

   - Josh Cozine

North State water guru Tom Stokely spoke to county supervisors last week,
sharing information gathered over a lifetime of working in water policy,
and his thoughts on the best path forward on how to bank more water in
Trinity Lake.

The presentation was agendized by CAO Trent Tuthill for Stokely to discuss
“Trinity Lake cold storage pool needs and potential alternative
recommendations for the ongoing Trinity River Division reconsultation.”
Stokely suggested an alternative recommendation to go with those already
drafted and put forward by the state, but first he gave the supervisors a
history lesson on the river and lake and previous carryover storage efforts.

*History*

The Trinity River Division Project, including the Trinity and Lewiston dams
finished in the early 1960s, and by 1964, the reservoirs had filled and
overflowed, flooding all salmon spawning gravels to the point that salmon
returns for one season to the hatchery was down to the single digits. This
led to Trinity High School students putting on a “mock salmon funeral”
which drew national attention at the time.

Trinity Lake was then drained down to 10%, about 227,000 acre feet, during
a multi-year drought in the late ’70s. One major finding that came from it,
Stokely said, was the “County of Origins Statutes” — which states that
water released from a state-owned dam should not deprive water necessary
for the development of its origin county — and it could be an argument to
keep more water in the lake, but at the time, there was no evidence
provided that doing such would benefit Trinity County.

“What I want to emphasize to you today, is that Trinity County has always
been at the forefront of issues to do with the Trinity River and protecting
and restoring the fishery, and you have a lot of power and you have a lot
of authority and I urge you to use it,” Stokely said.

Another drought in 1987 led to further litigation and in 1989 Sacramento
Winter Run Chinook was listed as a threatened species — changed to
endangered in 1994 — which Stokely said was used as an unfounded excuse to
take more Trinity water for the Sacramento River.

In 1990, Water Right Order 90-05 was created and said that water could not
be diverted from the Trinity — for temperature control — if it would harm
fish in the Trinity. Stokely stated this to be a “hollow victory,”
unfortunately, saying that Trinity temperatures aren’t really considered at
the upper levels of government, and the threshold of 56 degrees is not low
enough.

2000 saw the Trinity Record of Decision which increased flows from the dam
and based them on an “adaptive management” model that based water releases
on expected inflow to the dam in any given year, along with a 600,000 acre
feet minimum pool — which Stokely said is also inadequate, and can be
disregarded as it was last year.

Come to now, Stokely says, the reconsultation of the Central Valley Project
and Trinity River Division are underway.

*Carryover water*

Stokely said he would promote a strategy of keeping a minimum pool
requirement that could keep enough cold water in Trinity to withstand a
multi-year drought and still meet temperature objectives downstream to keep
salmon healthy for an approximately six- to seven-year period. He pointed
to a study he helped write that suggests the minimum pool be more than
doubled from 600,000 to 1.25 million acre feet or more, although now he
believes that number should be even higher. Likewise, he shared a letter
from the Bureau of Reclamation that said a Trinity Reservoir cold water
pool under 750,000 acre feet is problematic and is inadequate for cold
water fish in the river in case of a multi-year drought.

On the high end, Stokely said there are also limits to how high the pool
can be for safety in case of overflow. The Trinity Lake Safety of Dams
Criteria, as developed by the Army Corp of Engineers and Bureau of
Reclamation, he shared, after a wet year in 1974 with an already high
reservoir threatened to do exactly that, overflow, and the maximum full
pool was set to 2.45 million acre feet. A catastrophic overflow event, he
said, could overflow all communities downstream of the river to the coast.

Back to the low-end, another large issue for achieving a fuller carryover
storage minimum pool beyond reconsultation, Stokely said, are what is known
as “senior water contractors.” These contractors, he said, were promised
allocations from the CVP even before Shasta and Trinity County dams were
built.

“What you will see historically is that during the first few drought years,
they draw down Trinity very heavily … to fulfill these contracts,” Stokely
said. “These (contractors) get 75% of their contract amount regardless of
how much water is in the reservoirs, or how much water came into the
reservoirs. It’s a real problem.”

“We really need to see those contracts change, without it I don’t see much
hope for the Trinity River because they’ll continue to suck it dry during
drought years,” Stokely said.

*Moving forward, potential alternatives*

Moving forward, Stokely strongly, and repeatedly, suggested the county hire
a water rights lawyer, and to do it soon, as the reconsultation is taking
place.

“This stuff is really complicated, it even gets my head spinning,” Stokely
said at the end of the almost hour-long presentation. “There’s a lot to
think about, a lot of strategy.”

“This is a once in a quarter-century opportunity to get something changed,”
Stokely said.

He then discussed some of the already proposed alternatives in the
reconsultation, and suggested ideas for Trinity to draft and promote their
own alternative.

The “no action’ alternative would keep the minimum pool — which again,
Stokely warned can be ignored — at 600,000 feet, not enough to endure a
multi-year drought as has been seen very recently.

Stokely described the first alternative as “very bad” and it should be
eliminated from consideration. Among other problematic conditions, Stokely
noted the alternative removes the idea of a minimum pool altogether and
ignores the current Record of Decision, including the idea of adaptive
management and lowering flows during dry years.

The second alternative raises the minimum pool to 1.2 million acre feet, an
improvement, but not quite enough, Stokely said. He added again that the
number needs to be 1.5 million acre feet to survive multiple years of
drought. He also added that from his reading of the second alternative, it
also appears to remove Trinity County from much of the decision making on
river flows.

The fourth alternative is as terrible as the first, Stokely said, and it
does not have enough protections to keep enough water from being diverted
to the CVP.

“As long as we’re thrown in with the rest of the CVP, I think the Trinity
River is going to get the short end of the stick,” Stokely said.

Stokely said he is still working on the exact language for what he plans to
suggest as an alternative, but elements will include a 1.5 million acre
feet minimum pool and a moratorium on winter variable flows until results
from this year are known.

The full presentation can be found online at youtube.com/@trinitycountybos.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm7JMGDBSUU
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