Families Protecting the Valley – CalWatchdog.com

Sen. Feinstein moves toward compromise on drought legislation

Wayne Lusvardi — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 17:43:21 +0000

Crises commonly produce compromise. That seems to be happening in the U.S. Congress with solutions to California’s drought. In particular, Sen. Dianne Feinstein appears to be moving away from her San Joaquin River Restoration Act of 2009, which was a response to a 2006 court decision and gave priority to salmon runs over water for farming.

A March 10 editorial in the Fresno Bee paraphrased her comments to the paper’s editorial board:

“It is time, in light of climate change, Feinstein said, to ‘reassess’ the $2 billion plan that would revive salmon runs on the San Joaquin by rebuilding the 153-mile stretch between Friant Dam and where the Merced River empties into the San Joaquin.

“This is significant because Feinstein has been a strong river restoration advocate. She, along with former Rep. George Radanovich, was a key figure in pushing negotiators forward in the 2006 settlement of a long and bitter federal lawsuit filed by environmentalists over river diversions to farmers.”

And with Fresno in the heart of California’s farming country, the Bee’s editorial board also has been persuaded to change its stance. An Oct. 28 editorial in the paper didn’t foresee any problems with water releases from Friant Dam for fish. But its new editorial on March 10 wrote:

“The Editorial Board has championed the river’s restoration. However, we concur with Feinstein.

“The project has ballooned in costs. Deadlines have been repeatedly missed on this massive, unprecedented and unpredictable project. Indeed, the schedule for fully restoring the salmon runs was pushed back three years in mid-2012.”

Farm community

A typical response from the farm community came from the activist group Families Protecting the Valley:

“Is it possible that Senator Dianne Feinstein is starting to see the San Joaquin River Restoration project as the unrealistic dream that it really is?… There is no money, no promise of funding. Yet, water has needlessly been sent down the river instead of to farms. Thousands of acre-feet [of water] could have been saved just in the past few months, but the restoration was ‘off the table’ for re-negotiation according to Senator Feinstein.”

Feinstein’s new stance contrasts with her reaction to the drought legislation proposed in January by Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Tulare, H.R. 3964, The Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley Emergency Water Delivery Act of 2014. The bill effectively would repeal her San Joaquin River Restoration Act of 2009.

In a Jan. 29 statement, she wrote of H.R. 3964:

“Today’s bill is another irresponsible proposal that puts politics ahead of the needs of California, and candidly, it’s very disappointing. … This bill is disingenuous, it is irresponsible and it is dangerous. I truly hope Valley farmers speak out against this ugly example of politics as usual and demand that Valley Republicans quit the games and fulfill their responsibilities as legislators.”

Pretty tough words. But since then, the drought only has worsened. President Obama toured the drought area. And the November election, with Democrats worried about losing House seats from California, approaches ever nearer. Indeed, just yesterday Democrats’ plight became more critical as Republicans won an election for an open House seat in Florida.

So it’s not surprising that Feinstein and other Democrats want to advance compromise solutions to the drought that put them in good light with farm voters.

Compromises

Where might compromises be hashed out?

Compromise 1. The San Joaquin River has a 60-mile stretch where the river runs dry during droughts because the riverbed is at a higher elevation. This hump in the river keeps salmon from running to the ocean. The present solution is wasteful: flushing the river with huge amounts of water to get the fish over the hump.

Feinstein’s 2009 San Joaquin River Restoration Act required lowering the riverbed to create a sort of Panama Canal for fish at a prohibitive cost of $1 billion to $2 billion. It has not been built. The project is a literal example of the old saying, “In California water runs uphill toward money.”

A compromise could be to create an upstream fishery. An alternative compromise could be to build a cheaper parallel fish canal, but only after new replacement water storage facilities were built first for farmers to prevent repeat water shortages during drought.

Compromise 2. Water savings could be advanced through the quantification and greater efficiency of environmental water, not agricultural or municipal and industrial water.

Check out this Water Balance Table from the Department of Water Resources:

The environment is allocated 22.4 million acre-feet in a dry year, but nearly triple that, 62.1 million acre-feet, in a wet year.

By contrast, notice the narrow range for urban uses: 7.7 million acre-feet in a wet year, to just 8.6 million acre-feet in a dry year.

And agriculture goes from 27.7 million acre-feet in a wet year to 34.1 million acre-feet in a dry year. That’s just a 23 percent increase during the dry times farmers most need more water.

If a bit more environmental water were reallocated to agriculture in dry years, the crisis could be alleviated.

Compromise 3. Discussions could be started on the $102 million collected from farmers under the San Joaquin River Restoration Act of 2009 to build infrastructure to replenish their lost farm water allocations, but which never was implemented.

Compromise 4. A “fail safe” drought planning principle could be adopted that puts pre-mitigation of lost farm water before water diversions for fish. Otherwise, when droughts hit, farmers are decimated.

Boehner crosses Rubicon in CA drought war

Wayne Lusvardi — Wed, 22 Jan 2014 19:30:31 +0000

In 49 B.C., Julius Caesar and his army crossed the Rubicon River in Italy and triggered a civil war. Thereafter, the term “crossing the Rubicon” has meant a limit that, when passed, permits no return and an irrevocable commitment.

Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives John Boehner crosses the California “Rubicon” today on a visit to Kern County with a platoon of California congressmen to set forth a Republican strategy to alleviate the official state drought called by Gov. Jerry Brown — and maybe pick up some more House seats for the GOP.

The contest of this drought war is between Brown and Boehner over who controls the releases of water from the federal Central Valley Project to lessen drought impacts to either fish or farmers.

On Jan. 17, Brown issued a call to create an Interagency Drought Task Force, whereby his team would control the releases of federal water to California. Some California environmentalists see Brown as a foe of the California Environmental Quality Act, while caving in to farmers’ water demands. Others hold out the prospect that Brown will pander to the powerful environmental lobby in California, especially U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, Democrats like Brown.

Boehner’s entry into California signifies the Republican-controlled House wants to manage any water releases to assure they will go to farmers. Backing Boehner are Republican Reps. Devin Nunes of Tulare, David Valadao of Hanford and Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield.

Nunes has proposed floating a new bill in the House that would:

Allow the pumps run by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on the Sacramento-San Joaquin River to remain running as long as water is available.
Re-establish salmon runs, put a stop to the San Joaquin River Restoration Program that would allow river water to flow to the ocean instead of farms. River restoration plans have run into difficulty, not necessarily because of farms having taken water from the fish, but because engineers need to find ways for water to run uphill along former riverbeds.
Create a joint House-Senate committee to find long-range solutions to California’s drought problems.

CEQA suspended by Brown

Brown has not let Boehner take all the action in the water wars. Under Paragraph 9 of Brown’s Emergency Drought Declaration issued Jan. 17, the provisions of CEQA have been suspended.

That means any measures taken by the governor to alleviate drought do not have to comply with water quality plans, prepare scientific documentation of environmental impacts or hold public hearings and solicit official comments on any environmental impacts as a result of those measures.

The governor’s action to suspend CEQA has created quite a reaction among California environmentalists. Charged Nick di Croce, facilitator of the California Environmental Water Caucus, “The need for more conservation and greater efficiencies in water management should not result in abrogation of equally needed environmental safeguards benefitting both humans and other species, including fish.”

Federal-state water transfers now possible due to Mendota Intertie

Returning to the federal level of Boehner’s field of play, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has a new potential mechanism to alleviate drought that heretofore has not been available in California history. The USBR recently completed the Mendota Canal Intertie to the California Aqueduct. The intertie is comprised of two nine-foot diameter subsurface pipes that invisibly connect the federal and state water systems. Prior to the construction of the intertie, the two systems existed for 45 years about 500 feet apart near the City of Tracy without any way to cross-transfer water.

The bigger question is whether there will be any water available within the federal Central Valley Project to transfer to the State Water Project. That is because of the severity of the predictable drought and no new water capture reservoirs being built in the state since the 1960s.

Latino Water Coalition lobbies governor

Mario Santoyo of the Latino Water Coalition has lobbied the governor for relief for the population dense and lush Eastside farmers in the Central Valley, not just the parched, unplanted acres of the thinly populated Westside. The present drought is believed to be so severe that it can’t be isolated to Westside farmers, as in past dry spells.

The political struggle is over environmental water. If water were released from Millerton Lake to restore salmon runs on the San Joaquin River, the result would be turning off the spigot to Eastside farmers all the way from Fresno to Kern County. Millerton Lake is an artificial lake near Fresno run by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation as part of the Central Valley Project.

Families Protecting the Valley, a Madera-based association of farmers, reacted favorably to the governor declaring a drought emergency. But they are taking a wait-and-see posture if he will override the state’s powerful environmental lobby to provide water for farmers. Democrats lost the seat for State Senate District 16 in the midterm election of 2013 to Republican Andy Vidak mainly for choosing fish over farmers.

Boehner also is eager to exploit such problems for Democrats to try to pad his Republican majority in the House with a couple of more California representatives.

Environmentalists so far have been losing due to Brown’s suspension of CEQA and now Boehner’s entry into California to capture the San Joaquin River pump houses away from Brown.

To many farmers, winning the drought war means economic survival. To the victor go the perks of California’s drought war.